Jessel Taank, one of the stars of the “Real Housewives of New York City,” has opened up about her journey with infertility — and the pain she went through during in-vitro fertilization (IVF).
Taank spoke to Reality Tea about the struggle she had to give birth to her twins, Kai and Rio, with husband Pavit Randhawa. At 34, they began trying to get pregnant, but couldn’t do so naturally. The couple went through four rounds of intrauterine insemination (IUI) and five rounds of IVF, but Taank said it wasn’t easy.
“You don’t even know what it felt like to be normal, because [of] the hormones,” she said. “You’re so overstimulated.”
At one point, while shopping at Whole Foods, she fainted, and had to be taken to the hospital vial ambulance. “There’s something called ovarian hyperstimulation. If you are doing multiple rounds of IVF … your ovaries go into overdrive, and they start to expand and swell,” she said, adding that it felt like “the worst period [pain] of your life. I literally passed out because the pain was so bad.”
Today, Taank said she wants more children – and a girl specifically – but isn’t eager to go through with IVF again. “The thought of having to repeat that process again is just kind of daunting,” she said.
READ: She created 48 embryos via IVF and lives with guilt: ‘We don’t know what to do with them’
Numerous celebrities have publicly spoken about using IVF and surrogacy to grow their families, like Paris Hilton and Chrissy Teigen, but many have also been opening up about the difficulties of IVF, too.
“Month after month of injections, several egg-harvesting procedures, more IVF injections, new ADHD meds, my natural state of chaos — it was a lot. The shots are painful,” Paris Hilton said in an interview earlier this year. “At times, I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore.”
Kourtney Kardashian is another celebrity who has spoken about IVF, though she seemingly was eventually able to get pregnant naturally. Not only did the drugs from IVF cause her to gain weight, but they put her into early menopause. “All the things that came along with IVF took a toll on me physically,” she said. “My health is still impacted, because it’s hormones. And also, like, mentally, it definitely, like, took a toll.”
In an appearance on a podcast, she added, “I felt like we kind of got pushed into doing IVF. If you look online, it says if you’re over 40 go right away to an IVF doctor. So I felt a little bit pushed.” She also added in reply to a social media comment that how IVF affects women’s bodies isn’t spoken about often.
It’s natural for people to want children, and when struggling with infertility, IVF can seem like a lifeline. But children should not be commodified, and women deserve better than suffering so much, without even so much as a warning first.
