Michelle opens lid on the Obamas’ marriage
Former first lady also talks of her IVF treatment and the couple’s counselling in a revealing new memoir
MICHELLE OBAMA, the former first lady of the United States, has revealed that she used IVF treatment to conceive her two daughters, after once suffering a miscarriage.
In a deeply personal interview, Mrs Obama, who is married to former president Barack Obama, also made public that the pair had undergone marriage counselling.
Mrs Obama also said she would “never forgive” Donald Trump for endangering her family by escalating claims that her husband was not born in America, triggering a new row with the president yesterday.
The revelations were made both in her new memoir, Becoming, which will be published on Tuesday, and a promotional interview for the book which she gave to ABC News. They provide an intimate portrayal of a relationship that sat at the heart of the White House for eight years during Mr Obama’s presidency, which ended in Jan 2017.
During the ABC News interview Mrs Obama discussed the struggles she had in conceiving during her early marriage and how suffering a miscarriage left her feeling “lost and alone”.
“I felt like I failed because I didn’t know how common miscarriages were because we don’t talk about them. We sit in our own pain, thinking that somehow we’re broken,” Mrs Obama said.
The Obamas eventually turned to IVF treatment which led to the conception of her two daughters, Malia and Sasha, who are now aged 20 and 17.
“The biological clock is real because egg production is limited,” Mrs Obama said. “I realised as I was 34 and 35, we had to do IVF. 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.”
Asked why she chose to reveal that the pair had marriage counselling, Mrs Obama said: “For those young people out there who think that marriage is supposed to be easy. Marriage counselling for us was one of those ways where we learned how to talk out our differences. What I learned about myself was that my happiness was up to me.”
The memoir fulfils half of a deal that publisher Penguin Random House struck with the Obamas for each of them to publish a book, reportedly for a sum worth more than $60 million (£46m). She will do a 10-city promotion tour for her book, which will include London.
Mrs Obama also criticises Mr Trump for fuelling the so-called “birther movement”, which demanded Mr Obama produce his birth certificate. Only US citizens are allowed to be president.
Mrs Obama wrote in the book that she would “never forgive” the current president for “putting my family’s safety at risk”. She added: “The whole [birther]
‘I felt like I failed because I didn’t know how common miscarriages were’
thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed. But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wing nuts and kooks.”
Asked about that comment yesterday, Mr Trump hit back by saying Mrs Obama “got paid a lot of money to write a book and they always insist that you come up with controversy”. He added: “Well, I’ll give you a little controversy back. I’ll never forgive him for what he did to the United States military by not funding it properly.”