Operation Rainbow Space Baby: An astronaut’s journey with IVF

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.

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.

“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.”

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From astronaut life to motherhood, Gerardi shares her life online. Her videos document everything from her space research on biomedical and thermodynamic fluids to trips with her mom and daughter — usually rocking her chunky star necklace and some sort of space-themed sweater with multicolored stars, moons or aliens.

With over 2 million followers on her Instagram and TikTok accounts, Gerardi’s social media presence has been a space to celebrate women, science and girlhood. These days, with Gerardi openly sharing her fertility journey and experiences with in vitro fertilization — a treatment that extracts eggs and fertilizes them with sperm outside of the body — her socials have become a communal space for others going through similar struggles.

“There were so many highs and lows just within the process [of IVF],” she said. “The egg retrieval, that was my first time going through it. And I think I was just a little bit emotionally unprepared.”

Gerardi began IVF in the fall of 2024. Only one viable embryo came out of that first round. It transferred successfully, and she shared the joys of being pregnant proudly and widely online. In February, the day before her 36th birthday, Gerardi attended one final ultrasound.

Gerardi recalled, “I went into my graduation appointment, or what was supposed to be my graduation appointment from my IVF clinic at that nine-week check up … and in that appointment was just shattered to hear my doctor and the nurses in the room tell me that there was no heartbeat.”

She left the clinic through a discreet exit she hadn’t seen before and shared the news in a real-time update to her social media community. Gerardi is committed to being transparent with her community, and that means sharing both the good and the bad.

After taking time to heal, Gerardi and her family decided to try again. And she was just as committed to sharing every step of the IVF process this time around — especially her joy and hope.

“Nothing is ever guaranteed in IVF,” Gerardi said. “I’m not unaware that it is a distinct possibility that either the same thing happens again, which would be equally devastating, or you know transfers don’t work … whatever it may be. I know the risks, and I know that nothing is a given. And yet, I’m still allowing myself [to] exist in this level of hope and enthusiasm and optimism.”

Gerardi has a second space mission scheduled for 2026. While she’s still figuring out the best timeline for herself and her family, those three embryos are set to be frozen and she has high hopes for a transfer in the future.