Pregnancy struggles are no longer taboo to talk about.
With more and more celebs shining a light on this sensitive topic, it’s helping women realize that they are not alone. Infertility can affect anyone.
Whether they adopted, went the IVF route, or used a surrogate, here are 10+ brave celebrities who shared their stories of struggles to motherhood.
1. Khloé Kardashian
For years, viewers of Keeping Up with the Kardashians watched as Khloé struggled to get pregnant with her ex-husband, Lamar Odom.
“It’s more about my hormones being off.… I was taking hormone shots to stabilize them,” she told Redbook .
“And you have to take those shots consistently and they have to be done by a doctor,” she continued.
Thankfully, she was able to get pregnant with her daughter, True, with Tristan Thompson.
This blessing came after she worried if she was infertile.
2. Mariah Carey
Before having her twins, the singer tragically suffered a miscarriage in 2008.
From then on, she went to extreme lengths to ensure that never happened again, turning to acupuncture and taking progesterone every month.
3. Anne Hathaway
When the actress announced her second child with her husband, Adam Sulman, she revealed her pregnancy struggles.
“For everyone going through infertility and conception hell, please know it was not a straight line to either of my pregnancies,” she shared on Instagram in 2019
4. Chrissy Teigen
The star faced a pregnancy loss in 2020. Tragically, that wasn’t the only time she struggled to become a mother.
In 2015, she opened up to Tyra Banks about her issues with the IFV, saying, “It’s been a process.”
In the end, she froze her eggs in order to have her daughter Luna through IVF treatments.
She had to go the same route in order for her and her husband, John Legend, to have baby #2, Miles.
5. Gabrielle Union
The Bring It On actress revealed something devastating in her tell-all book, We’re Going to Need More Wine .
She wrote that she has had “eight or nine” miscarriages while trying to have children with her husband, Dwyane Wade.
“For three years, my body has been a prisoner of trying to get pregnant,” she continued.
“I’ve either been about to go into an IVF cycle, in the middle of an IVF cycle, or coming out of an IVF cycle.” In 2018, she finally had an answer to her struggles with her adenomyosis diagnosis .
6. Nicole Kidman
The Big Little Lies actress has been struggling to conceive for decades . It’s why she and her ex-husband, Tom Cruise, chose to adopt two children when they were married.
As for her and her current husband, Keith Urban, they’ve had two biological children: one naturally and another via surrogate.
7. Sharon Osbourne
In her autobiography, Extreme , the host revealed why she and her husband, Ozzy, never had a fourth child.
“Sadly, it didn’t work. After I had Jack, I got a stomach infection, and I didn’t treat it, so the infection spread into my tubes and messed them up,” she wrote.
8. Courteney Cox
“I get pregnant pretty easily, but I have a hard time keeping them,” the Friends star once told People about trying to conceive with ex-husband, David Arquette.
In the end, the couple welcomed their daughter, Coco, via IVF in 2004.
9. Elizabeth Banks
“The one true hurdle I’ve faced in life is that I have a broken belly,” Banks shared on her blog in 2011.
These infertility issues caused her and her husband, Max Handelman, to welcome two sons via surrogate .
10. Tyra Banks
“It’s so funny when I was 23 years old, I used to tell myself, ‘In three years, I’m going to have kids.’ Then I turned 24. ‘In three years, I’m going to have kids,’” she shared in 2015.
But once she was ready, infertility issues set in.
“I’ve had some not happy moments with that, very traumatic moments,” she said about trying IFV.
“It’s difficult as you get older. It’s not something that can just happen.” In the end, she welcomed her son, York, via a gestational surrogate.
11. Jamie King
The Hart of Dixie star went through the wringer before getting pregnant with her son, James.
This included five miscarriages, five rounds of IVF, and 26 rounds of intrauterine insemination. She told People that she finally spoke out about her struggles to help other women.
12. Emma Thompson
The actress shared that she was sent into a ” deep clinical depression ” after struggling to conceive a second child with her husband, Greg Wise.
In the end, she and Wise adopted a former child soldier named Tindy from Rwanda.
13. Beyoncé
In the star’s HBO documentary, Life Is But a Dream , she revealed that she suffered a devastating miscarriage before having her twins and Blue Ivy,
“Literally the week before I went to the doctor, everything was fine, but there was no heartbeat… it was the saddest thing I’ve ever been through.”
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14. Kim Kardashian
She may have four healthy children now with Kayne West, but getting there wasn’t easy.
She largely faced preeclampsia , which causes extremely high blood pressure, during her first two pregnancies with North and Saint.
“I had so many complications. I had this condition called placenta accreta,” she told *C Magazine* in 2015.
“There were a couple little operations to fix all that, so that created a little hole in my uterus, which I think made it really tough to get pregnant again,” she said .
This led her to use a gestational surrogate for their daughter, Chicago, and son, Pslam.
