Michelle Obama has opened up about the emotional pain she experienced while struggling to conceive before welcoming her daughters with husband and former U.S. President Barack Obama.
The couple welcomed Malia Obama in 1998 and Sasha Obama in 2001. In her 2018 memoir Becoming, Michelle previously revealed that she suffered a miscarriage about two years before giving birth to Malia.
During a recent live episode of her podcast IMO, the former First Lady sat down with businesswoman and retired tennis star Serena Williams to discuss motherhood and reflect on her journey through pregnancy.
Around the 4:00 mark of the episode, Michelle Obama described her miscarriage as “devastating” and shared that she later turned to IVF before giving birth to her daughters.
Serena Williams, who shares daughters Olympia Ohanian, 8, and Adira Ohanian, 2, with husband Alexis Ohanian, revealed that she froze her eggs while in her twenties before eventually deciding to have children.
“I don’t know about all of you, but I know that when I struggled to conceive, I took that on, like a personal failure,” Michelle said around the 7:20 mark.
Williams responded by explaining that she has learned to openly discuss “uncomfortable” subjects like fertility struggles in an effort to help normalize those conversations.
In her memoir Becoming, Michelle previously reflected on the difficulties she and Barack Obama faced while trying to conceive before turning to IVF, writing that things “wasn’t going well for them.”
“We had one pregnancy test come back positive, which caused us both to forget every worry and swoon with joy, but a couple of weeks later I had a miscarriage, which left me physically uncomfortable and cratered any optimism we felt,” she wrote (per PBS).
