While pregnancy is considered a true miracle, it’s not always rainbows, food cravings, and baby showers.
For some women, the difficulties of pregnancy go well beyond just morning sickness. They deal with everything from extreme morning sickness to other health complications that threaten their lives.
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Here are 10+ celebs who opened up about their difficult pregnancies.
1. Kate Middleton
Carrying royal children doesn’t make you immune from complications.
Kate dealt with hyperemesis gravidarum , a rare form of morning sickness, during her pregnancies with all three of her children, Prince George, Prince Charlotte, and Prince Louis.
The experience left her hospitalized.
She eventually spoke out about the ordeal.
“I’m not the happiest of pregnant people,” she said about the experience on the Happy Mum, Happy Baby podcast. She also called it “absolutely rotten.”
2. Salma Hayek
While the actress felt lucky to be pregnant at 40, her age did lead to some complications.
“I gained a lot of weight. I had gestational diabetes. The pregnancy was really difficult for me,” she told People .
3. Mariah Carey
The pop superstar ended up with not one but two major complications during her pregnancy with twins, Moroccan and Monroe. She developed gestational diabetes and preeclampsia .
In an interview with Barbara Walters , she shared that both conditions were a huge strain on her life.
“I would sit and then someone would have to help me up,” she shared.
She even said that she couldn’t go to the [bathroom] by herself.
Eventually, the high blood pressure from preeclampsia forced her to have a C-section at 35 weeks.
4. Kelly Clarkson
If you thought morning sickness was bad, try all-day sickness.
“I have to get IVs and fluids because I get so dehydrated. It’s really bad,” the singer told CBS This Morning while she was pregnant with her son.
5. Tori Spelling
She has five healthy kids, but things were the opposite of smooth sailing for baby number four.
She developed placenta previa , a painful condition that results in the baby’s placenta covering the cervix and heavy bleeding.
As a result, the *90210* alum was hospitalized for 10 weeks and then put on bedrest for four months.
“When they put him in my arms I was like, ‘We made it,'” she told Us Weekly .
“We have an insane bond. We’ve been through hell and back.”
6. Amy Schumer
Like Kate Middleton, the comedian dealt with hyperemesis gravidarum.
To illustrate how difficult it was, she even posted a video of her vomiting on her way to her comedy show in New York (only watch if you don’t have a weak stomach).
As a result of these severe complications with her first child, the comedian was forced to cancel her comedy shows.
“It’s been pretty tough. I didn’t know that pregnancies could be such a bummer,” Schumer later told Seth Meyers .
7. Cardi B
Recording the singer’s debut alum was really tough. That’s because she was pregnant at the time and dealing with motherhood-related depression.
“I [spent] 24 hours for months sleeping on a couch with my pregnant depressed [expletive] in a studio,” she shared on Twitter.
8. Carrie Underwood
Pregnancy has never been easy for the country star. In the past, she revealed that she suffered from three miscarriages within two years .
When she finally got pregnant with her second child, the difficulties didn’t stop there.
“It’s definitely different than the first time,” Underwood told *Entertainment Tonight*.
“When they say every pregnancy is different, it really is. Just different symptoms. I feel like this one is just a little harder on my body for some reason,” she said .
9. Beyoncé
“I was 218 pounds the day I gave birth to Rumi and Sir.” the singer wrote in an essay for Vogue .
“I was swollen from toxemia and had been on bed rest for over a month. My health and my babies’ health were in danger, so I had an emergency C-section.”
10. Chrissy Teigen
We can always count on Chrissy for keeping difficult subjects a little humorous.
“This baby is sucking the life from me,” she tweeted during her second pregnancy. “Drinking my water, making me dry. Eating my food, making me hungry. Why do we create these monsters they want us dead.”
11. Kate Hudson
While her first pregnancy was smooth-sailing, she encountered many odd symptoms with her second.
“I got acne, all my hair fell out after he was born, and I definitely had to work out to drop the weight,” she told Redbook .
12. Serena Williams
The tennis star has been open about the fact that she almost died during her pregnancy.
That’s because she had a high risk of blood clots from previous surgery. To stay safe, she had to inject herself with anticoagulants every day.
13. Kim Kardashian
If you ever wondered why Kim had a surrogate carry Chicago and Psalm, it’s because of the complications she faced during her first two pregnancies.
This largely included preeclampsia , which causes extreme high blood pressure.
She also had placenta accreta—a condition in which “the placenta grows too deeply into the uterine wall,” she wrote on her website.
“It was the most painful experience of my life!” she wrote .
“I still had a piece of placenta attached inside of me and I had to have surgery to remove it.”
