Former First Lady Michelle Obama has revealed she had a miscarriage 20 years ago, and that she used in vitro fertilization (IVF) to help conceive her daughters, Sasha, 17, and Malia, 20.
Suffering a miscarriage made her feel “lost and alone,” Obama said in an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America Friday. “I felt like I failed … I didn’t know how common miscarriages were, because we don’t talk about them.”
“We sit in our own pain, thinking that somehow we’re broken,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I feel like it’s important to talk to young mothers about the fact that miscarriages happen.”
Obama has a new memoir, Becoming, coming out Nov. 13, which contains more information on her “journey to motherhood,” according to GMA.
“We had to do IVF,” she told GMA’s Robin Roberts. “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.”