Liz McClarnon – who revealed last month she was expecting her first child – fell into a “dark hole” after failing to get pregnant during her first rounds of IVF treatment.
Liz McClarnon fell into a “dark hole” after struggling to get pregnant.
The Atomic Kitten singer revealed last month that she and husband Peter Cho – who she met online in 2021 and married in 2023 – were expecting their first child together and the 44-year-old star has now spoken about their struggles to conceive.
The couple began fertility treatment early in their relationship but experienced three failed embryo transfers in 2020, leaving Liz “broken”.
She told Britain’s OK! magazine: “The first time we did it, I thought, ‘This will be it’.
“But by my third cycle, it was obviously very different. When that one didn’t work, I was really quite sick and I was in a dark hole.
“I’d put on so much weight but I didn’t want to tell anyone why, because I didn’t want the IVF to become my identity, my whole personality. I was still doing shows and I’d see the comments online talking about me.
“I remember one said, ‘She’s getting really thick,’ and others were like, ‘She’s unrecognisable.’ I tried to remember that those people didn’t know what was happening, but it was hard. I just felt broken after the third time, so we took a break before the wedding.”
The couple then had two successful cycles of IVF last year but Liz sadly miscarried and vowed she was “done” with trying to have a child.
She said: “I said I was ‘done’ after the last one, and Peter was absolutely on board with that, he didn’t say anything other than, ‘This is your body and I’ll support whatever you decide you want,’ which was a huge thing for me. I felt so bad emotionally, it was really tough.
“But then we spent Christmas at home in my tiny two-bedroom flat, and my mum and dad came down from Liverpool and we all squeezed in. That time actually helped me heal.”
The ‘Whole Again’ hitmaker hailed having children “a miracle”.
She said: “The whole process made me truly appreciate that having a baby is a miracle. There are so, so many things that need to happen correctly for someone to get pregnant, and for that to result in a healthy baby.
“If you fall pregnant naturally maybe you’re not as aware, but at times we would be waiting every single day for the phone call to say how many eggs had been retrieved, or how many embryos they had, or if the embryos were healthy, or growing, or to tell us if I was pregnant. Then when it doesn’t work, you’re just in shock.”
Liz McClarnon slipped into ‘dark hole’ amid fertility struggles
