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Gabrielle Union penned an article detailing the misery of not being able to conceive and have a baby.
The US actress shared she was forced to consider surrogacy, after suffering from multiple pregnancy losses and fighting adenomyosis.
“I was not ready to do that [surrogacy],” Union wrote in her piece for Time magazine. “I wanted the experience of being pregnant. To watch my body expand and shift to accommodate this miracle inside me.”
However, she added, her husband Dwayne Wade convinced her to change her mind.
“As much as we want this baby, I want you,” she recalled him saying. “We’ve lost too much in our relationship for me to be okay with encouraging you to do one more thing to your body and your soul.”
She added her fears vanished when she met her surrogate, who turned out to be a fan.
After the surrogate ran a positive pregnancy test, Union said she was elated, “This growing bump that everyone thought I wanted to see was now a visual manifestation of my failure. I smiled, wanting to show I — we — were so happy and grateful. But part of me felt more worthless.”
Detailing her emotions when she saw what was soon to be her daughter during an ultrasound, Union revealed, “It was suddenly incredibly real,” she explained. “Dwyane took my hand, and there was so much happiness on his face, I lost it. My cry was a choke stopped up in my throat, tears streaming down.”
“It was grief,” she continued. “I’d had so many miscarriages … looking at the screen, I understood how many potential babies I had lost. That’s why I was crying.”
At the end of the piece, Union said she felt it was important to share her story.
“If I am telling the fullness of our stories, of our three lives together, I must tell the truths I live with,” she concluded. “And I have learned that you can be honest and loving at the same time.”