Difficult pregnancies and infertility issues are painful, physically as well as emotionally, and yet it’s quite a common problem.
Even well-known figures experience the challenges of infertility, highlighting that it can affect anyone. Some of them are:
Kim Kardashian:
After giving birth to her daughter North, Kardashian West struggled to conceive again.
"I had so many complications. I had this condition called placenta accreta. There were a couple little operations to fix all that, so that created a little hole in my uterus, which I think made it really tough to get pregnant again," she said back in 2015. "It was a long road. I would go to the doctor in Beverly Hills every day at five in the morning to get tested to see if I was ovulating."
Placenta accreta is a high-risk pregnancy condition where the placenta attaches too deeply into the uterine wall, which causes severe bleeding, with the placenta failing to detach after childbirth.
Courteney Cox:
The Friends star suffered from "quite a few" miscarriages before conceiving her daughter Coco through IVF.
"I get pregnant pretty easily, but I have a hard time keeping them," Cox told PEOPLE in 2003, adding that she and ex-husband David Arquette would "bounce back pretty quickly," after each miscarriage.
"I don't say it's a walk in the park. But what are you going to do? We just try again,” she added.
At that time the couple did admit that trying IVF was “nerve-racking” and Arquette said that he feels "terrible that she has to go through so much."
Nicole Kidman:
The actress revealed in 2011 that she "had a roller coaster ride with fertility" over the course of her life.
During her marriage to actor Tom Cruise, she struggled to conceive, and they decided to adopt kids Isabella and Connor.
In 2006, Kidman wed singer Keith Urban, and after she gave birth to daughter Sunday Rose in 2008, she struggled to conceive again.
"Anyone that's been in the place of wanting another child or wanting a child knows the disappointment, the pain and the loss that you go through trying and struggling with fertility," she said, adding, "Fertility is such a big thing, and it's not something I've ever run away from talking about."
Then, the couple decided to use a gestational surrogate to carry their second daughter, Faith, about which Kidman said, "We were in a place of desperately wanting another child.”
"This opportunity arose for us, and I couldn't get pregnant … Children are children — you'll die for your children. And when you feel that as a parent — that's the unconditional love,” she concluded.
Emma Thompson:
After a miscarriage in 1997, the actress gave birth to her first child, daughter Gaia, with her husband, actor Greg Wise, two years later at age 40 through IVF.
But Thompson's feelings of guilt and failure over being unable to conceive again, despite trying IVF again, sent her into a deep depression.
"After that, we tried to have another child, it didn't work, and I went into a deep clinical depression," she revealed back in 2006.
"It's only now that I no longer count other people's children or judge myself harshly for not providing my daughter with a sibling,” Thompson stated about how far she has come in her healing process.