When Erin Sarris and her husband first visited a fertility clinic, they were hit with unexpected news: severe male factor infertility and an immediate recommendation to pursue IVF. What followed was a long, winding, and often painful journey filled with setbacks, from failed cycles to loss and emotional isolation.
Now a mother of three and author of Cupcakes Everywhere: One Sweet Tale of Overcoming Infertility, Erin shares how infertility reshaped her view and inspired a metaphorical children’s book that captures the bittersweet reality of struggling to grow a family. This conversation is raw, vulnerable, and ultimately a reminder that even when the path to parenthood is anything but straightforward.
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Guest: Erin Sarris, Progyny Member
Host: Dan Bulger, Progyny
Watch this episode on YouTube:
Here are some highlights from this episode:
Reshaping Their View on Family Building
02:02 – 05:21
We got five embryos that were edge cases. We got the phone call that none of our embryos were viable and none of them were suitable for transfer, which honestly was a consideration that I hadn’t even taken. I thought that everybody gets a transfer. I was like, I just want to go home. I want to go home for the whole month. And luckily, we both worked remotely at the time, and we could do that. So, we spent the money that we would have spent on the transfer, and we booked a month-long rental in Chicago, and came home to be with our families. And that was so nice and so healing to do.
Feeling Isolated
06:02 – 08:24
I ended up having a DNC for that pregnancy and thus began my dark phase of just completely like every day felt so unbearable, like I just couldn’t interact with anybody, and I felt very socially awkward. I have two brothers, I’m really close to them, and I called them and I said, I don’t even know how to make small talk with people at Easter when people say, “Hey, Erin, how’s it going? What’s new?” Like, I literally did not know how to answer that question in a casual way without just feeling this like complete shame and like grief over our infertility. I just felt like my brain was broken and my ability to be engaged with the world, and you’ll see a lot of this in the book, like just feeling this sense of otherness and like things come so easily to other people.
Finally Getting Their Cupcakes
08:53 – 12:12
Erin Sarris: One day, my husband and I were out in the car, and I’m like, you know what’s funny, I haven’t gotten my period in a really long time. And then he was like, Well, how long? And so I, like, went back and kind of like, was thinking about it, and I was like, I think I haven’t gotten a period for like, six or seven weeks. And he was like, what? Oh my gosh, I think I’m pregnant.
I wrote an Instagram post to announce my pregnancy with my son, and I used the metaphor of the special bakery, because I wanted to highlight the different processes that I took to having, you know, all three of the kids, and I just kind of talked about how, imagine if you had to go to this sad, sad bakery to even get a chance at having a cupcake. But everyone else can easily bake their cupcakes at home. That was kind of how the cupcakes metaphor was born. It’s actually maybe more for grown-ups than I even realized when I was writing it. I think that infertility is just something that makes its mark on you.