AFLW legend Erin Phillips shares heartbreaking details of wife Tracy's miscarriage days before 2022 preliminary final

7NEWS

a day ago

AFLW great Erin Phillips has broken down while speaking about a 'devastating' family tragedy she went through just days before a preliminary final in 2022.
The dual sports champion and star commentator, became emotional on Channel 7's Unfiltered while revealing her wife, Tracy, had a miscarriage during the pregnancy of their fourth child.
Phillips was a superstar for Adelaide's powerhouse AFLW team that won grand finals in 2017, 2019, and, eventually, in Season 6 in 2022.
Bu there were mixed emotions and complications in 2022, as Erin and Tracy went through another IVF journey after already having three other children.
'It took us two years before we had Blake and Brooklyn, and we had multiple unsuccessful pregnancies where we couldn't even get pregnant. We tried. We moved on to the IVF route, which is more expensive, obviously,' Phillips said.
'(We were) maybe a bit more hopeful in the chances of becoming parents, and we end up getting five embryos. We tried for two, and we were just hopeful to just get one, and we won the lottery. We got two, we got Blake in Brooklyn.
'I thought, after all the sleepless nights and ... just how crazy life was, I thought maybe we'd be done at two, because looking after kids is a full-time job.
'And so we decided to have another one. So we go for three and then we had Drew straight away, no problem. And then we tried for number four, thinking that this is easy, like the hard part's done.
'We've had one, two and three. All the three embryos took. Why wouldn't number four take? And initially it did.
'And then three days before the prelim in 2022, three days before we played Fremantle in the prelim at Adelaide Oval, Tracy miscarriages ...
'And it was one of the most just ... devastating, hardest, awful moments to see your your wife, your partner, go through that.
'As her wife, there was nothing I could do to make it better. You just feel so helpless to see her go through that.
'We got to the obstetrician thinking it was a regular scan, (but the scan is) saying there's no heartbeat anymore. And it was like, it was a shock. It was like, we can't possibly be hearing that, surely not.
'We didn't talk about it with anybody. We didn't want to tell people what we were going through, because we didn't really want people to worry.
'I didn't want anyone to feel like that something was wrong, and I had a prelim, and I know that seems so irrelevant, a game, and it is in many respects, but it was also a big game that I wanted to find the energy and the willpower to go and perform and bring some joy into back into our lives.
'And and there was also this element of, you know, we were so lucky. We've already got three kids, you know. You know, we miscarried our fourth. Should we even be feeling like we were unlucky or should we even be grieving.
'There were so many emotions going on at the time when we won the grand final, it was like the final siren was the moment that I could actually just grieve. You know, I just, I just wanted to bring some joy back in that moment for Trace and what we just been through.
'And football seemed like such a small part of what we were going through, but we were able to celebrate and find some joy in that moment.'
The couple would again try for child number four, and in 2023 Londyn Skye Phillips was born.