Kellie Gerardi on secondary infertility, timing IVF around a spaceflight, and the view that changed her
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Kellie Gerardi has spent her career blazing a path to space for civilian scientists. She has also spent nine years navigating secondary infertility, a stretch of egg retrievals, IVF cycles, and pregnancy losses that unfolded quietly in the background of some of the most public milestones of her life. When she was assigned to a follow-up science mission, the timeline she couldn’t control collided with the one she desperately wanted, and her fertility journey became what she calls the A plot of her life. In a candid conversation on The Motherly Podcast, Gerardi opens up about the losses she navigated in private before deciding to share them, the girl math of timing IVF around a spaceflight window, and the moment in orbit when she realized she was no longer on the same planet as her baby.
Meet the expert: Kellie Gerardi is a research astronaut, author, and advocate for women in STEM. In 2023 she became one of the first non-government payload specialists to fly a suborbital science mission, and she is the 90th woman to fly to space. She grew up in Jupiter, Florida, has a Barbie made in her likeness, and once pumped breast milk in microgravity as part of her team’s research into lactation and the postpartum body. She is leading a follow-up science mission next year. She and her husband are parents to two daughters, Delta and Max, born nine years apart after a long secondary infertility journey.
Liz Tenety: You grew up in Jupiter, Florida. Did you always dream of becoming an astronaut?
I did. I grew up in Jupiter, Florida, which is very on brand for someone with my particular career dreams in life. I joke that I had front row seats to the final frontier right up the coast. Human space flight was just a part of the backdrop of my childhood and adolescence, so it never felt quite so far out of reach.
I grew up envisioning what are the ways in which I can contribute to helping open up the next generation of space access for the next generation of scientists. That has always been my North Star.
Liz Tenety: Was there someone who made you feel like it was actually possible?
When I think about what made my mind click, like, oh, I could actually do this, it was really my parents, and my mom specifically. The greatest gift they gave me was this combination of humility and confidence as a mindset. The humility to know that it’s not a given, not something where I deserve to do this or of course I can do this. But more the quiet confidence of, if I work hard enough for long enough, why not me? That why-not-me mindset carried me through so many doors and seats at so many tables that are beyond my wildest imagination.
Liz Tenety: You always knew you wanted to be an astronaut. Did you always know you wanted to be a mom?
Yes. My two dreams in life were to be a part of human space exploration and also to be a mom. I knew from a very early age that was something I wanted for myself. It was a dream come true to have my daughter and to share so much of my career journey and personal life with her. And then, most recently, welcoming my second daughter, Max, into the world after a long secondary infertility journey.
Liz Tenety: Can you share more about that secondary infertility experience?
I had always known I would love to give Delta a sibling. I knew from that first experience it might not come as quickly as I had hoped, but I still had hope I might not need fertility treatments, given that I was able to conceive Delta naturally. That just wasn’t the case. Months turned into years.
After my first spaceflight in 2023, I sat back down and reassessed where I was in life. The combination of my age and my goals and the future of my career all came together, and it was just, it’s time. If I’m going to do this, I don’t want to leave it up to chance. It’s too important to me at this point in my life. So we decided IVF was the best route for us. That in itself was a journey over multiple years, multiple egg retrievals, multiple IVF cycles, losses.
Over the nine years in between Delta and Max, I had multiple pregnancy losses, and each one was painful in its own unique way, because it would be this glimmer of hope, like, oh, my body can do this thing I need it to do, and then, oh my God, no it can’t. There was the devastation of the loss, but then also this extra layer of frustration at my body for dangling this much-wanted pregnancy in front of me and then taking it away.
Liz Tenety: IVF and miscarriage were things our mothers’ generation whispered about. Why was it important for you to share and destigmatize it?
There still is a significant amount of stigma attached to pregnancy loss and fertility struggles. Even the sort of, oh, wait 12 weeks before you tell anyone. That’s so inculcated societally that even I was preconditioned to think I have to wait through the first trimester, because I wouldn’t want to have to un-tell them.
I’ve gone through every permutation of this. I’ve waited the requisite 12 weeks and still had to un-share the news after a second trimester loss. I’ve shared immediately and been able to benefit from all of the support and joy even when those ended in heartbreak. I’d rather do the latter and have this village surrounding me with support.
A fertility journey is this odyssey, physically, mentally, emotionally, financially. It’s just everything, and it becomes the A plot of your life, no matter how big the rest of your life was previously. After my first spaceflight I suddenly had a bigger audience, and I felt a little disingenuous sharing so much about my career but not addressing the thousand-pound elephant sitting on top of my personal life.
Liz Tenety: Who or what supported you through that odyssey?
In the beginning, honestly, there were a lot of difficult chapters where I didn’t have that type of support. A large part of that was the barrier and the isolation I constructed around myself, because I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. There was a stigma attached, and also this fear of burdening other people. Often when other people are celebrating exciting life milestones, I didn’t want to be the one who has to be felt sorry for. What I realized in sharing is that that was a completely unfounded fear, and there were people waiting to step up and support me.
I lurked on forums for so long. I’ve always been a very data-driven person. I like to read the studies behind the odds. It became an obsession at points, trying to calculate my own body’s odds at any given moment. Not necessarily the healthiest coping mechanism, but that’s where I turned, because there wasn’t so much discourse immediately available. There are so many more resources now than there were a decade ago when I was first navigating this.
