Evanne Ni Chuillinn: ‘I tried for three years to get pregnant naturally’
Evanne Ní Chuilinn: speaking openly about her IVF experiences.
For Evanne Ni Chuilinn, it wasn’t a hard decision to talk publicly about her fertility treatment. The RTÉ sports broadcaster, who is expecting her third child early next year, believes it would have been “almost dishonest not to let it be known that I did IVF because I tried for three years to get pregnant naturally and I couldn’t.
“It was something we wanted for a long time. I’d see people getting pregnant naturally with absolutely no bother and it would be really hard to take so I didn’t want people to think it had happened naturally when it didn’t. I would have felt a bit under pressure when I heard about people my age getting pregnant without any trouble.”
The 40-year-old said that she had put IVF in the ‘hopefully-I’ll-never-need-it’ category, adding that she was very nervous about having the intervention. She believed it was the last possible way for her to get pregnant and she was worried it might not succeed. “That’s why I put it off for so long. I was terrified that the last chance salon wouldn’t work.”
Evanne and her husband Brian were lucky. The treatment worked first time. She was expected to go to Tokyo to cover the Olympic Games in July but had to pull out because she is suffering from hyperemesis, a debilitating medical condition. Instead, she will be presenting RTÉ’s coverage of the Paralympics from Dublin later this month.
Hyperemesis is a kind of all-day sickness experienced by a very small percentage of pregnant women, says Evanne. “I had it on my other two children so I kind of expected it. It’s really debilitating because you get yourself into a cycle of vomiting.”
She was hospitalised several times during her previous pregnancies but thankfully the anti- nausea medication she is taking is helping to control it this time. “I feel sick all day long but, unless I get extremely tired, I don’t vomit.” A pregnancy when you’re already looking after children is tough, but Evanne says that “my two are nine and six, so I think it’s probably easier than having toddlers”.
She took a lot of annual leave in the early part of her pregnancy just to rest and she admits that she is exhausted after the adrenalin rush of the Tokyo Olympics.
Evanne knows the Olympics inside out. She worked on RTÉ’s coverage of the Athens and Beijing Games from Dublin and she went to Rio for both the Olympics and the Paralympics in 2016. She missed the London Games in 2012 only because she had her son that year.
The Kilkenny native loves the Games and she’s delighted to be working on the Paralympics this year. “I really enjoyed the Paralympics Games in Rio. I actually enjoyed that trip and the experience more than the Olympics.
“It’s a less stressful and less hectic event. In Rio, there was a lot of military presence during the Olympic Games and they definitely scaled it back during the Paralympics, probably because there weren’t as many people around the city so it was a more relaxing experience.” During the Paralympics, there is also better access to the athletes. There is a rule with the Olympic Games, she says, that you get 90 seconds to interview people. “With 90 seconds, you get to ask two, maybe three, questions and they literally stop you. With the Paralympics, I definitely had four, five and six-minute chats with people such as Nicole Turner and Ellen Keane after they swam.
“At the Paralympics, you get more access to athletes and you have the opportunity to really hear their stories.” And she expects great stories from this year’s Games. She is excited about our medal hopes, saying that the Irish Paralympic team is very strong. She is quick to point out that this event is a separate one from the Olympic Games.
Early in her television career, she travelled a lot for a programme called OB Sport and she thinks that’s probably what got her so interested in the Olympic and Paralympic events because they covered minority sports that didn’t get a lot of national airtime.
As a child, Evanne was very sporty, loving swimming, athletics, gymnastics, basketball and camogie among others. “My mam was really into music, she was a music teacher, Dad was an English teacher so he was more into the arts. But sport was my thing.” She absolutely loved modern dance too, at one stage considering doing it professionally.
She is 5ft10, however, and her dance teacher told her that she wouldn’t be able to eat anything because of her height. Her response was ‘Oh for God’s sake, no way, it’s not for me’.
The lure of academia was always strong and after a degree in Communications in Dublin City University, she did a diploma in journalism in Galway. She began her career as a researcher in TG4 and then moved to RTÉ in 2004, where she has covered many major sporting events.
Evanne’s two children share her love of the game. “My nine-year-old Seimi is mad into sport, he’s a complete anorak, he loves stats, he loves results, he loves knowing who’s who and what’s what, so he does ask me a lot of questions and I don’t always have the answers.”
Although she says that she will always be encouraging her children to get involved, she does think that it can be stressful for parents who aren’t into sport to hear people like her say, ‘oh, kids should be into it’.
“I think there is a sport for every child. Some kids don’t like ball sports or the contact sports or the physicality of some of the some of the field sports but there are also those people who crave the physicality. I remember Jenny Murphy saying that what drove her to rugby when she was in UL was that Gaelic football wasn’t physical enough for her.
“Gymnastics is a good example of a really athletic, aerobic activity that doesn’t involve tackling somebody or being good with a football. It’s something that can appeal to people who aren’t interested in the physicality of sport.”
A few years ago, Evanne said that she thought gymnastics could be the new boxing in Ireland, and she says that Gymnastics Ireland has done a great job. “Over the last five or six years, they’ve started elite training squads with the target of the 2024 Olympics.
Rhys McClenaghan, Meg Ryan and Emma Slevin are exceptional athletes who have broken through earlier than Gymnastics Ireland expected so we’re in bonus territory with gymnastics at the moment but in the future, we are definitely going to compete.”
She says that it was hugely disappointing for Rhys McClenaghan when he lost his balance on the pommel horse during the Olympics. “The pommel is such a tricky piece of apparatus to specialise in because you train for four years and then you have a minute to get it right. But he’s very young and he was always going to be at Paris [in 2024], this was a bonus Olympics for him.”
Gymnastics was also in the spotlight when Simone Biles, the American gymnast who is considered one of the sport’s greatest athletes, pulled out of the Olympics citing her mental health. Evanne thinks that she did “a really selfless, honourable thing by showing other athletes who aren’t at the top of their game that it’s okay to pull out. She displayed such strength of character to have come through so much and do still be able to look after herself. It’s a really strong message for young athletes.”
For Evanne, getting to the Olympics and the Paralympics in Rio definitely counts as some of her career highlights to date. “There were so many good days and bad days to report on.” She has also loved the All-Ireland finals but says that last year’s camogie final was particularly special.
“It was a strange one as well because there were no fans, it was the Saturday before Christmas, the place was lit up, it was a bit magical because it was a night-time game. I always wanted to present and All-Ireland final and I got to do that last year. But there have been loads of highlights and hopefully there will be many more as well. I can’t wait to present the Paralympics.”
Beyond that, she’s really thinking too far ahead because “obviously I’m about to expand my family and take some time off”.
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