‘What am I going to do with this?’: How Sasha Mielczarek sparked a new career with what had been sitting inside his Notes app

Ever wanted to peek through the Notes app of one of your favourite reality stars? You might be surprised at what you could find: shopping lists, a never-ending catalogue of things you need to do, a rolling inventory of restaurant or bar recommendations… 

Not for Sasha Mielczarek – yep, the guy you all know from the inaugural season of The Bachelorette. For him, what had been sitting inside that app for years became the beginnings of a whole new career. 

At the time his wife Carly was pregnant, and he wanted to understand everything and to be as involved in the process as he possibly could. So he started writing notes. 

“All of a sudden it turned into this long series of notes and I thought, ‘What am I going to do with this thing?’” 

There was only one answer to that question: Mielczarek turned his pages and pages of notes into a book called Hashtag Dadlife – an easy-to-read guide for dads-to-be.

Yep. Sasha Mielczarek: Former reality star. Builder. And now author. 

“I thought I should do it to help guys who might not understand the process or have no idea,” he tells nine.com.au, explaining he found there was so much information available about pregnancy, but very little that was tailored to men. 

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The things people ‘don’t talk about’

For Mielczarek, 41,it was important he told the truth about his experience – regardless of how confronting or emotional that might have been. It was the only way he felt he could actually help men reading and to truly take steps towards breaking down stigmas he faced during his own journey to fatherhood.

That included the brave decision to reveal the aftermath of a heartbreaking date night he and Carly shared the week before their 12-week scan.

“Carly started experiencing pain and bleeding during a date night,” he recalls. As things started to get worse, they decided to head to the hospital, where they were told they had lost their baby. 

“I think it’s so important to talk about this because it’s so common,” he says, determined to break the stigma around discussing pregnancy loss. 

“You feel isolated, and then you feel like it’s you,” he says of the mental spiral that can turn into a “really vicious cycle”. 

Mielczarek says things only became tougher mentally in the months after that visit to the hospital.

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“We accidentally fell pregnant the first time, and we were like, ‘Oh, well, that was easy. We did it unexpectedly, so let’s just do it again,’” he tells nine.com.au, “and then we realised it wasn’t happening.” 

Three months turned into six months, six months turned into 18 months, and still no baby.

“It’s such a big thing that people, again, don’t talk about,” Mielczarek says.

“Everyone asks people why they don’t have kids and stuff, but you might not know the background there are challenges people are having.”

He describes trying to conceive a child as “harder than a frozen cucumber”.

“A lot of people struggle with it,” he offers. “It’s hard not only to fall pregnant, but hard on your relationship, as well as your physical and emotional wellbeing.” 

It was a year and a half of trying before Mielczarek and his wife decided to visit a fertility specialist and undertook a series of tests to assess their reproductive health.

He said it made him feel “inadequate” and found comfort in talking to his mates. 

“You start to question everything. You feel like you’re not a man,” he recalls of how it affected him.

“My grandfather, he had, like, four or five kids with no fertility treatment, so you look at all, and you go, I can’t even get one to take after 18 months.”

But he was steadfast in doing everything he could to make their dream of having a family come true, including writing down everything he was told in his appointments and undertaking some tests he jokes felt like being in a “f--king horror movie”. 

Eventually, after countless notes about IUI and IVF and learning everything he could about optimising his health, there it was: two lines on a pregnancy test.

A whole new life after Stevie

And the notes kept coming, throughout every scan, every doctor’s appointment and, yes, even through the birth of his daughter, Stevie Marie. 

Mielczarek says he came out of that experience “with a whole new level of respect, not just for my wife, but for women in general”. 

“I just looked at Carly and she has this tear running down her face. Just one tear,” he recalls of the moment Stevie arrived. “I [remember thinking], you are so tough.”

It’s been three years since Stevie arrived, and everything has changed for the father-of-one. 

“Having children changes your whole perspective on life,” he explains. “It makes you more patient because you have to be. You put them first in everything you do, and it slows you down because life speeds up.” 

One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is people doing a double-take when they see him out, even 11 years after appearing on the then-Australian reality TV juggernaut.

“It’s weird, some people still recognise me. I was on a job site the other day and this chick was like, ‘I know you’,” he says. “But life did go back to normal pretty quickly”.