One in six couples across Australia struggle with infertility and many choose to undergo IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation) in their journey to parenthood.
But the process can be a lonely one with the topic still shying away from the headlines.
WATCH BELOW: Amy Schumer Shares Graphic Video Of Hyperemesis Gravidarum
Thankfully, celebrities far and wide who have gone through IVF are using their platform to shed some light on the subject—a move sure to help others going through the same experience.
From Chrissy Teigen to Amy Schumer, these are the stars who have spoken candidly about the highs and lows of IVF.
Amy Schumer
On January 10, Amy Schumer revealed that she is undergoing IVF in order to give her son, Gene Attell, a sibling.
The US comedian posted a refreshingly honest photograph of her bruised stomach via Instagram alongside the caption: “I’m a week into IVF and feeling really run down and emotional.”
Schumer also utilised her platform to seek advice from other women who have also undergone the process.
“If anyone went through it and if you have any advice or wouldn’t mind sharing your experience with me please do,” she wrote. “My number is in my bio. We are freezing my eggs and figuring out what to do to give Gene a sibling.”
Schumer and her husband Chris Fischer welcomed their first child, a son named Gene Attell, in May 2019.
During the pregnancy, she kept things real with fans and posted candid photographs of everything from her stretch marks to the realities of hyperemesis gravidarum, a condition which causes severe nausea and vomiting.
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Chrissy Teigen
Chrissy Teigen and husband John Legend welcomed their first child, Luna Simone Stephens, in April 2016 before their son Miles Stephens was born in May 2018.
But the A-list couple’s journey to parenthood was a difficult one.
The model has always been open about the couple’s infertility struggles and wasn’t afraid to call out people who criticised their decision to choose the sex of their first born child.
“From reading everything tonight, I think I made a mistake in thinking people understood the process better than they do, which is my fault,” Teigen tweeted.
“We didn’t create a little girl. We had multiple embryos. Girls and boys. We simply chose to put in a female first (and second)…”
She concluded, “You’d be surprised at how many people you know go through this. Also every doctor knows the sex of the embryos, it isn’t some grand secret.
Unfazed by the controversy, Teigen joked: “I also picked the embryo with a taste for bacon, a knack for magic and size 7 feet so she can always find shoes.”
Courteney Cox
Courteney Cox suffered several miscarriages before learning that she has a rare antibody in her blood which prevents pregnancies from reaching full term.
The actress underwent IVF twice before going on to welcome her first child, Coco Arquette, with former husband David Arquette in June 2014.
But it was difficult for the star to cope with the loss and Cox recently revealed that the difficult period of life coincided with the last year of filming Friends.
Céline Dion
Céline Dion welcomed her first child, Rene-Charles, with husband Rene Angelil in January, 2001 after several rounds of IVF.
In the years that followed, the couple continued to try to give their son a sibling.
After six further IVF treatments, the songstress gave birth to twin boys, Eddy and Nelson, in 2010.
“I think it’s the worst thing that we do to each other as women, not share the truth about our bodies and how they work,” Obama said during an appearance on Good Morning America.
The process was difficult for the former presidential couple with Michelle having to administer IVF shots on her own while Barack worked.
Eventually, the couple sought therapy to help them support each through the process.
“I know too many young couples who struggle and think that somehow there’s something wrong with them,” she told Good Morning America.
“And I want them to know that Michelle and Barack Obama, who have a phenomenal marriage and who love each other, we work on our marriage. And we get help with our marriage when we need it.”
Lena Dunham
Lena Dunham has revealed that she underwent in vitro fertilisation but discovered that none of her eggs were viable.
“I learned that none of my eggs were viable on Memorial Day, in the midst of a global pandemic,” the 34-year-old actress wrote in an essay for Harper’s Magazine. “I was in Los Angeles when I got the call from Dr. Coperman, the slight Jewish man who was my entry into (and now exit from) the world of corporate reproduction.”
“‘We were unable to fertilise any of the eggs,’” Dunham recalled her doctor telling her. “‘As you know, we had six. Five did not take. The one that did seems to have chromosomal issues and ultimately…’ He trailed off as I tried to picture it—the dark room, the glowing dish, the sperm meeting my dusty eggs so violently that they combusted. It was hard to understand that they were gone.”
In a follow-up interview with People, Dunham went on to explain how “this journey has forced me to rethink what motherhood will look like.”
“IVF destroyed my body—as a woman who tends towards rampant endometriosis, filling my body with estrogen… and because of what my body has been through, subjecting it to such excruciating pain, only to come to the end and learn those eggs were not viable after working so hard through illness and discomfort and going through anxiety and depression, it is just clearly not something I can ever repeat.”
She added that she had explored adoption before learning she could go through IVF to possibly have a biological child, saying: “My entire career, the thing that has felt like a driving factor for me in many ways has been this thought of, ‘What can I do to normalize challenging topics that many women may feel like they are alone in experiencing but are actually universal and yet women have been made to feel shameful about?’”
“Never has been that truer than in grappling with my infertility and the loss of my fertility, and the pain and the shame that came with it.”
Khloé Kardashian
Khloé Kardashian has kept her her struggle with infertility and her attempts with IVF relatively private. Back in a 2013 episode of Kourtney & Kim Take Miami, while married to former NBA player Lamar Odom, Kardashian revealed that her body does not ovulate (release an egg), and her uterine lining isn’t thick enough to support a pregnancy.
