Weekend TODAY host Deborah Knight and her husband Lindsay Dunbar had always planned to have children, but they never realised how difficult their journey to becoming parents would be.
Speaking to Mamamia, the Nine journalist admitted she undertook 12 rounds of IVF to conceive her firstborn, Darcy. She also discussed her struggle to keep a happy face on while at work.
Knight, who is now a mother-of-three, said she felt like a “different person” to the smiling journalist we saw onscreen as she battled with her emotions internally.
“In the morning, I was going off and having blood tests for rounds of IVF and being told that an implantation had failed and then I’d have to go into work.”
“That was quite difficult to put that mask on. I would put the hair and makeup on and my mask on and go and try to do my job. It was hard.”
Knight said the stress her infertility caused her to be in an altered state of mind. “I kind of think I was a different person then.”
“I look back at myself then and I think I was such a sad person. I was deeply quite distressed about the road my life might take. Quite different to what I’d envisaged.
“I was a very different person then and I put a lot of that and those experiences into a compartment.”
After almost two years after the process Deb and Lindsay welcomed Darcy, now eight years old. But she and her partner underwent the process again as they tried for second child.
The 44-year-old shares that she was grateful as the second time around was not as intense. “Elsa came along much easier and at that point I didn’t really mind because we had one little baby … She was IVF too but much less problematic. It was two rounds of IVF.
But still, “it was costly emotionally and financially and a very, very difficult time”.
“You always hear that it’s an emotional rollercoaster and that’s exactly what it is. But I kept going and I thought I have no other option here. I just have to keep trying.”
Six years on, Knight was 42 and fell pregnant naturally. The couple added to their family with now 14-month-old with Audrey. “I do look at her … and think ‘wow you were just so determined to come into this world’ and she is a real go-getter.”