Michelle Obama continues to open up about her fertility journey and the hardships she faced along the way ― despite thinking she had it all figured out.
“You imagine your life as you’re checking boxes,” the former first lady said during an appearance on “The Diary of A CEO” podcast released Wednesday.
“I’m waiting, I delayed having kids, I’ve found the love of my life, and now I’m gonna get pregnant,” Obama shared. “And no one tells you that there really is a biological clock ― like, that’s not false.”
Obama spoke about listening to someone talk about women’s fertility recently, and her first thought was, ”‘Why didn’t anybody tell me this? Why weren’t people talking about this?’”
Obama said that by the time she and her husband, Barack, started really trying ― “which worked perfectly for our careers and maturing and having everything set” ― they began to run into roadblocks.
“While we’re waiting for our lives to be perfect, that biological clock is ticking,” she said of their own experience.
“So you start trying and it’s not working, that’s when you go to the doctor,” she said. “And they tell you, ’Oh! You’re running out of eggs ― this is normal. You’re gonna have trouble getting pregnant. And so try a little bit, and now it’s time for IVF, if you can afford it.”
Obama described the news as “just a shock to the system,” especially as someone who likes learning and knowledge.
She also disliked that the knowledge or information felt like “such a secret,” which is why Obama says she speaks openly about her fertility journey, including experiencing pregnancy loss, and doing in vitro fertilization.
Obama first opened up about undergoing IVF and having a miscarriage in her powerful 2018 memoir, “Becoming.”
“I felt like I failed because I didn’t know how common miscarriages were because we don’t talk about them,” the author said in an interview on “Good Morning America” in 2018. “We sit in our own pain, thinking that somehow we’re broken.”
She also wrote about feeling alone during IVF, as her “sweet, attentive husband” was away at the state legislature.
His absence left her “largely on my own to manipulate my reproductive system into peak efficiency.”
Read the full article here
