Former First Lady Michelle Obama revealed Friday that she had a miscarriage and underwent in vitro fertilization to conceive her two daughters, Malia and Sasha.
“I felt like I failed because I didn’t know how common miscarriages were, because we don’t talk about them,” Obama said during an interview Friday with ABC’s “Good Morning America. “We sit in our own pain, thinking that somehow we’re broken. That’s one of the reasons why I think it’s important to talk to young mothers about the fact that miscarriages happen.”
She said she ultimately opted for in vitro fertilization because “the biological clock is real, because egg production is limited.”
“I realized that as I was 34 and 35, we had to do IVF,” Obama said in excerpts that will air on ABC on Sunday. “We had to do IVF.”
Obama said she wanted to share her experiences with other women who have had challenges concerning fertility and conceiving a child.
“I think it’s the worst thing that we do to each other as women, not share the truth about our bodies and how they work, and how they don’t work,” she said.
Obama is promoting her new memoir “Becoming,” which is slated for release on Tuesday.
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