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Gabrielle Union opened up recently about the “difficult” decision of using a surrogate to bring her and husband Dwyane Wade’s daughter, Kaavia into the world.
The Deliver Us From Eva actress’ latest book, You Got Anything Stronger unveils the “hard truth” about the journey and what she learned from it.
“In 2016, my doctor, Kelly Baek, a no-nonsense reproductive endocrinologist in L.A., gave it to me straight: ‘Your best chance for a healthy baby would be surrogacy,” Union wrote in an adaptation of the book in Time Magazine, revealing an adenomyosis diagnosis and “more miscarriages than I could confidently count.”
“I was not ready to do that,” she said.
Union revealed that she wanted to have the “experience of being pregnant,” and to do so publicly.
“I would shake off the distrust society has for women who, for whatever reason –– by choice or by nature –– do not have babies. I had paid the cost of that for years, and I wanted something for it,” she explained.
After enduring another year of fertility treatments and losses, the actress said it was her husband’s words that stopped her from taking a risky reproductive drug that would have brought her chances of carrying a baby to term to 30%.
“I told him I wanted to try the drug. Dwyane was quiet, then said, ‘You’ve done enough,’” she shared.
The actress went on to detail in part the pregnancy the basketball star had with another woman in 2013, the year before they were to be married.
“To say I was devastated is to pick a word on a low shelf for convenience,” she wrote, adding later, “The experience of Dwyane having a baby so easily–– while I was unable to –– left my soul not just broken into pieces, but shattered into fine dust scattering in the wind.”
After putting a lot of work into their relationship, the decision to use a surrogate was made, and not lightly.
When they saw the first ultrasound, Union said she broke down, emotional from the realization of all the miscarriages she’d experienced, describing the scene as a “floodgate of grief.”
“I was reliving death. Of course I was grateful, it would be impossible not to be. But what I was grateful for was that this life might be spared.”
The rest of the story, in Union’s own words, can be found her new book, You Got Anything Stronger, which is scheduled for release Tuesday (September 14). Pre-order your copy at this Black woman-owned bookshop by clicking here.
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