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Gabrielle Union Says Her Fertility Issues ‘Went Undiagnosed Through Multiple Rounds of IVF’

A long journey. Gabrielle Union shared her adenomyosis diagnosis in 2018 and opened up on Thursday, August 13, about how many doctors failed to notice it.

Related: Becca Tobin and More Stars Who Are Honest About Their Fertility Struggles

“I went undiagnosed through multiple rounds of IVF with different leading doctors in the field around the country,” the actress, 47, said on the “Katie’s Crib” podcast. “Not until the last doctor, Dr. Kelly Baek in California. That first ultrasound, she was like, ‘Oh, so, you have adenomyosis. … [It’s] really pronounced]. I don’t know why no one would’ve noticed this.”

The We’re Going to Need More Wine author added, “When Dr. Baek started asking me more questions going back to my periods and what my experience was like with my periods as a younger woman, I explained that I ended up getting on the pill not for birth control reasons, but because my periods were lasting, like, a third of the month and I was bleeding like I had been shot in the vagina.”

Gabrielle Union Says Her Fertility Issues Went Undiagnosed Through Multiple Rounds of IVF
Gabrielle Union Soul Brother/Shutterstock

Related: See Gabrielle Union and Dwyane’s Wade’s Family Album

Adenomyosis affected Union’s ovarian reserve, which meant fertility clinics could benefit from her lack of awareness, the Nebraska native went on to say.

“If you’re going in and no one’s diagnosing you correctly, a lot of places will offer older women or women who have these conditions that have been diagnosed rounds to basically bundle … so you might do … three rounds for this price because you’re not going to get a ton of eggs,” the L.A.’s Finest star explained. “But no one’s super clear or honest because that affects your business.”

In order to have a chance of carrying a baby, Union would need to use “a drug called Lupron,” she told Katie Lowes, noting that it could cause brittle bones. When her husband, Dwyane Wade, urged her to “pump the brakes,” the couple started seriously considering surrogacy.

Union and the former professional basketball player, 38, welcomed their daughter, Kaavia, now 21 months, in November 2018 via gestational carrier.

Related: Kim Kardashian and More Celebs Who Used Surrogates

Before becoming a mom, the Bring It On star suffered “eight or nine miscarriages,” she revealed in October 2017. “My wife is one strong individual!!!” Wade tweeted at the time.

As for the Chicago native, he has three other children — Zaire, 18, and Zaya, 13, with Siohvaughn Funches, as well as Xavier, 6, with Aja Metoyer. he is loving life with their latest arrival, exclusively telling Us in July 2019: “[She] looks like me, acts like [Gabrielle]. She has a whole personality. She’s very particular about everything just like her mother, very particular, but I love it because she lets you know who she is and what she wants, what she don’t want. It makes it easier for me to be like, ‘Oh, you don’t want that? Cool.’”

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