{"id":796457,"date":"2025-06-04T09:11:03","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T14:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=796457"},"modified":"2025-06-04T09:11:03","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T14:11:03","slug":"astronaut-kellie-gerardi-shares-her-journey-with-secondary-infertility-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=796457","title":{"rendered":"Astronaut Kellie Gerardi shares her journey with secondary infertility : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Struggling to have a second child, astronaut Kellie Gerardi uses her social media presence to let others know they’re not alone. She’s pictured above in 2021 in New York City. \n <\/p>\n
Roy Rochlin\/Getty Images for NYFW: The Shows<\/p>\n
Roy Rochlin\/Getty Images for NYFW: The Shows<\/p>\n
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Six white roses sit in a glass vase on Kellie Gerardi’s kitchen counter. On camera, for millions of followers across her social media platforms, Gerardi slowly picks out stems until only three remain. Each of the final three faded white roses represents a viable embryo, a bundle of hope in her battle against secondary infertility.<\/p>\n
Gerardi was the 90th woman in history to fly to space. She’s also a children’s author, a researcher, a Swiftie and a mother. Her latest mission is one she’s been working on for years: to give birth to a second child.<\/p>\n
“To date, I’ve been pregnant five times with only Delta as my child,” she said. “It’s been a rough journey and it’s this mix in secondary infertility of both knowing that it’s possible for me to conceive and carry a pregnancy to term, obviously, but having long periods of time not being able to get pregnant [or] when I do, having a loss that is just devastating each time.”<\/p>\n