Gabrielle Union is opening up about her struggle to expand her family with husband Dwyane Wade, who she has been married to since April 2014. “I have had eight or nine miscarriages,” Union, 44, writes in her forthcoming book, We’re Going to Need More Wine. “For three years, my body has been a prisoner of trying to get pregnant — 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.”
Union, who is stepmom to Wade’s kids Xavier, 3, Zion,10, and Zaire,15, also briefly discussed her fertility struggles in a 2015 interview with Redbook. “So far, it has not happened for us,” the actress confessed at the time. “A lot of my friends deal with this.”
Now, the Being Mary Jane star is opening up about dealing with the public pressure to conceive.“For so many women, and not just women in the spotlight, people feel very entitled to know, ‘Do you want kids?’” she continues in the excerpt obtained by People. “A lot of people, especially people that have fertility issues, just say ‘no’ because that’s a lot easier than being honest about whatever is actually going on. People mean so well, but they have no idea the harm or frustration it can cause.”
“Once a month I look like I’m in my second trimester because I’m bloated,” she continues in her book, explaining the side effects of IVF. “It leads to the questions and it leads to the rumors and anytime I go into a doctor’s office I feel like I’m a member of SEAL Team Six undercover because I don’t want people to speculate.”
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