Amy Schumer just shared an incredibly personal look at her IVF results with her followers on Instagram. We've always known Amy to be open and honest. That's part of what makes her an incredible comedian and actress — she doesn't mind revealing even very personal stories about herself. She does it all the time during her routines, sharing intimate details of her life. But now, Amy is talking about a more serious issue that's near and dear to her: her struggle to get pregnant.
She first got up-front on Instagram back in January when she wrote about undergoing in-vitro procedures. She shared an image of her bruised stomach from where she had to give herself injections. Followers reached out, giving her tons of support following her reveal. Now she's keeping her fans in the know with what's been going on since then. She just shared a post about her in-vitro fertilization treatment the day after Valentine's Day.
In a heartwarming post, Amy shared the details of her first egg retrieval.
Amy shared a picture of herself smiling on Instagram on February 15. She captioned the photo, “They retrieved 35 eggs from me. Not bad for the old gal right?"
Her post continued: "Then 26 fertilized! Whoa right? For all those we got 1 normal embryo from that and 2 low level mosaic (mosaic means there are some abnormal cells but can still lead to a healthy baby). So we feel lucky we got 1!”
It's pretty incredible to see Amy sharing her journey to pregnancy so openly. We hear about celeb pregnancies and births all the time. It's rare that celebs actually show us the realities of their own personal journeys, which are, of course, different from person to person.
Especially in Hollywood, many women wait until they are older to begin trying to have babies. It makes sense that many actresses may go through IVF, but how often do we actually hear about it? How often do we see those challenges in their own photos, along with their own words? Not all that often.
In that way, Amy is kind of a trailblazer. She doesn't want to hide her story. She wants to share it to let other women know that it's OK if their pregnancy journey looks different. Now she's starting conversations about IVF and what it looks and feels like.
Amy first opened up about her in-vitro fertilization journey in January, saying that she was undergoing the process to give her son a sibling. Amy's son Gene is not quite a year old. "I’m a week into IVF and feeling really run down and emotional," she wrote.
She continued: "If anyone went through it and if you have any advice or wouldn’t mind sharing your experience with me please do. My number is in my bio. We are freezing my eggs and figuring out what to do to give Gene a sibling." It's a pretty rare move for a celebrity to reach out to fans to ask for support like this. Of course, followers answered the call.
Amy was blown away by how many people shared their stories with her and helped to lift her up. That's probably why she's so committed to keep sharing her stories with us, too. Either way, it's lovely to see different kinds of journeys to have a baby being more normalized on social media. All of those stories deserve an outlet.
When women ended up sharing their stories and advice with Amy, she posted another photo of herself in a doctor’s office. In that post, she thanked her followers for the tips she received. They told her to eat salty food and drink Gatorade. Sometimes advice, even from strangers, can go a long way.
We hope Amy keeps sharing her IVF journey with us. We will be following along and keeping our fingers crossed for her as she continues to try and grow her family with the help of modern medicine.
She's definitely an inspiration to us all.
