The show was inspired by her own love story—then infertility left her too numb to write.
Chances are pretty high you’ve binged Erin Foster’s hit show Nobody Wants This—more than 10 million people did in just its first four days on Netflix—and are anxiously awaiting season two. But if you haven’t, here’s the gist of the series without spoilers: A chronically single LA-based podcaster named Joanne (played by millennial favorite Kristen Bell) falls for a charming and emotionally available “hot rabbi,” Noah (the impossibly charismatic Adam Brody). Chemistry ensues.
It’s fair to say the series, which is loosely based on Foster’s courtship with her now-husband, music executive Simon Tikhman, struck a chord with the masses. The hit show quickly rose to the #1 spot on Netflix’s coveted Top 10 list, where it stayed for two weeks. And since then, it’s been a full-on Nobody Wants This media frenzy, with lots of (well-deserved) think pieces about how Joanne and Noah’s partnership is the healthy relationship we needed to see on TV, and whether the show’s female Jewish characters were fairly portrayed, and why Kristen Bell and Adam Brody just may be the ultimate rom-com duo.
But one narrative has been missing from the conversation: The impact Erin Foster’s difficult fertility journey had on Nobody Wants This. The 42-year-old writer, who gave birth to her first daughter, Noa, in May, went through 20 rounds of IVF (20 egg retrievals and five embryo transfers) before she became pregnant…and around half of those rounds took place while she was working on the show. As someone who’s gone through seven rounds myself, with no clear end in sight, I was stunned when I read that she’d managed to create such a smart and relatable series against the incredibly challenging, all-consuming backdrop of IVF. Because make no mistake: IVF is all-consuming. Throughout the first half of this year, I interviewed 30 other women who’ve also struggled with long and winding fertility journeys, and the biggest takeaway message was that IVF treatments can take over your life. The appointments and injections and procedures are completely overwhelming, as are the emotions. The whole thing is soul-crushing. Relentless. And so I wondered: How did Erin do it?
The truth is, it wasn’t easy. I sat down with her on Zoom to chat about her journey, and the impact it had on her creative process—including the period when IVF left her too numb to write at all. Read on for Erin’s story, and her advice for others going through it, too.
Allure: A lot of people don’t understand that IVF doesn’t always work right away. That it can take years, as it did for you. Can you take me through your own long journey?
EF: It started when I went to have my eggs checked right after my 34th birthday. I was single for all of my adult life, and I just thought, ‘It’s weird that I’ve never had an accidental pregnancy.’ After I got checked, I found out I have a really low egg count [also known as a low ovarian reserve]. So I thought, ‘Well, I guess I should get ahead of this and freeze my eggs.’ But I only got three eggs after my retrieval. Then I did another round about a year later, and only got two eggs. I met my husband [music executive Simon Tikhman] after that, and was gearing up to do a third retrieval before my 36th birthday. He wasn’t ready to do a round with me [where we would freeze embryos] because we’d only been dating for four months, so I did a third round by myself. I got three eggs again, bringing my count to eight eggs total.
About a year into my relationship with my husband, I told him I really wanted to make embryos so that I could see what we’d get from my eight eggs, since I already had such a low reserve. We did that, but none of the eight eggs worked. We didn’t get any embryos. So I was 36 years old, I had done three rounds of [egg retrievals], and I had nothing. It was expensive, it took a big toll on me physically and emotionally, and I still ended up with nothing. I felt really scared. And this is what people don’t get: Freezing your eggs is not always the solution.
After that, I just kept going. I ended up doing 20 egg retrievals and five embryo transfers. It finally worked on the 5th transfer. And 20 rounds was just my completed retrieval rounds…there were so many others that got canceled. Maybe I’d ovulated too early, or I’d ovulated too late, or whatever else. I think more or less, in the past six years, there wasn’t a time when I wasn’t doing IVF.
EF: I’ve said before that IVF is sort of like a gambling addiction: You always think it’s going to work next time. You don’t know how to stop. There were so many times when I said, ‘That’s it. I’m not doing this anymore. I’m done with this process. F*ck this.’ But then, you know, I just couldn’t help myself. I’d see some sign from the universe. And I’d think, ‘This is it. This is the time. This is the time it’s going to work.’
