TV Personality Reveals ‘Shocking’ Pregnancy After 7 Years of Trying

Tanya Hennessy is pregnant after nearly a decade-long fertility journey.

The TV presenter, comedian, radio host and author announced she was expecting her first child with husband Tom Poole in a July 27 interview with Body+Soul, marking her 20-week pregnancy milestone over the weekend.

“I’m pregnant!” Hennessy, 39, announced at the time. “I still feel a level of anxiety about saying it out loud. I genuinely never thought I would get here. For such a long time, I just didn’t think it was going to happen, and I grieved that. So now it’s kind of shocking. I’m still processing, but I’m so excited to be here.”

She continued, “Until you’ve been in a fertility struggle, you never really know the pain, hopelessness, fear and loneliness that consumes every day. Hope is what fuels you.”

It’s taken more than seven years of trying for Hennessy to embark on her motherhood journey, having struggled to get pregnant due to her stage four endometriosis diagnosis. Having undergone her first endometriosis surgery four years ago, Hennessy has since had two more surgeries, the most recent of which was in January.

Having been told over the years that it would be impossible for her to have a baby, Hennessy held out hope through two early miscarriages, an ectopic pregnancy, and seven rounds of IVF — the last of which worked.

“I was out the front of this burger place when the IVF clinic called. It was April and I had had an [embryo] transfer seven days earlier. I had started to bleed, so I thought I was having a chemical [miscarriage],” the expectant mom remembered. Upon finding out she was actually pregnant, Hennessy said, “I lost my mind out the front of the burger shop, with no shame at all. I had never seen a positive pregnancy test before. I was screaming with excitement!”

“I love seeing the scans and the heartbeat – there’s a whole baby in there. Still, every time I go for a scan, I wonder if it’s real,” she continued. “When you’ve only known loss, you become attuned to everything that can go wrong. I still feel a disconnection; it’s like an out-of-body experience.”

Hennessy has been taking anti-clotting injections, a steroid and progesterone to aid her pregnancy, who joked that while she thought she would spend her pregnancy “wearing overalls, painting the house and just being gorgeous,” she’s been “non-verbal for months and have become this weird closet-witch, sleeping all the time in my bedroom.”

“Pregnancy has been hard, but you know what’s harder? Infertility,” she admitted, adding, “I’m really happy that the chapter of infertility has hopefully closed for me. I’ve been really sad – tragically sad – for seven years. I’m ready for some joy.”