Despite her struggles, her separation from Odom, Kardashian opened up about how her fertility treatments did not work, in a 2016 episode of Kocktails with Khloé.
“At the time, I was like ‘Ugh! Gotta have a baby’. That’s all I wanted at that time. And I thought maybe it would fix the situation. So I’m also happy that it didn’t happen. I was young, I was 27, and I thought, ‘Oh my god, a baby will fix this!'”
Since then, she and then-boyfriend Tristan Thompson welcomed their child True in 2018.
Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness
Hugh Jackman and wife Deborra-Lee Furness always had plans to adopt their children, but planned to after they had their own biological children first. After attempting IVF twice, unfortunately each cycle ended in miscarriage. Jackman recalled the heartbreak in a 2013 interview with Good Housekeeping, saying that each loss felt like a “massive letdown.”
“While you’re going through IVF and get pregnant, every day [the feeling is], ‘We’re still holding! We’re still holding…!’” Jackman said. “You know how precarious it is and how much she’s been through to get there. And [miscarriage] is a massive letdown. It’s really difficult—and much harder for the woman.”
The couple then began exploring adoption in the United States, as Australia didn’t allow couples to pursue both adoption and IVF at the same time, when they were trying. Eventually, the couple ended up adopting two children, Oscar Maximillian, 19 and Ava Eliot, 14.
Giuliana Rancic
News host Giuliana Rancic endured three rounds of IVF cycles and one miscarriage, before finding out that she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
As she could no longer attempt to carry her frozen embryos due to her treatment, she and husband Bill Rancic went with a gestational surrogate to carry their son, who was born in 2012.
In a 2012 interview with CNN, Rancic opened up about the heartbreaking experience. “My first IVF I did get pregnant—that was the miscarriage,” Rancic said.
“But the second one, I did not get pregnant, and that was the biggest kick in the stomach, because I just could not believe you go through so much to get those eggs and put them in, and when the doctor calls you, to hear, ‘Oh, sorry, it didn’t work.’ That was the most shocking. I would go, ‘I’m a good person, and I could give someone the greatest life of all, but yet I can’t get pregnant.'”
Now, Rancic is happy, healthy and mother to an 8-year-old Edward Duke.
Brooke Shields
In her 2005 book Down Came The Rain, Brooke Shields wrote about her struggle to get pregnant and her struggles with postpartum depression. Shields first started IVF at 36-years-old, but endured a miscarriage and several failed IVF cycles before she and husband Chris Henchy decided to try it one last time in 2002.
Thankfully it worked, and she gave birth to her daughter Rowan Francis, in 2003. While she found success in IVF, Shields was not a fan of the IVF injection process, as explained in her book.
“The whole process was quite an ordeal, and we became slaves to the time of day and to little vials of liquid,” Shields wrote. “We’d find ourselves out at dinner with friends, and then we’d have to sneak off to a coat room, where we’d huddle over syringes and a travel-size cooler filled with small bottles of drugs.”
After her first cild, Shields ended up conceiving naturally and gave birth to her second daughter Grier Hammond, in 2006.
Emma Thompson
Actress Emma Thompson and husband Greg Wise turned to IVF to conceive their daughter Gaia Romilly Wise, in 1999.
However, when it came time for a sibling, fertility treatments weren’t as successul the second time around. The failure caused Thompson to suffer depression, with days where she couldn’t get dressed or leave the house.
In an interview, Thompson admitted her inability to conceive left her devastated. “For years I counted people’s children in the street and thought I’d never recover. But you do, of course,” The Telegraph quotes her saying.
“IVF is very upsetting. It’s a brutal process and it’s very emotional. It’s really hard. But then you pick yourself up, look around and see this unbelievably beautiful little baby you’ve got anyway,” Wise explained in a separate interview with the Daily Mail.
The couple went on to adopt their son Tindyebwa Agaba, a former Rwandan child soldier.
Jessica Rowe
The Studio 10 co-host underwent four cycles of IVF before conceiving her eldest daughter. Opening up about the experience in her memoir Is This My Beautiful Life?, Rowe reflected on the emotional turmoil of fertility issues, recalling a conversation where someone jokingly asked her what she was “waiting for.”
“I wanted to scream, ‘I’m on IVF and I don’t know if I can be a mum… Don’t tell me how wonderful it is to be a mother! And don’t you dare complain about how tired you are’.”
“As I listened to them I made a promise never to bore people with endless stories of my children. I would never whinge, complain or find it difficult once I had my precious child. I would know how hard fought it had been,” she wrote.
Since her treatment, Rowe is the mother of two daughters, Allegra, 12, and Giselle, 9.
One in six couples across Australia struggle with infertility and many choose to undergo IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation) in their journey to parenthood.
But the process can be a lonely one with the topic still shying away from the headlines.
WATCH BELOW: Amy Schumer Shares Graphic Video Of Hyperemesis Gravidarum
One in six couples across Australia struggle with infertility and many choose to undergo IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation) in their journey to parenthood.
But the process can be a lonely one with the topic still shying away from the headlines.
WATCH BELOW: Amy Schumer Shares Graphic Video Of Hyperemesis Gravidarum
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