Every cycle is different, so I’d think, ‘Maybe I’ll just go in [to the fertility clinic] when I get my period, and then I’ll have sex and try naturally.’ But then they’d say [something like], ‘Oh, you actually already have two follicles that are really big right now that we could take out,’ and I’d say, ‘Wait, okay, maybe I’ll just take those two out.’ I remember I was about to get on a plane to go to Switzerland for a friend’s wedding, and I went in to check what was happening. And they told me I had two follicles that were ready to go with no medication at all. And I thought, ‘Okay, this is a sign.’ I did the retrieval two days later, and then got on the plane the day after the procedure to go to Switzerland. I was thinking, it’s fate, you know? There were two follicles just sitting there, without medication. Like magic. But I got a text from my doctor when I was sitting at the wedding: Nope. There was nothing there. [Editor’s note: This means the follicles were empty sacs and there weren’t any eggs inside.]
I was just getting hit over and over and over again, and at a certain point, I stopped reacting. I became glazed over. Numb. I’d say, ‘Yup, okay, figured that would happen. Let’s keep it moving.’ I didn’t react to the highs because I didn’t want the lows, and I didn’t want to talk to my friends about it because nobody had the right thing to say. I didn’t know anyone who was going through it to the degree that I was going through it.
Allure: All of this was happening while you were creating Nobody Wants This. Did you see your work as a good distraction, or did you find it really difficult to do because of all the emotions and the hormones?
EF: We sold the idea to 20th [Television] before Covid. But then Covid happened, and I hit a wall. I was at my 10th failed retrieval at that point. And the number 10 just stuck out to me so much, you know? And this thing had recently happened to me where my estrogen had plummeted. I’d reacted really badly to Clomid, the pill they sometimes give you early in a cycle [to help your body produce eggs]. Somehow my estrogen got completely depleted from taking it, so I was having crazy hot flashes for six weeks. Every 45 seconds or something, my body would be covered in prickly heat, and I’d be bright red. I would peel my clothes off, and I would feel like I had icicles all over my body of heat.
It was just stabbing pain. It was so uncomfortable, and I just could not write. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t think. And I kept using Covid as an excuse. But obviously I had nothing but time to write. I just couldn’t focus on anything. I was in a funk. I was mad, and unhappy. I was so sick of IVF.
There was also a little bit of a gift from the universe because of Covid: I couldn’t go to the fertility doctor as easily as I could before. So I was able to not think about it for a while. But even then, I was still thinking about it; I secretly thought not thinking about it would be the answer. I was thinking about not thinking about it. I was like, the universe doesn’t know I’m really thinking about a baby right now. And so it took a long time for me to write the show, mostly because I was really in a funk over IVF. I just could not focus. And I’d started to turn my attention to other places. I started cooking a lot…trying to inject joy into my life that wasn’t about fertility stuff.
Then, once I did finish writing, Netflix immediately said, we love the show. I’d written it for myself to star in, but they said: We would rather have Kristen Bell. The first time I met her was on a Zoom when I was in New York, and she said, ‘I don’t want to take this role from you.’ And I was like, ‘Well first of all, no one is offering it to me. And second of all, the truth is I want to be pregnant. I want to be a mom. That’s actually what I want. And I don’t want to be in a hair and makeup trailer at 5 AM. That’s not where I’m at in my life. I’m 40 years old. I’m doing IVF. This wouldn’t really work.’ So it all worked out perfectly anyway.
Kristen Bell (left) as Joanne and Adam Brody (right) as “hot rabbi” Noah in Nobody Wants This.
I ended up getting pregnant during the [Writers Guild of America] strike. By the time we got back to the writer’s room, I was really sick—throwing up in my trash can at the office. And then I was pregnant the whole time we were shooting, which was honestly the greatest distraction ever because it got my mind off of it. I didn’t have to sit there for nine months thinking [even more] about what could go wrong…I was already doing that anyway. One time I was in Nashville and I stopped feeling nauseous for a couple hours, and I panicked and booked a flight home to go see my doctor and ask: Why did I stop feeling nauseous? Is something wrong?
Allure: I did similar things after all my embryo transfers. It’s crazy-making. While we’re talking about your pregnancy, I read that you ended up choosing to have an unmedicated birth at home in the end. Can you tell me more about why you wanted to have that experience after IVF?
EF: I shut off during IVF. I was constantly pumping synthetic hormones into my body, and I felt really disconnected from it [as a result]. I hated my body. It wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do. And that really pissed me off. I didn’t want to take care of it, you know? I was like, you don’t take care of me, so I don’t want to take care of you. I was very disconnected so that I could function. And then, when I finally got pregnant, every stage of my pregnancy was like magic. I just couldn’t believe my body was actually pulling this off. And I wanted to feel the birth. I wanted to experience it.