Liz Tenety: How did you navigate the timing of going into space with pregnancy?
It was highly stressful, because the timing of my spaceflights was not in my control. You’re assigned to a flight. Add to that a lot of anxiety around my ability to conceive generally, and secondary infertility. That was my joke, my version of girl math was running the numbers and figuring out, okay, what is my window?
After I flew in 2023, shortly after, I was announced as leading a follow-up science mission. It was a twice-in-a-lifetime moment, but it created a lot of pressure. It was like, okay, now is the time with IVF. We originally thought that flight might happen this year, so I thought I had this very specific time-bound window in which to conceive.
In that particular egg retrieval, after all of the attrition, which is devastating in its own right, I was left with only one potentially viable embryo. It was literally all my eggs in one basket. So it was miraculous joy when I conceived after that transfer, and all the more devastating when I lost that pregnancy on the same day I was supposed to graduate from my IVF clinic. Then the schedule shifted, and now we’re targeting next year. That gave me the opportunity to try again from scratch.
Liz Tenety: How has your fertility journey changed you as a person?
There’s this viral video trend where the beginning is something difficult, like, how did you survive that? And the answer in the second half is, I didn’t. That was a different version of me. I believe that. The version of me a decade ago mentally, physically, emotionally is very different than the mother I am today.
I want to be careful, because I’m definitely not someone who believes every heartbreak is a lesson to be learned. Some things are just terrible and objectively painful, and there is no silver lining to them. At the same time, I have a lot of respect and grace for the version of me that exists today, because I’ve watched her navigate things that are objectively terrible and still come out the other side.
I talk about this concept of functional hope. In my last IVF journey I didn’t have a lot of hope. But what I had was functional hope. It wasn’t the belief that no matter what, everything is going to work out how it’s supposed to. It was a more self-confidence-centered version of hope, that no matter how my story ends, I’m going to get through it. That’s a much more valuable version of hope I’ve been able to cultivate for myself.
Liz Tenety: How does that cosmic perspective affect you as a person and as a parent?
I think the world would greatly benefit from more people taking the time to gaze at the stars, and the best part is you don’t have to physically travel to space to cultivate that mindset. Taking time intentionally to look up in awe at the night sky is the perfect visual representation of that combination and contradiction of humility and confidence. The humility to realize there is so much more than you in this universe, that you are a very small piece of something bigger. But then the confidence to see what’s within your reach.
Having the opportunity to look down at our home planet with my own eyes was profound. It’s one of the most humbling things you can imagine, realizing you are seeing a perspective that so few human beings have ever seen. And then the cognitive shift of realizing in that moment, I’m not on the same planet as my baby. It’s mind-bending. It will be my mental screensaver until the day I die.
There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth, only crew, and it’s really important that we act like that.
Liz Tenety: You pumped breast milk in microgravity. What was that experience like?
About 90% of my career as a research astronaut takes place right here on Earth. We test technologies in special aircraft that fly in parabolas, like a rollercoaster. The aircraft takes off, then freefalls, and during that freefall you experience microgravity, then it pulls up really fast, over and over. That’s where the nickname the vomit comet comes from.
At eight weeks postpartum, I was really excited to get back with my science team. I always have to say the caveat that it was entirely my choice to be there that early. No one was pressuring me. One of the things we had questions about was the postpartum body and lactation in the microgravity environment. Is it possible? We were also studying how an altered gravity environment might affect the composition of breast milk. It was fascinating on a scientific level but also on a personal level, and empowering to see that visual of what women’s bodies are capable of.
Space flight inherently carries risk. As a mom, how do you come to terms with it, and how do you talk to your kids about it?
I’m certainly never cavalier about risk, and I never shy away from the reality that human spaceflight is not without significant risk. For me personally, I have a great deal of trust in the spacecraft and the engineering team, so I feel very comfortable with that risk calculus. Translating my comfort to someone else is not always easy, specifically my family.
Delta was five when I flew for the first time, and I could tell even in her five-year-old mind she was running through the risk calculus in her own way. She asked questions like, what happens if you bump into another planet? It allowed us to have really honest, direct conversations. Here’s how this spacecraft works, here’s what we train for if something doesn’t go right, here’s why this matters. We were able to engage on a level that was developmentally appropriate and reassuring while still being honest and not dismissive.
Liz Tenety: How do you explain what you do to a child?
Delta from a very young age has been my pint-sized co-PI with all of my experiments. It’s never mommy leaves and does this thing over here. I try to make it part of the entire family. She even proposes experiments now. My favorite part is when I don’t have the answer. She had one of those squishy dumpling fidget toys and wanted to know, if you take the container top off, would the dumpling float out or stay in the container in microgravity? I had a guess but I didn’t know for sure, and I said, let’s find out.
So being able to explain what I do is, mommy goes into microgravity or into space to help figure out how different things work in that environment, to test technology and conduct research and find answers to questions we have.
Liz Tenety: What do you hope your daughters say about you someday?
I hope they say very similar things to how I speak about my parents, which is that they gave me the best gift possible, this limitless imagination and confidence for what’s possible in this life, and they encouraged me every step of the way. That’s what I would love to earn.
This article has been edited and condensed for clarity. Listen to the full episode of The Motherly Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
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