The Olympic gold medalist and her husband, Todd Kapostasy, welcomed their first child, a baby girl named Georgie, via surrogate after five years of fertility struggles and multiple miscarriages.
“I dreamt about this for so long. A crying baby, sleepless nights,” the retired figure skater told People Wednesday while debuting her daughter.
“Even when I’m like, ‘OK, take an hour nap,’ I’m almost too excited,” the 41-year-old continued. “I’m like, ‘She’s there. Just watch her a little longer.’”
taralipinski/Instagram
Georgie’s arrival comes less than one month after Lipinski revealed she had a baby on the way following four pregnancy losses, six failed IVF transfers and eight egg retrievals.
After her fourth miscarriage, she and Kapostasy decided that it was time to “think of other options.”
The 1998 Olympic champion told “Unexpecting” podcast listeners on Oct. 5 that she formed an “instant connection” with her surrogate Mikayla.
taralipinski/Instagram
taralipinski/Instagram
taralipinski/Instagram
When the gestational carrier gave birth, Lipinski “was playing Dave Matthews’s song ‘You and Me’ and … could not stop sobbing” in the delivery room.
“Then the baby came out, and it was so much relief,” she told People. “I felt like I could breathe again.”
Although Lipinski acknowledged that the fertility struggles put a strain on her marriage, she and the producer “figure[d] out how to support each other” during the ups and downs.
taralipinski/Instagram
“I would have loved for us to not have gone through all this,” Lipinski said. “But now, I can’t imagine it any other way.”
The couple started dating in May 2015 and got engaged seven months later at the Plaza Hotel.
Lipinski and Kapostasy walked down the aisle in June 2017. Their ceremony took place at the Middleton Place plantation in South Carolina.