NFL’s sideline reporter Kaylee Hartung was just preparing to celebrate her 35th birthday when she suddenly came to a screeching realization. “Something about that number and me sort of taking stock of where I’m at in my life struck me,” Hartung said on the latest episode of Kylie Kelce’s Not Gonna Lie Podcast. What Hartung realized was that at 35, her mom was widowed with two kids. This led her to take a hard look at herself and ponder what to do next. What she thought about ended up being an empowering journey not only for Hartung but also for all the women trying to control their own fertility.

Back in 2020, when the pandemic was underway, Kaylee wanted to make the most of her free time. “I’m not traveling as much as I usually do for work. And I wanted to feel like I came out of the pandemic having accomplished something that would be harder to do otherwise,” Hartung revealed. So, that determination to achieve something she couldn’t have in her usually busy routine pushed Kaylee to freeze her eggs. “I decided I was going to freeze my eggs,” Kaylee told Kylie. But it didn’t take her long to realize how hard and weird this process was going to be.

“It’s such a weird process on so many levels,” Kaylee added. She apparently tried to find resources and answers to her hundreds of queries. However, she recalled that there was literally a scarcity of information present on the internet. “They were probably the questions any girl would ask who was exploring the process. But it was just surprisingly hard to find information,” Hartung recalled. So, when Hartung felt stuck in her life-changing process, it was her former employer, ABC News, that came to her rescue.

“I was working for ABC News, and Good Morning America thankfully was open to me talking about it and gave me a platform,” Kaylee said, expressing her gratitude. This little gesture led to Hartung getting a reaction from social media she couldn’t believe. There were apparently lots of other women who were on the same page as hers. She felt that those women were waiting for someone like Hartung to come clean about their egg-freezing journey.

From injecting 2 to 3 shots every day to 27 in 12 days, Hartung’s eggs were successfully harvested and stored. It may not have been a smooth-sailing journey with a five-figure price tag and frustrating discoveries. Still, Hartung was able to get control of her own fertility through oocyte cryopreservation. Her journey now serves as an inspiration to women who are considering this option.

But surprisingly, Hartung wasn’t the only NFL sideline reporter who chose to freeze her eggs. 

Erin Andrews chose to freeze her eggs in light of a cervical cancer discovery

Dating back to 2016, Andrews was diagnosed with cervical cancer. This, and a public lawsuit against the Nashville Marriott, led Andrews to decide it wasn’t the right time to have a baby. At 35, she followed her oncologist’s recommendation and chose to freeze her eggs. After undergoing two surgeries, Andrews was declared cancer-free. But then she and her husband, Jarret Stoll, decided to move ahead with IVF, thinking that if her cancer suddenly returned.

Within the next few years, Andrews found herself going through hell, opening up about her surrogacy experience. Little did Andrews and Stoll know that her frozen embryos only had a 41% success rate through surrogacy. “We were not prepared for how difficult and risky it is,” Andrews once recalled. She and Stoll tried to transfer two embryos to their first surrogate, but nothing happened. They circled through five more surrogates before finding their ideal match, who carried Mack.

“I just could not stop crying. Mack was our golden embryo. He was our last hope,” Andrews claimed. She later also added that Mack’s surrogate mother, her husband, Stoll, and she still meet occasionally. Now, after embracing parenthood, having fought so many battles. Andrews only wants to make up for the lost time. She might have gone through infertility, IVF, and surrogacy, but Andrews never lost hope. That’s why she and Kaylee Hartung serve as role models to those women who also need similar courage in their lives.