En route to her history-making, gold medal-winning free skate, Olympian Tara Lipinski picked herself up off the ice countless times. But all the setbacks she triple toe looped over to claim her spot atop the podium at the 1998 Nagano Olympics seem relatively minor when stacked up next to her grueling five-year fertility journey.
"It truly was the most difficult thing that I've encountered," the athlete detailed in an exclusive interview with E! News. "I look back at it like, 'Oh, you were an athlete, you went to the Olympics.' That was easy. That was nothing compared to this."
And while the physical effects of enduring four miscarriages, 24 surgeries, eight egg retrievals and six failed transfers shouldn't be discounted, "I think the emotional toll it took on me was the hardest part," Lipinski continued. With her and husband Todd Kapostasy "being confronted with so much loss and grief and failure constantly, it really took us a long time to get a win. So you just feel like you're repetitively getting hit and knocked down. And it's like, how do you just get back up and try again?"
But she did continue to find ways to lace up those metaphorical skates.
"Maybe my athlete mindset kicked in at times," the 42-year-old explained, "because I would go through a miscarriage and not want to get out of bed for two weeks and I would tell my husband, 'We're never doing this again. We're done. This is the end of the road.'"
But after weeks of grieving, Lipinski continued, "I'd be on the phone, making an appointment where I knew I was getting back in the game. Five years is a long time, but when you don't know what's ahead, you just go down that same cycle."
Her personal merry-go-round led her to 8-month-old Georgie, the daughter she and director-producer Kapostasy welcomed last October with the help of a surrogate. But she's careful to note that's not the only way to go for gold, so to speak.
Procedures like in vitro fertilization (IVF) aren't guaranteed to work and whether due to finances or medical hardships, "a lot of people decide to move on and live a child-free life," explained Lipinski. "I feel like the word 'success' is something that needs to be taken out of infertility. It's a diagnosis, there is no success. So whether you move on to have a family or not, you've succeeded getting through something that's that difficult."
That's just one of the parables she hopes to deliver as fertility company Dandi's newly minted Head of Community. .
"Since the arrival of my baby girl last year, I really have realized that I have so much passion towards the infertility community," Lipinski said of leaping into work that involves helping couples land fertility grants to fund their family-making efforts.
And she found herself particularly impressed with Dandi's plethora of offerings that range from IVF care kit and live injection support to a bustling WhatsApp-based community where, said Lipinski, "people can connect with one another to ask questions like, 'Should I check out a fertility acupuncturist?'"
It's the type of community Lipinski would have loved when she was panicking about properly mixing her IVF medication and sneakily following couples on Instagram using a burner account.
"I wish it was a resource that I had while I was going through this," she said. "I would just be Googling and hash tagging on Instagram to find other people who were telling their story that I could then relate to or feel validated by."
Because struggling with fertility can feel isolating "for so many reasons," Lipinski continued. "I isolated from friends and family and the world for so long because it was the only way I knew how to cope. But while you're in that little cocoon, it's so nice to have support from a place like Dandi. It makes the diagnosis less scary being able to connect with other people in your exact position."
And it means the Finsta won't be necessary as she and Kapostasy ready themselves to embark on their second surrogacy journey.
Though the hosts of the Tara Lipinski: Unexpecting podcast are eager to give Georgie a sibling close in age, "Nothing is guaranteed," stressed Lipinski. "I still remember the doctor's appointments and the scans and all of the anxiety that I had for so long. That just doesn't disappear overnight. So for me, it's just taking it day by day, and knowing anything can happen. And if there's anything that I learned it's that, even if there is failure, you get back up and you find a way."
And Georgie truly is the gold medal she worked so hard for.
"I remember, I was sobbing, because, obviously, the miracle of the moment, but also just relief," she described of holding her daughter for the first time. "I think it was the first breath that I actually took in five years. It just felt like all of this pain was coming out of me. I was like, 'Oh my gosh, this is actually happening. I thought this wasn't going to happen to me.'"
And she was so affected by the grief and pain of everything she had gone through that she found herself waking to a middle-of-the-night anxiety attack mere hours before Georgie's arrival.
"There so much that you deal with when you experience, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say, trauma," Lipinski explained of spending nine months fearing the worst. "And until I held her and saw her breathing, I was terrified."
Having experienced four losses, "the innocent, beautiful parts of pregnancy that people can experience, unfortunately I just wasn't able to tap into that," she said. Instead of spending appointments marveling at the presence of tiny fingers and toes, "I was like, 'There's going to be no heartbeat.' It's hard to experience it in a different way after everything you've been through."
But those blissful, delirious newborn days were pretty much everything she dreamed they could be.
"I do think there's a silver lining, even though there shouldn't be a silver lining to trauma or grief," said Lipinski. "But if there is one, it's just the overwhelming feeling of gratitude that I have for every single moment. I waited for these poopy diapers, I waited for things spilling out of my hands and coffee falling on the floor. This is what I was waiting for. And I'm experiencing it now."
While she's having fun with the tentpole events—why, yes, that was Georgie sporting a tiny version of Mom's Olympic costume on her first Halloween—"It really is those quiet moments that I am savoring," said Lipinski, "like, hearing her cry in her crib for me to come pick her up when she wakes up from a nap. There's just so many moments that I'm so grateful for."
Though Georgie's first Olympics is probably going to glide right to the top of that list.
With the broadcaster set to host coverage of the closing ceremonies at the 2024 Paris Olympics alongside her figure skating partner in crime Johnny Weir as well as sportscaster Mike Tirico, Georgie "already has her little beret with her initials on it," said Lipinski, "and Uncle Johnny is ready to show her the city. So we're excited."
Add to the bank of core memories she's been intentionally collecting since last fall.
"Almost every person I meet, they're just like, 'It goes so fast, before you know it, they're going to be out of the house,'" noted Lipinski. "And she's only eight months old, but I already am like, 'You better be taking in this little milestone—she's crawling, she's pulling up.' You're just so proud of them because they're growing in front of your eyes. But at the same time, I'm like, 'Okay, all the advice, just take it all in.'"
Because while the journey to the top of this particularly podium was a battle, the prize was priceless.