Emma Roberts is gearing up for the most important role of her life- mom. The soon to be mom and her partner Garrett Hedlund kept the news a secret for months until her mom hilariously spilled the beans on Instagram. The actress recently opened up in an intimate interview with Cosmopolitan about growing pup in the spotlight, her pregnancy, and her experience living with undiagnosed endometriosis. The diagnosis led the actress to freeze her eggs before she got pregnant.
Roberts started acting when she was 6 years old and already had a label- Julia Roberts niece. The actress grew up in front of the world but some people still can’t accept that she’s a grown woman. She explained in the interview, “It’s funny, because I think people to this day think I’m 19, even though I’m turning 30. I don’t know if it’s about growing up as Julia Roberts’ niece or if it’s because I’ve been doing this since I was so young that people see me as younger.” She continued, “There’s always been a disconnect between the private me and the public me. In Hollywood, the public decides who you are and then they’ll decide if you get to change or not… If you want to come out and say, ‘But wait, this is who I am,’ it’s rarely perceived well or people think, ‘I don’t want to hear that story. I want the old story because it’s juicier or it makes me feel better,’ or whatever the reasons are.”
2020 has been a strange year for everyone, especially for pregnant women, but “long story short” she’s “hungry and tired.” Roberts explained, “Food and sleep do not abide by the normal laws when you’re pregnant. But I’m healthy, which is the thing I’m most grateful for.” The usually busy actress is taking this down time to savor the experience and practice self care. “To see my body change inside and out so drastically has been a wild experience. Surprising and beautiful... I’ve really gotten to take care of myself for me, instead of for a movie or for a show or for an event. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve had this much time off since I was 12 years old.”
When the actress was 16 she thought she would be a mother by 24. “At 16, I thought, By the time I’m 24, I’ll be married with kids. And then I was 24 and I was like, Remember when I said I would be married with kids by now?” Acting kept Roberts busy with a wild schedule, “it’s not always conducive to settling down in a traditional way” she explained. But a few years ago she learned she was living with undiagnosed endometriosis that affected her fertility. Endometriosis is an often painful disorder in which tissue that normally lines the inside of the uterus, (the endometrium) grows outside the uterus. It most commonly involves the ovaries, fallopian tubes, and the tissue lining the pelvis.
Roberts knew something was wrong but her male doctor shrugged it off. She recalled, “I always had debilitating cramps and periods, so bad that I would miss school and, later, have to cancel meetings. I mentioned this to my doctor, who didn’t look into it and sent me on my way because maybe I was being dramatic? In my late 20s, I just had a feeling I needed to switch to a female doctor.” Making the switch from a male to a female doctor gave her validation that what she was dealing with was real. “It was the best decision. She ran tests, sent me to a specialist. Finally, there was validation that I wasn’t being dramatic. But by then, it had affected my fertility. I was told, ‘You should probably freeze your eggs or look into other options.’”
She was terrified at the thought of having to go through the process and was “stunned” when she found out. She recalled, “When I found out about my fertility, I was kind of stunned. It felt so permanent, and oddly, I felt like I had done something wrong.” But the actress discovered it was something many women struggle with after opening up to other women. “I started opening up to other women, and all of a sudden, there was a new world of conversation about endometriosis, infertility, miscarriages, fear of having kids. I was so grateful to find out I was not alone in this. I hadn’t done anything ‘wrong’ after all.”
The actress eventually froze her eggs, but they got pregnant once they stopped thinking about it. “It sounds cheesy, but the moment that I stopped thinking about it, we got pregnant. But even then, I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Things can go wrong when you’re pregnant. That’s something you don’t see on Instagram... This pregnancy made me realize that the only plan you can have is that there is no plan.”
