Idina Menzel has been praised for her honesty after opening up about her journey of motherhood.
“This is so brave,” wrote one fan.
Scroll on for the full story.
For certain lucky people, conceiving a baby is an easy path.
That blesses us with the births of thousands of babies every year.
These couples celebrate their new additions with huge happiness.
After waiting 9 months they finally get their own bundle of joy.
And fortunately in today’s day in age, pretty much anybody can have a baby.
Thanks to the technological advances in IVF, couples who can’t conceive naturally, and who would once have had to admit defeat, can now have families of their own.
There are many different ways to conceive.
But by far the most talked-about is surrogacy.
Now, what exactly is surrogacy?
Surrogacy is an agreement wherein a woman agrees to carry and birth a baby for another person or couple.
It’s a truly selfless act.
And, from there, the baby will grow and be born from this other woman, rather than its biological mother.
Obviously, agreeing to become a surrogate for someone is a huge commitment…
A surrogate will have to put her body through the journey of pregnancy (and the trauma of labor, of course) for someone else’s happiness and fulfillment… So, it isn’t a decision to be taken lightly.
But sometimes, IVF isn’t as simple as that.
And one story has broken the internet’s heart this week.
Singer Idina Menzel has opened up about her fertility journey.
Menzel is a singer, and you’ll probably best know her as the voice of Elsa in Frozen.
But this week, she’s hitting headlines for a different reason than her incredible voice.
And it’s hitting the internet right in the feels.
She’s featuring the story in her new documentary, Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?
“No matter what the outcome, I just wanted women to feel seen in this film and people to understand what we go through,” Menzel tells People.
“It was important to me to forgo the privacy of that and allow people to have a little window into that experience.”
Menzel has a thirteen-year-old son with ex-husband Taye Diggs, but after getting remarried to Aaron Lohr, she decided to try to conceive again.
But as Menzel is in her fifties, things didn’t necessarily go to plan.
“Maybe before meeting me, [Lohr] didn’t think he wanted to have kids, and then he sees how good of a dad he can be,” Menzel explains.
“So I wanted that for him.”
“I didn’t think I wanted to have a baby but then Aaron has been the most amazing man to my son.”
But Menzel called her IVF journey alongside her singing career a “balancing act.”
“I’m literally going through stuff that I’m shooting into my body and I don’t know how that’s going to affect my voice,” she says.
“And it may force me to make extra trips to get back and forth to the doctor in addition to making trips to get home to my family,” she adds.
“And all of that isn’t great on your body when you’re trying to have a baby.”
“I have this amazing son and I was fortunate enough to have him.
“And the pregnancy was pretty easy and I conceived easily, and there’s a lot of people that don’t even get to have that.”
Se also says that putting her body through IVF was a sign of her love for Lohr.
“I think going through all that, you’re so exhausted by it that finally, it becomes apparent like, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore and it just wasn’t meant to be,’ and you’re resolved in that.”
“[Lohr] sees Walker as his own kid at this point anyway.
“I think we feel content and lucky with what we have.”