Kate came on the podcast with her son Oliver — 11 months old, named for her nan Olive and her dad Ian — and she did not hold back.
She was 39 when she rang Melbourne IVF back. Not quite ready. Not quite sure. But her dad had just been diagnosed with cancer, and watching those last months of his life — the way he and her sister were everything to each other — something crystallised. She had to have a child.
She’d been in a relationship for three years, a COVID relationship that started well and wore itself out in grief and exhaustion after both of them lost their fathers within months of each other. The breakup was amicable. The clarity, for Kate, was sudden and complete. She wasn’t going to spend another year or two trying to find someone to start a family with. She was 40 in two months. She rang Dr Kate Stern at Melbourne IVF.
The practicalities
Kate went straight to ICSI — Dr Stern’s recommendation at 40. She tried to time the cycle around school terms (Kate is a primary school teacher) and her body had other ideas: Day 1 landed on Christmas Day. By late January she was stimulating. By early February she was in the pre-op cubicle at Melbourne IVF.
She tells us about that moment — sitting in the cubicle, feeling her dad and nan with her, walking into a room with nine people in it and welling up. They retrieved 13 eggs. Eleven were mature, nine fertilised. One fresh transfer. Three frozen.
The first transfer didn’t work. The second — a natural frozen cycle, no medications — did. She took an at-home test two days before the blood test, looked at herself in the mirror, and thought: Oh. Okay. Now what?
Hyperemesis gravidarum — the part nobody talks about
By Week 5, Day 6, Kate was hit with hyperemesis gravidarum — not morning sickness. HG. The kind where you can’t eat, drink, sleep, or think. She was on 13 tablets a day. She had hospital-in-the-home IV fluids. She missed most of Term 2. She describes this period honestly: she was anxious, depressed, and at her lowest, was googling the earliest gestation for a successful birth because she wanted it to be over.
Her baby was perfectly healthy throughout. But Kate wasn’t, and she’s clear-eyed about that.
The tablets continued until the day Oliver was born.
The third trimester — and everything after
Once HG was managed, Kate loved pregnancy. She loved her belly. She loved the movement. She had an elected C-section at Francis Perry Hospital under Dr Karen Black. Her favourite song played. She saw the placenta. The student midwife was the photographer. She calls it the best part of the whole process.
Post-birth, she redirected her doula budget into an Airbnb for her mum in the same apartment building. Mum came 7am–10pm for six weeks. Kate did all nights solo.
She couldn’t get the breastfeeding latch right and triple-feeding (breast + pump + formula) was unsustainable. At three months, she stopped entirely. She describes the relief as enormous. Oliver is now a thriving, formula-fed 11-month-old.
On Oliver’s name — and her decision not to have more
Oliver Ian: Olive for nan, Ian for dad. Kate had wanted to deliver on her mum’s birthday to tie three generations together; the hospital couldn’t accommodate the date. He was born two days later. Her sister cried at the NIPT appointment when they found out he was a boy: Dad would have loved this.
Kate has three frozen embryos — currently in a home freezer, storage decision pending but not urgent. HG confirmed for her that a second child with a toddler is not on her horizon. She loves her Melbourne inner-city lifestyle, her apartment, her five-minute-radius parents group, and the life she’s building. She never felt she had to have two, three, or four children. One Oliver is enough.
Kate’s advice: Find out your options. Create a vision for your life in 10 years. Who do you see in it?
Oliver was named for Kate’s nan Olive and her dad Ian, who died before he was born. This episode is, in a quiet way, for him.
This episode is brought to you by City Fertility
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