- Golnesa Gharachedaghi from "Shahs of Sunset" recently told the Pregnantish podcast about her fertility journey.
- At a recent event hosted by Pregnantish, she said she hopes to help others going through the same.
- Now a mom to a son, she said she feels like he was meant to be her child.
Golnesa "GG" Gharachedaghi, a star of Bravo's "Shahs of Sunset," said that when she wanted to have a child, it was "never a factor of having a significant other — it was more about when I have my shit together."
Gharachedaghi, who recently shared her story on the podcast "Pregnantish," said she'd had several unintentional pregnancies during a "careless" time in her life. "I lived such an unhealthy lifestyle," Gharachedaghi told Insider.
She said she went through a lot both physically and mentally before she could welcome her son into her life. Part of her journey included agreeing to have her fallopian tubes removed in an emergency surgery to save her life, making her unable to get pregnant naturally again.
Gharachedaghi's IVF journey
Gharachedaghi said that after considering a male friend as a potential coparent, she decided to seek out a sperm donor and turned to Donor Concierge, a company that finds qualified egg and sperm donors and surrogates.
"It was a psychoanalysis of me to understand who I was so they could profile me and profile the donor," Gharachedaghi said. "I had certain criteria, and I said, 'I need pictures.'"
Gharachedaghi said that the donor she chose had childhood photos and an adult photo and that his genetics were "pristine." She purchased the sperm and completed the IVF process.
"We got 21 eggs in one retrieval," she said. "I have an autoimmune disease, and I was 38 at the time, so it was a little shocking."
Gharachedaghi said her doctor implanted one embryo and confirmed two weeks later that the pregnancy was viable.
The good news was short-lived.
She said the doctors discovered the embryo had traveled into her fallopian tube, and while they didn't know why, they knew it needed to be dissolved. She said she was injected with two shots of methotrexate, a drug used to treat ectopic pregnancy.
She said she'd been planning to announce her pregnancy to her family that week and was flying to see them.
"I was seated next to a woman who was seven months pregnant. It was one of those moments where you can't cry," she said. "It's just like, if this airplane door just swung open, I would be OK if the wind just sucks me out right now. It was miserable."
But Gharachedaghi said she believed this was karma. "I accepted that because I had no other answer for what happened to me," she said.
Gharachedaghi said that she healed mentally in a week but that physically the worst part was still on the horizon.
She needed her tubes removed
Gharachedaghi said that upon returning to Los Angeles, she experienced severe pain in her abdomen and was rushed to the hospital.
She said it turned out that the methotrexate hadn't worked and that her fallopian tubes needed to be removed. She said her doctor had informed her that her fallopian tubes were not needed to get pregnant, so she said to "take them."
She said that after she recovered, her first question for her doctor was when they could start again.
In three months, she was pregnant.
"I don't feel like I mourned the whole process of what I went through and how I can never get pregnant naturally ever again," she said.
Still, Gharachedaghi said that when she looks at her son, she feels it was all supposed to happen. "He was supposed to be my kid," she said.
Gharachedaghi recently joined an event hosted by the podcast "Pregnantish" featuring celebrities who've struggled with infertility. She said she was moved by being able to share her story and hear other people's journeys to becoming parents.
"I get to now tell this story. Being at Pregnantish, this is my journey — I'm supposed to be a voice for certain people who feel like that was their entire life and they can't move past it," she said.