Katie Lee who previously said to not giving up on her dream of having a family in an essay for PEOPLE is expecting her first child with husband Ryan Biegel following infertility struggles.
The 38-year-old Food Network star announced the good news on her Instagram. She shared a photo of herself showing her baby bump standing near a kitchen counter and grabbing a forkful of spaghetti from a bowl.
“Eating for two ? Baby Biegel is on the way!” she captioned the picture. In an exclusive essay for PEOPLE, Katie revealed about her fertility challenges admitting that she and Biegel had had difficulties conceiving since their September 2018 wedding.
“I know a family will happen for us; it’s just not going to be as easy as we thought,” Lee wrote of being optimistic for the future. “We will keep working toward it. Someday we will have our happy new beginning.”
“I pray any of you out there experiencing the same will have yours too,” added Lee, who’d had surgery and undergone in vitro fertilization (IVF) in attempts to get pregnant.
“I get multiple messages a day asking me if I’m pregnant or why I am not pregnant yet,” Lee wrote on Instagram. “After one said that I looked ‘thick in the waist’ I finally responded that it’s not ok to comment on a woman’s body and you never know what someone is going through.”
“I naively thought it would be easy. I’m a healthy woman, I eat a balanced diet, exercise, I don’t smoke. Ryan is the same,” she continued of her preconceived notions of getting pregnant, but she quickly learned “reproductive health is an entirely different ballgame.”
“We just finished the intense process only to get zero healthy embryos,” Lee said of the couple’s journey with fertility treatments. “Not only is IVF physically exhausting, the emotional toll is unparalleled. We were filled with hope and excitement only to be crushed.”
“It is really hard to put on a happy face,” she admitted. “Fertility issues are supposed to be private so many of us are silently in pain. I hesitated to share this but I feel comfort when I hear others’ stories and I hope any of you in a similar situation know you are not alone.”
“When people ask me when I’m getting pregnant, it hurts. It’s just a reminder that I’m not. When they say I look like I’ve gained weight, I have. I can’t exercise as much and the hormones have made me bloated,” Lee continued.
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