Michelle Obama Has Confirmed That She Was Pregnant and Used IVF to Conceive Daughter
Marina Daniel
Michelle Obama Pregnant
After having a miscarriage 20 years ago, Michelle Obama said she felt “fallen and alone,” and she and Barack Obama used in vitro fertilization to create their two daughters.
“We were trying to get pregnant and it wasn’t going well,” Mrs. Obama, 54, writes in her upcoming memoir. “We had one pregnancy test come back positive, which caused us both to forget every worry and swoon with joy, but a couple of weeks later, I had a miscarriage, which left me physically uncomfortable and cratered any optimism we felt.”
The Associated Press purchased an early copy of “Becoming,” Mrs. Obama’s memoir and one of the most avidly anticipated political books in recent memory. In it, she writes of being alone to administer shots to help hasten the process. Her “sweet, attentive husband” was at the state legislature, “leaving me largely on my own to manipulate my reproductive system into peak efficiency.”
Obama’s familial revelations are only one of several in the book by a former first lady who has made few in-depth remarks about her time in the White House. Additionally, former first ladies’ memoirs, like those of Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush, frequently achieve bestseller status. Tuesday will see the publication of “Becoming.”
One type of assisted reproduction is IVF, which usually entails taking a woman’s eggs, fertilizing them in a lab with sperm, and implanting the resulting embryo into the woman’s uterus. Every “cycle” costs thousands of dollars, and many couples need more than one go-around.