Throughout IVF, I had no say in the process. No control. I didn’t get pregnant the way I wanted to. So I thought: This is the one thing I can try to have on my terms. My way. Everybody said it was the worst idea, which only made me want to do it more. I said: You don’t understand what it’s like. You don’t understand that I haven’t had the experiences other people have had, where you’re surprised that you’re pregnant or you don’t have to think about it as much. We don’t get to have those sort of intrinsically primal experiences. So I just thought: The most insane one is the one that I want to really experience.
Allure: And how was it?
EF: It was extremely painful and very hard…the most insane thing I’ve ever done in my life. But it all went fine. I had a 100% non-complicated birth.
Allure: Congratulations again to both you and Simon! How did all of the IVF impact your relationship?
EF: Honestly, it strengthened our relationship. I’m really lucky…I have a wonderful partner who is super tapped into my experience on this planet and what I’m going through. Every time I was doing anything—the night before a retrieval, for example—he’d say: ‘You’re the strongest person I know, and I can’t believe you’re going through this. I’m so impressed with you.’ That made me feel like I never had to have the argument of: ‘Look what I’m having to go through. You don’t understand.’ He was always just really, really there, so I think it strengthened our relationship—because we both wanted it equally. We got excited about the tiniest things together, and disappointed at the same time. I remember lying in bed together watching TV one time when I was hoping I was pregnant [after an embryo transfer], and we got the call that I wasn’t. We just looked at each other and he was like, ‘Do you want to talk about it or just put the show back on?’ And I was like, ‘Just put the show back on. I don’t want to talk. Let’s just watch TV.’ It was like, what is there to even say? At a certain point, what can you say? Literally, what can you say?
Allure: I deeply relate to that. What advice do you have for others going through it?
EF: Have a conversation with the people in your life, and tell them what you don’t want them to say to you. People don’t realize that going through IVF tests your humanity. It tests your patience with other people, because people say really dumb sh*t when they’ve never been through it. I was trying to get pregnant for a long time, and people would say: ‘Have you gone on vacation? Have you stopped thinking about it? It’s going to happen as soon as you stop thinking about it.’ And I know that people mean well, but what they need to understand is that when you give any suggestion, you’re actually blaming us for why it’s not happening. When you say, ‘Have you gone on this diet? Have you read this book? Have you tried this smoothie?’ you’re saying that something we’re doing is preventing pregnancy from happening. And that’s already how we feel. We’re already blaming ourselves. We’re already thinking things like, ‘Oh sh*t, I had that glass of wine. Maybe I shouldn’t have had that. Maybe I’m not as healthy as I should be.’
That’s why it’s so important to give people some insight—because they are saying the wrong thing all the time, and it’s not their intention. [I found it helpful] to say to people: ‘When I have a disappointment, I just want you to gossip with me about something else. I don’t want you to look at me with a sad face, and I don’t want you to ask me about the details. If I go to a doctor’s appointment, I don’t want you to ask me what happened. I’ll let you know when I’m pregnant. You don’t need to know every single time a follicle grows two millimeters.’ It’s really about protecting yourself with the people around you, and making sure you’re teaching people how to support you the right way.
My other advice to people who are going through it—yourself included—is that there will likely be a point where you have to be open to how to become a mom in a way you didn’t want to. At some point, you may have to say: I’m ready to do the thing that I didn’t want to do, whatever it is for that person. Maybe it’s more IVF than you wanted to do. Maybe it’s a surrogate. Maybe it’s an egg donor or a sperm donor. At one point, I took pressure off myself and started wondering: Should I use my sister’s eggs? What would that look like? There are so many different options. But I can say this: Once you become a mom, you really don’t care how you got there. You love the baby you have so much that it makes it easier to remember what you went through. Because you’re like: If it had worked any other time, it wouldn’t be this baby. And now I only want this baby. This was the baby I was meant to have.
Foster’s clothing brand Favorite Daughter and CCRM Fertility just launched a limited-edition t-shirt printed with “IVF, Baby” for $48, available for pre-order at shopfavoritedaughter.com. 100% of the proceeds go towards RESOLVE: the National Infertility Association, an organization dedicated to those struggling with infertility.
