Football pundit Richie Sadlier’s wife is to give birth this month to a “little miracle” – years after doctors told them pregnancy might never happen.
The former Republic of Ireland international revealed how he and his wife Fiona tried fertility treatment for four years and then conceived naturally. He tweeted yesterday: “My wife and I underwent fertility treatment for four years, having been told in 2018 we couldn’t conceive naturally.
“She’s now 37 weeks pregnant, naturally.” Richie, 43, and his wife Fiona, who got married in 2019, are expecting their baby to be born within weeks.
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He spoke about the couple’s desire to have a baby on the Fertility Talks podcast of IVF clinic Therapie Fertility. He told host Ranae von Meding: “In my head and in Fiona’s head, we were like, ‘Don’t worry, it’s going to work for us’.
“We thought that we’re healthy people and we live healthy lives and we really want this to work. But we got to the day of the results and it was a no. There was an issue appearing about the egg quality.
“They said, ‘We don’t think IVF is for you any more’.” Richie revealed that Fiona later said to him: “I’m a day or two late.”
She took a pregnancy test which confirmed that they were having a baby. Richie said: “We got the lovely news that we are pregnant and we’re expecting a baby, all being well, at the end of January. It will be our first child.”
IVF did not work for Richie and Fiona, but he highlighted how the rounds of treatment helped to deepen their relationship. He said: “With each round, they were all unsuccessful rounds, we got closer.
“There was an additional connection because no-one but the person next to either of us knew how it feels. They were going through this with me and they are being really supportive as well as being heartbroken, too.”
He added: “It seemed to deepen things between us.” After playing once for Ireland, injury prematurely ended Richie’s playing career at the age of just 24, so he retrained as a psychotherapist after getting help for alcoholism.
He revealed in his award-winning autobiography Recovering, which won the 2019 Irish Sports Book of the Year, that he was abused at the age of 14 by a physiotherapist. After Fiona had a scan last November to check the baby’s health, Richie called their unborn child a “little miracle worker”.
The proud dad-to-be tweeted: "Everything is measuring healthy and normal and the pregnancy has been really smooth for Fiona. We were previously told we’d face a high probability of fetal abnormalities. This baby is a little miracle worker.”
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