How Matilda Katrina Gorry beat the odds to get pregnant and return to the A-League

Katrina Gorry's done it all when it comes to football.

She's won countless accolades, tasted premiership success, travelled the world, been an Olympian and represented her country 78 times.

But there was one thing she's always wanted — to be a mum.

Enter Harper Ollie Gorry on August 16.

Gorry's journey to motherhood was a little more complicated than the path taken by many other women. 

She was used to basing her life around the four-year football cycle: the Asian Cup, the World Cup, the Olympics and then a bit of time off.

When the Olympics started looking like it wasn't going to go through last year, Gorry jumped on her chance — but she was living overseas at the time.

«I knew that 2021 was kind of my year. I did want to fall pregnant, with or without a partner, so I decided that I would give IVF a go,» she said.

Gorry was in Norway, playing for Avaldsnes, but she was injured at the time.

When she went in for her first IVF appointment, things started happening a lot quicker than she had planned.

«I wasn't due for my period and I actually got it half an hour before I walked into the clinic,» Gorry said.

«So I sat down and spoke to him and said: 'Well, we could start today?'

»I had no reason not to."

She began weeks of hormone injections to prepare her body for the transfer of the embryo.

Then, half an hour before her flight back to Australia, returning after her Danish season ended, they transferred the embryo.

«I was sitting on a flight and had my legs crossed, scared that maybe it would fall out. Then I had 14 days of quarantine.»

Days into her isolation period, a little faint line started to appear on pregnancy tests.

«I remember sitting in my bed just crying and I couldn't believe it was happening,» she said.

Once out of quarantine,