Whitney Way Thore is ready for the big, fat, fabulous road to motherhood.
The TLC star, who has starred on My Big Fat Fabulous Life since 2015, has previously spoken out about her desire to become a mom. And now, Whitney is taking the first step to make her dreams of motherhood come true: artificial insemination.
"Things are getting really real," the 41-year-old shared in a clip previewing the July 8 episode, per People. “I’m about to inseminate myself and hope that I get pregnant. That’s crazy, but there’s no going back now.”
While she's taken measures to preserve her fertility in the past, she explained that having her plans come to fruition has been a strange feeling, sharing that she's "nervous" amid a range of other emotions.
“It was one thing to have my eggs frozen, and this is another," she shared. "This is actually the most intentional act that I’ve ever done to try and get pregnant in my life, and it feels weird that I’m doing it alone.”
As Whitney explained as she utilized an at-home kit to begin the process, "I think I'm ready to get pregnant."
The TLC star’s big step comes one year after she opened up about her fears of potentially never becoming a mom after turning 40, while also noting that maybe it just wasn't meant to be.
"I was like, 'Who cares? Turning 40? Whatever,'" she told E! News in July 2024. "Then I turned 40, and I was like, 'Oh my god, 40.' I hate to be this kind of person. I didn't think I would be that way. But, for women, there are some stark implications that I don't think men go through."
Whitney—who has polycystic ovarian syndrome, the cause of the dancer's 200-pound weight gain in just one year while in college—continued, "I'm feeling real feelings about being 40 and unmarried and no kids."
Whitney’s PCOS diagnosis has required her to stay on top of her fertility, and while at the time, she shared that her doctor told her she's "got a few more years" to try out IVF treatments, she was still juggling feelings about her personal life.
"I want a partner. I know I could do it by myself, but I wouldn't, honestly. Obviously, anything can happen in life where you end up being a single mom, but I don't have the confidence to go in knowing I'm going to be single," she explained at the time. "I'm thinking if I can't meet the right man, or even a man, what are the chances that I'm ready to have a baby in two or three years?"
Ultimately, Whitney knew that deep down, she wanted to become a mother.
"Even if you weren't sure you wanted kids or it didn't get ripped away right from under you, you mourn the fact that it's never going to happen," she shared. "And I am just trying to assume it won't happen, so that I can come to terms with that. And then if it does, that'll be a nice surprise."
For more stars who have detailed their fertility journeys, read on.
Bella Robertson
The Duck Dynasty star and husband Jacob Mayo have been open about why it’s important for them to give insight into their fertility struggles on her family’s new reality series.
“We share the story of infertility in the show and that’s something that we haven’t really shared publicly that much, but that’s something that others just don’t know.” Bella said in a joint May 2025 interview with Jacob for Us Weekly. “When you just look at someone on social media, you can’t know what anyone’s going through.”
For them, it not only “felt right” but allowed the pair to be their “authentic selves on this new show.”
Olivia Culpo
Two years before the former Miss Universe and Christian McCaffrey shared they were expecting their first baby, she detailed how her endometriosis diagnosis may lead to future fertility issues.
“I want to have kids, but I want to make sure that I can,” Culpo, who was diagnosed with the disease in 2020 and subsequently had surgery to treat it, shared in a November 2022 episode of The Culpo Sisters. “It could be really hard for me to have babies.”
“Endometriosis can affect your fertility in a lot of different ways,” she continued. “You can have endometrial tissue growing near or on your ovaries, it can affect the quality of your eggs, scar your fallopian tubes.”
Caelynn Bell
Bachelor Nation's Caelynn shared a candid message about her and husband Dean Bell’s difficulty conceiving in the years since their 2023 wedding.
“It’s hard,” Caelynn explained in a March 2025 YouTube video. “I’m putting way less pressure on myself than I was in the first few months of trying.”
Although the process has been emotionally challenging, Caelynn is remaining positive as she and her husband get medically tested to “figure out what’s going on.”
Bunnie Xo
The wife of country musician Jelly Roll has been vocal about her in vitro fertilization (IVF) journey since June 2024.
"We had planned on doing this privately," she wrote on Instagram, "but decided our IVF journey needed to be shared because we've always been so open.”
