Michelle Obama about her artificial fertilization and the female burden

The number of women who become a mother late has been increasing for years. Medically supported paths to pregnancy such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) also increase-often for biographical reasons, sometimes from professional. But it is still rarely openly talking about what it means if your own body does not play along during family planning. A well -known person who now talked about their own way is Michelle Obama.

In a remarkably open conversation in the podcast “The Diary of a CEO”, Michelle Obama talks about her unfulfilled desire to have children, the decision for artificial fertilization and the challenges of modern motherhood – also in the light of the political public.

“Imagine your life as a list,” says Obama. “I have postponed children, found the love of my life, and now I’ll be pregnant. You think it will just happen. But nobody tells you that the biological clock is real. This is not a lie.”

Michelle Obama describes herself as a “abrasive”, a woman with clear goals that she has consistently pursued: elite training, career before. But when she was finally ready to become a mother, her body was no longer as ready as her resume. Only artificial fertilization made it possible for her and her husband Barack to become parents.

In 1998, at the age of 34, daughter Malia was born in 2001, Sasha followed, when Michelle Obama was 37. Even if these age information were statistically in the middle of the field today, the way there was a stony. “When it happens to you – as someone who thought that life would go so and so and who did everything right – and it does not work (…) and nobody prepared you for it, then it is a blow. And as a woman you go around and wear this load as if it were your fault.”

Michelle Obama moved to the White House in 2009 with two small children – as a first lady with a family that is more of the exception in the center of power. Her daughters were ten and seven years old at the time. She experienced the fact that political operation was hardly prepared for childish needs.

“We had little children in the White House – that was rare. There were simply no precautions, and the way the west wing worked was not designed to protect us comprehensively as a family.” Her role as a mother was in the area of ​​tension in political representation, public expectation and private care. She talks not only about organizational hurdles, but also about emotional stress that went hand in hand with this double responsibility.

Today, at the age of 61, Michelle Obama looks back on her experiences with a mixture of self -confidence and serenity. Her life story shows how fragile can be perfectly planned biographies – and how important it is to speak openly about alternatives, medical possibilities and social expectations: “I think I just said to myself: ‘I think I did enough.’ And if that’s not enough, then I will never start.

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