By Ferdinand Ekechukwu with Agency Report
Former United States first Lady Michelle Obama has revealed how she had miscarriage 20 years ago, and then used in-vitro fertilisation to conceive their daughters – Malia and Sasha. The revelation was contained in her memoir, ‘Becoming’, which would be released on Tuesday.
The 54-year-old talked about how she and husband, Barack Obama, who was the 44th president of the United States, sought couples therapy, in her 426-page book.
In the run-up to the Tuesday’s presentation of her biography, Michelle, lawyer, university administrator and writer told ABC on Good Morning America, that she felt “lost and alone” after her miscarriage, and felt as if she had “failed, because I didn’t know how common miscarriages were, because we don’t talk about them.”
She told Robin Roberts of ABC that when she was around 34 years old, she realised that “the biological clock is real” and that “egg production is limited”, which made her decide to seek in-vitro fertilisation, adding, “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.”
Mrs. Obama further revealed that the couple’s relationship struggled at times, especially after her husband joined the state legislature, leaving her at home where she was forced to administer IVF shots herself. “Marriage counselling for us was one of those ways where we learned how to talk out our differences,” she told ABC, stating further, “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.”
She also describes falling in love with Mr. Obama one summer night in Chicago thus, “As soon as I allowed myself to feel anything for Barack, the feelings came rushing – a toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.” The book Becoming is her half of a two-book deal, reportedly worth more than $60 million (€53 million), the Obamas signed last year with Penguin Random House, a record sum for US presidential memoirs. In Becoming, Mrs. Obama says she would “never forgive” President Trump for championing the “birther” theory that her husband was not born in the US, according to excerpts obtained by US media.
“The whole (birther) thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, it’s underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed. What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington? What if that person went looking for our girls? Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family’s safety at risk. And for this I’d never forgive him,” she wrote.
She said she reacted in shock to Trump’s presidential victory and “tried to block it all out.”
Before departing the White House for Paris on Friday, President Trump addressed some of the quotes from Mrs. Obama’s book. “Michelle Obama got paid a lot of money to write a book and they always insist you come up with controversy. I’ll give you some back. I’ll never forgive him for what he did to our United States military by not funding it properly,” Trump said, referring to his predecessor, Barack Obama. “What he did to our military made this country very unsafe,” he shot back.
