Anne Hathaway felt tormented as she tried and failed to conceive.
The 36-year-old actress recently revealed that she is pregnant with her second child with husband Adam Shulman, 38, but Anne used her pregnancy announcement to reveal that she has struggled with fertility issues in the past.
Speaking to the Daily Mail newspaper, Anne – who already has three-year-old son Jonathan with Adam – explained: "I just remembered how I felt when I was struggling myself.
"Each time I was trying to get pregnant and it wasn’t going my way, someone else would manage to conceive. I knew intellectually that it didn’t happen just to torment me, but, to be honest, it felt a little bit like it did.
"What made matters worse was that I was embarrassed to feel like that because there was no conversation to be had about it. This is something people don’t talk about, and I think they should. So, when I was writing that post, I was thinking about that one follower I might reach, the woman who’s in hell about this and can’t figure out why it’s not happening for her. She’s going to see my announcement and, while I understand she will be happy for me, I also know that something about it will make her feel worse. I just wanted to say: ‘Look, this wasn’t as easy for me as it looks.’
"By leaving out the sad part, we make women who are struggling with this feel isolated and lonely; we make them feel like it’s all their fault. I wanted to be more sensitive than that."
Anne’s pregnancy announcement featured a picture of her baby bump and a supportive message for women who were dealing with fertility issues.
She wrote on the photo-sharing platform: "It’s not for a movie… #2
"All kidding aside, for everyone going through infertility and conception hell, please know it was not a straight line to either of my pregnancies. Sending you extra love (sic)"
And the ‘Modern Love’ star admitted she thought long and hard about how she worded her message.
She previously explained: "I just knew that somewhere my announcement was going to make somebody feel worse about themselves because – and it wouldn’t be their fault that that happened – you just can’t help it when you want something so bad and it feels like it’s happening to everyone else but you.
"And I just wanted that person to know that they’re included in my story too and that my story didn’t just have happy moments too."
Anne Hathaway’s fertility torment
