Michelle Obama says she felt ‘lost and alone’ after suffering a miscarriage 20 years ago, as she opens up about ‘having to do’ in vitro fertilization in order to conceive her two daughters with husband Barack.
The former first lady, 54, opened up about her miscarriage in her new memoir, Becoming, explaining in an interview with Good Morning America on Friday that she made the decision to share her own painful experiences in order to help others who have been through a similar loss.
‘I felt like I failed because I didn’t know how common miscarriages were because we don’t talk about them,’ she said while speaking with anchor Robin Roberts. ‘We sit in our own pain, thinking that somehow we’re broken.’
Opening up: Michelle Obama reveals that she had a miscarriage 20 years ago in her new memoir, and revealed in an interview with GMA that she ‘felt like she had failed’
She added: ‘That’s one of the reasons why I think it’s important to talk to young mothers about the fact that miscarriages happen.’
Michelle also revealed that she and former President Barack Obama ‘had to do IVF’ to conceive their daughters Sasha and Malia, now 17 and 20, explaining that, because of her age at the time, she was worried about being able to get pregnant naturally.
‘The biological clock is real,’ she said on GMA. ‘I realized that when I was 34 or 35… we had to do IVF.’
At the time, Michelle did not speak about her miscarriage, or her pregnancy struggles, with many people, a decision that she now admits might have been the wrong one.
‘I think it is the worst thing that we do as women, sit around and not talk about our bodies,’ she noted.
The mother-of-two, who has been busy promoting her new book in recent weeks, also reflected on early struggles in her marriage, as her husband began his political career, revealing that the couple underwent counselling together in an effort to overcome their issues.
Relationship: Michelle also revealed that she and Barack underwent marriage counselling in an attempt to ‘learn to talk about their differences’
‘Marriage counseling for us was one of those ways where we learned how to talk out our differences,’ she told Robin.
‘I know too many young couples who struggle and think that somehow there’s something wrong with them.
‘And I want them to know that Michelle and Barack Obama, who have a phenomenal marriage and who love each other, we work on our marriage. And we get help with our marriage when we need it.’
But Michelle also shared that one key lesson she has learned during her marriage to Barack, whom she tied the knot with in October 1992, is that her ‘happiness is up to me’, and not the sole responsibility of her husband.
‘What I learned about myself is that my happiness was up to me,’ she said. ‘So I started working out more and I started asking for help more. I stopped feeling guilty. It was important for me to take care of myself; that’s not on Barack.’
Pregnancy, motherhood and marriage are not the only hot-button issues that the former first lady addresses in her memoir; Michelle writes openly about everything from growing up in Chicago to confronting racism in public life and becoming the country’s first black first lady.