‘You’re going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it’s just not going to work’: Inside Casey Donovan’s IVF miracle
Casey Donovan has spent the majority of her life thinking she’d never have her own children.
Diagnosed with PMOS (formerly PCOS) when she was just 14, she was warned she may never see two lines on a pregnancy test.
Casey Donovan and Renee Sharples are expecting their first child together. Instagram/@caseydonovan88
“It’s something I heard from doctors my whole life,” she tells nine.com.au.
“I just had this monologue in my head that [said], ‘You’re not going to have babies. It’s not going to be a thing for you.’”
When she started exploring IVF with her fiancée Renee Sharples, that voice returned to haunt her: “You’re going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it’s not going to work.”
It turns out that voice was wrong.
Two lines did appear on a pregnancy test − a moment that is immortalised in a video fiercely protected in Donovan’s phone.
The beloved singer is now 24 weeks pregnant, halfway through her biggest ever national tour, This is Me, and has just released a song, aptly titled My Baby & Me.
She’s spent the last year prioritising her health as she threw everything at making her dream of becoming a mother come true.
She underwent two rounds of egg retrievals, but because her body was good at producing eggs due to her PMOS, the question wasn’t how many would be retrieved - it was how many would hold as embryos.
Donovan shared her journey with the public, including pictures from the transfer. Instagram/@caseydonovan88
“And then the even bigger question was: Will my body be able to sustain a pregnancy?”
The result was 13 embryos. But the first transfer wasn’t successful.
“We set our expectations really low, [we thought] ‘If this one doesn’t stick, we’ll keep trying’. But certainly after the first [transfer] my expectation was even lower,” she explains.
Donovan, 38, says, unlike the first transfer, she carried on with her life: She was on tour, lifting bags and performing. Her voice over the course of the treatment, however, was changing.
“The hormones were affecting my vocal cords beyond belief, but one night it was just … woah. I had a feeling … I’d never been that free in my voice.”
Ten days post transfer, she did a test. Positive.
Donovan’s journey most certainly hasn’t been easy, but she says she’s proud of herself.
“Being a plus-size woman, you hear all these things ... weight, BMI, complications, so I kind of felt doomed from the start,” she tells nine.com.au. “I did all the things to give myself the best possible chance to get pregnant, and I’m very proud of that.
“But pumping your body with all these hormones, it’s a lot, and a lot on my mental state. Having to do that quite publicly, for people to see, there was a bit of shame putting on a bit of the pregnancy weight.”
Donovan says it was 40-year-old Sharples, a paramedic and lecturer, who carried her through those mental challenges.
“Renee, my beautiful fiancée keeps telling me, ‘Babe, you’re growing a human, give yourself grace.’”
“Having to try and keep this precious thing inside of me healthy and letting go of those fears that my body can’t do something, because it very much can.”
Donovan was already in her second trimester when she performed with Robert Irwin at this year’s TV Week Logie Awards Getty Images for TV Week
The singer, who raise to fame right across the nation when she won the 2004 season of Australian Idol at 16 years of age says she and Sharples were committed to becoming parents, and both decided to undergo fertility treatment.
“Renee has also had some egg collections and created embryos as well,” Donovan tells nine.com.au.
“She is a few years older than myself, and we wanted the best possible outcome for her eggs and embryo, so we did it [earlier]. She absolutely loved the process of the whole thing. It was this really beautiful time.”
Ultimately, they decided Donovan would undergo the transfer, but she had a national tour on the horizon.
“Renee and I spoke at length about when we were going to do it, how we were going to do it, and Renee just said, ‘Babe, we need to start trying because it may not work the first time’. And sadly, it didn’t.”
Donovan said her mindset was: “I’m going to give it a red-hot bloody go until I cannot any more”.
“And then [we’ll] have different conversations about raising children, adopting and respite.”
Right now, Donovan says she is focused on wrapping up her national tour, taking in this special time and preparing for her first child, who is due to arrive in February 2027.
“I can’t do the long hours that I once could, which infuriates me, but it also gives me the opportunity to stop. I find [that] very hard as an Australian artist. We’re go-getters.
“[I recall] at the Logies [in August] being 17 or 18 weeks pregnant, and putting on all these dresses, telling the dressers I was going through IVF so I was a little bit swollen.
“But doing all of those things and making those memories with our little family before they’re even earthside, it’s pretty special.”
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