Being rich and famous comes with a lot of perks, but there’s no amount of money that can guarantee a stress-free experience with trying to have children. Just as many everyday women have dealt with fertility issues like trouble conceiving, miscarriages, and stillbirths, so have these 15 celebrity women. And for every one star who speaks out, there’s likely a handful more who just aren’t ready to share their stories yet.
Pregnancy struggles are a very personal thing to endure, but it does help so much to know that anyone can go through the same horrific experiences. Every time a celebrity opens up about her fertility journey, it makes the rest of us feel less alone.
Here are 15 stars who’ve spoken candidly about their challenges — and no doubt helped countless others by doing so.
Jinger Duggar
Lily Allen
The singer has been candid about experiencing a “horrendous” stillbirth at six months pregnant in 2010. “It’s not something that you get over,” she told the Sun. “I held my child, and it was really horrific and painful — one of the hardest things that can happen to a person.”
In addition to losing her baby, Lily experienced near fatal complications brought on by the stillbirth. “I nearly died. But I was numb and I didn’t care. I’d just lost my baby and that is a reflection of how numb I was,” she recalled.
Chrissy Teigen
Even before her stillbirth last year, Chrissy has been open about her fertility struggles. She conceived Luna and Miles via IVF after she had a difficult time getting pregnant on her own. “The big question was why this wasn’t working for us when I was young and he was healthy,” she told Self. “I thought, people get pregnant by accident all the time! How does this happen?”
Tori Roloff
Tori has two children with Little People, Big World star Zach Roloff. The duo was expecting a third child in 2021, but Tori ended up miscarrying. “We were so excited when we found out we were expecting baby #3, and we couldn’t wait to share. We went in for our first ultrasound at 8 weeks and found out that we lost our sweet baby two weeks earlier,” she wrote on Instagram in March.
She added that she hoped her sharing her story would help others as well as herself. “I post this in hopes that it will touch just one mama and let them know you’re not alone. I also post this selfishly as a form of healing for myself. I felt as though I needed to acknowledge our sweet angel baby so I could go on sharing my babies here with me.”
Courteney Cox
According to NBC, the Friends star has a rare blood antibody that attacks the fetus when she’s pregnant, and she experienced several miscarriages before learning that. “I remember one time I had just had a miscarriage, and Rachel was giving birth on the show. It was like that same time. Oh my God, it was terrible having to be funny,” she said.
Beyoncé
Beyoncé has spoken about having trouble getting and staying pregnant, as she had a miscarriage before Blue Ivy was born and reportedly had nearly given up on having more children when she finally conceived her twins, Sir and Rumi. “Having miscarriages taught me that I had to mother myself before I could be a mother to someone else,” she told Elle in 2019. She’d previously spoken about one of her miscarriages in her HBO documentary Life Is But a Dream, calling it “the saddest thing I’ve ever been through.”
Elizabeth Banks
After struggling to conceive on her own, the Pitch Perfect star turned to surrogacy for her two children. She told Porter that she sometimes feels criticized for taking that path, though. “I definitely think I’m still judged for what I’ve done and that people don’t understand my choices, but I don’t feel I owe anybody any explanation,” she said. “And if my story helps people feel less alone on their journey, then I’m grateful for that.”
