October 21, 2024
Mitsu Yasukawa/Northjersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK
Retired soccer star Carli Lloyd, a Delran Township native, announced the birth of her first child, Harper. Lloyd previously opened up about her struggles with infertility, which led her to undergo multiple rounds of IVF.
Retired U.S. soccer star Carli Lloyd announced the birth of her first child, following a long journey with infertility struggles that she opened up about in the spring.
Lloyd — who grew up in Delran Township and attended Rutgers University — wrote on Instagram on Monday that she and her husband, professional golfer Brian Hollins, welcomed daughter Harper Anne Hollins on Oct. 18.
RELATED: Carli Lloyd announces pregnancy, details journey with 'unexplained infertility'
"So very grateful for this amazing blessing in our lives," Lloyd wrote on Instagram. "By far the hardest thing I have ever endured but the best thing I’ve ever done! ... We just can’t get enough of this little peanut. We love love you so much and will do our best to give you the tools necessary in life to be a good human being!"
Lloyd, 42, works as a Fox Sports correspondent and soccer analyst. Before that, she enjoyed a successful soccer career, helping the U.S. women's national soccer team win two World Cups and two Olympic gold medals. In May, she penned an article for Women's Health, intimately detailing her "secret journey involving unexplained infertility and multiple rounds of IVF treatments."
She said she always wanted to be a mom, but during her long soccer career her "sole mission" was to become the best player in the world. She retired in 2021 at the age of 39, but things didn't necessarily slow down — she still was traveling around the world for appearances, photo shoots and speaking engagements.
Lloyd and her husband began trying to conceive in 2022, and Lloyd said she faced a race against her "40-year-old biological clock." Fertility begins to decline by 30, and by 40, healthy women on average have only a 5% chance of getting pregnant each menstrual cycle.
She began meeting with Louis Manara, a fertility doctor at the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Fertility in Voorhees. Upon his recommendation, she began her journey with in vitro fertilization — a process to create embryos by mixing eggs and sperm in a lab dish.
She underwent two unsuccessful rounds of IVF and described the "emotional toll" she felt during the process.
"I felt all the emotions during my career — stress, worry, fear, anxiety — but I’d never felt all the emotions that IVF brought on," Lloyd wrote in Women's Health. "I felt completely out of control. It’s an indescribable roller coaster unless you go through it."
Lloyd and her husband decided to do a third round of IVF, and they were overjoyed to find out that Lloyd was pregnant in January.
In her Instagram post Monday, Lloyd thanked Manara, as well as Virtua OB-GYN Stacy Ann McCrosson and Virtua midwife Erica N. O'Leary.
"I am so thankful for the amazing team that surrounded us and helped Harper enter this world," Lloyd wrote. "You all got me through this and are truly the best of the best!!"
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