Since then, she has detailed "the emotions, the roller coaster, the worry," of the medical process on her Dumb Blonde podcast.
Despite the challenges, though, she is open to other options to grow her family.
“It is tough, but at the same time it’s like, you just put it in God’s hands,” she said on a November 2025 episode of her podcast. “If it’s meant to be it’s meant to be. And if not, we can always adopt.”
Julianne Hough
The Dancing With the Stars cohost has been open about her struggles with endometriosis, a female reproductive disease, and has been working to preserve her fertility for when she feels ready to try and have a baby.
In June 2025, she shared that she froze her eggs for the third time.
Whitney Port
Since welcoming Sonny with husband Tim Rosenman in 2017, the Hills alum has been candid about the ups and downs of her fertility journey, including her two pregnancy losses and her surrogate’s two miscarriages.
In July 2024, Whitney confirmed she’s preparing for a second egg retrieval.
"I'm feeling definitely better than my last round because I know a little bit more what to expect," she shared, "and I just have so much trust and faith in my doctor."
But no matter what happens in their journey to welcome a second child, Whitney has been clear there is nothing lacking in her family of three.
"Especially now, as we embark on this fertility journey for number two, I know we are complete no matter what," she wrote as part of a birthday tribute to her son on his 7th birthday in July 2024. "You are a blessing. We love watching you grow and are beyond grateful for how chill you are."
Michelle Yeoh
The Everything Everywhere All At Once star—who married Jean Todt in 2023 after a 19-year engagement—once opened up about the challenges she experienced trying to conceive with her first husband, Dickson Poon.
"I always wanted to have children," Michelle shared during a podcast appearance in November 2024. "I went and did fertility [treatments] to aid in the process. I think that's the worst moment to go through is every month. You feel like such a failure."
She continued, "At some point, you stop blaming yourself. There are certain things in your body that don't function in a certain way. That's how it is. You just have to let go and move on."
Eve
The rapper, who shares son Wilde with husband Maximillion Cooper, once detailed a heartbreaking pregnancy loss she experienced due to an ectopic pregnancy while filming her sitcom Eve.
"It was 2006 when I found out that I was pregnant," Eve wrote in her memoir Who's That Girl?. "I had to have emergency surgery and stop filming the show for two weeks. I don't know why I lied to everyone on set and said that my appendix had ruptured, really. Maybe because I was lying to myself."
"If I faced losing my baby, then I didn't know if two weeks would be enough emotional healing time," she continued. "In the end, it was barely enough healing time for me physically, before I was right back to work on set. I had lost so much weight after the surgery, and my body was so frail."
Mary Bonnet
The Selling Sunset star, who welcomed her son Austin at the age of 15, has been candid about her and husband Romain Bonnet's fertility journey.
“We don't know what the outcome is going to be,” she told E! News in September 2024. “We're just kind of taking it as it as it comes. I've been super busy right now with the book and with the season and everything. So, I know nothing's going to happen if I'm stressed out and if I'm running around.”
And in addition to undergoing a surgery to rectify a septate uterus (when the uterus is divided into two parts by a membrane), Mary said she and Romain aren't rushing into any decisions—and are happy with their dog.
“We have our fur baby though, Thor. Romaine is obsessed with him,” added the real estate agent. “So if it doesn't happen, he says he's OK. He’s got his little fur baby, and he is just beyond obsessed. We’ll be OK. What's meant to be will be.”
Erin Andrews
The NFL sportscaster and her husband Jarret Stoll, who welcomed son Mack in July 2023, have had their own fair share of ups and downs amid their journey to parenthood—including navigating Erin's cervical cancer diagnosis in 2017.
But having frozen her eggs before her cancer battle, she then underwent IVF to help her conceive a child—an experience she decided to share with the world.
"I just was so tired of keeping quiet," she explained of sharing her struggles in a 2021 essay. "It was such a hard, painful journey. I think I went numb through most of it, because you just feel like a robot and you're on this really unfair roller coaster that more times out of none, you're going to get really bad news."
She added, "I'm a vocal person, and I could speak from the heart and just talk about how crappy it was and that I get it for a lot of couples and families that are trying to have a child."