Kaillie Humphries is used to the feeling of physical excellence. With some of the fastest push times, she’s won three Olympic gold medals, five world titles, and this week, she will be heading to Milan Cortina to compete in an astounding fifth Winter Games.
So, when Humphries and her husband decided to start a family, it was particularly disorienting when she discovered she was unable to conceive naturally, later enduring multiple cycles of IVF.
“My body’s always performed. Every time I’ve asked it to, it’s raised the bar. It’s been the best in the world multiple times,” she said. “To have something where it was failing, and I couldn’t do anything about it – it was disheartening.”
She fought through a fourth round of IVF and in the summer of 2024, she and her husband welcomed their son Aulden. But the journey was by no means straightforward, and the athlete is currently on track to start a foundation aimed at helping female athletes like her, so no one has to make the financial decision between pursuing their sport or becoming a parent.
“It’s just bad cramps”
It was almost by accident that doctors discovered the cause of Humphries’ difficulties conceiving. For years, she had experienced debilitating menstrual cramps. She’d pushed through the pain in training, in competition, in daily life, until consuming a bottle of Advil a week wasn’t unusual.
“My periods were always excruciating,” Humphries said. “I’ll be in the grocery store and get a cramp and it will drop me to the floor, and I’ll be sitting on the floor, gripping the shelves for 10 or 20 seconds.”
Any time she mentioned it to healthcare providers, she was told it was just bad cramps, a normal part of being female. But when she scheduled a preventative procedure in 2021 to remove an ovarian cyst – in danger of rupturing during the Beijing Olympic Games – her surgeon found she was riddled with lesions and scarring, diagnosing her with stage four endometriosis.
The condition, in which uterine tissue grows on other internal organs, can result in the extreme pain Humphries had become accustomed to. It can also lead to infertility, and after a surgeon removed as much as possible, Humphries learned that a natural conception would not be likely.
“It made sense why, for the previous years that we were trying, it just never happened,” she said.
An Olympic effort to become a mother
Still determined to start a family, Humphries and her husband, Travis Armbruster, began IVF treatment, but after well over two years – including two separate egg retrievals – the regimen took a toll on Humphries, both mentally and physically. “As much as I can say I was prepared for it, I was not. Not at all. The shots, the injections, what I had to do, what my husband had to do, none of it,” Humphries said. “Give me an Olympic final any day.”
During the first round, she learned she has a sesame oil allergy (progesterone is typically dissolved in the liquid), leading to her first failed transfer.
“My body was completely inflamed and I was basically injecting things I’m allergic to right into my body,” she said. Then their doctor backed out on them, saying he couldn’t understand why it wasn’t working, advising they give up – words no athlete of Humphries’ pedigree hears with ease.
They found a new doctor, refocused, and continued towards their goal.
“Being an Olympic champion, I had a bit of a tool to rely on. I know what it’s like to not know the outcome and to give everything you have to something that’s unknown – to trust in the journey,” she said.
Through it all, Humphries never slowed down on the ice. Sport became her safe space, a way to focus on what she could control, and to be free from thinking about the barrage of injections and single lines on pregnancy tests.
“I needed something to keep me grounded, and as weird as it sounds, being in the gym and crushing my body every day is normal, it’s my safe space,” she said. “Competing was my time where I got to not think about it all. I was too busy going 100 miles an hour down a bobsled track trying not to die.”
But as their efforts continued, Humphries knew there might come a moment she would have to choose. Delay implantation for the competitive season, and their chances at success may diminish. Take a year away from sport, and she would lose not only her ranking, but her stipend and access to medical insurance.
The first time she was faced with that decision, she chose sport.
“After the second egg retrieval, either I was going to go right into implantations, or go into [the competitive season],” she said.
With the months of pressure and medications weighing on them both, Humphries and her husband decided to take a break from treatments while she continued to compete.
But the following year, they made a different call.
“My husband and I realized that if [parenthood] is truly what we were going after, then we needed to put everything we had into it. And whether that mental shift was the thing that made it work or not, that was the one that stuck,” she said.
She was pregnant in late September 2023, and by a quirk of the sporting calendar and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee protections for pregnant athletes, she was able to keep both ranking and her access to insurance.
Success story
Humphries is glad she was able to be a success story of balancing her competitive career and her journey to parenthood. But she is outspoken about the fact that not everyone has that conclusion to their story. One in eight families in the U.S. rely on some form of reproductive service or struggle with infertility, per Resolve, the National Infertility Association. She chose to open up about her own struggles, but it wasn’t until people began reaching out, sharing their own circumstances, that she realized how pervasive the issue is in America today.
This is what led her to found the Kaillie Humphries TrailBlazeHer foundation. While currently on hold as she focuses on the 2026 Milan Cortina Games, Humphries hopes to begin providing grants to support women in sports, as well as grants for those who are undergoing financial strain to become mothers.
“For most athletes it’s all out of pocket – do you fund a coach or equipment that you need to win, or do you fund a $10,000 egg retrieval?” she said. “I don’t think that female athletes should have to pick.”
Humphries is uncertain what the future holds after Milan Cortina. Sometimes she thinks this will be her last Olympics, but other times she isn’t so sure.
“I would love to do 2034,” she said, referring to the Games that will take place in Salt Lake City. “I’ll be 48, and I’ll just come out, be the oldest, and just rip it,” she added, laughing.
One thing she’s certain of, however, is that she wants to have more children. After the Olympics, she and Armbruster will head back to the doctor for another round of IVF, starting the process all over again.
“No journey is just straight up,” Humphries said. “It very much embodies the Olympic spirit. You have this dream goal of becoming a mom, or of going to the Olympics, winning gold, and you don’t know if you’re ever going to get there. Even with no signs that it’s working, you still believe that the next one could be it – and it’s going to happen.”
Throughout the winter, in a series called Hometown Hopefuls, NBC is spotlighting the stories of Olympic and Paralympic athletes from across the United States as they work towards the opportunity to represent their country at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. We’ll learn about their paths to their sports’ biggest stage, the communities that have been formative along the way, and the causes they’re committed to in their hometowns and around the world. Visit nbcsports.com/hometown-hopefuls for more stories on the road to Milan Cortina.
