Molly Sims has switched her focus from model/actress to lifestyle blogger. Although it seems this is what every actress does at a certain age, Molly has done so rather successfully. She has both her website and her YouTube channel. For the most part, she posts workable ideas. There are a few party suggestions that require a planner and a hefty bank account but there’s plenty someone like me can do. I also appreciate that Molly posts missteps and ‘fails’. Even if my disaster pile is 10x larger than hers, it just makes me feel better knowing supermodels can’t make fruit leather either.
Something else Molly is good about is bringing up issues that aren’t always discussed. Her latest subject she opens for discussion is infertility and how we need to stop treating it as taboo. She spoke about the subject at a MitoQ Launch in New York last week.
Women who have experienced fertility struggles know that the subject is not always easy to talk about — but model and actress Molly Sims is ready to break the silence. The mother-of-three sat down with Closer Weekly at the MitoQ Launch at Catch NYC on Wednesday, where she explained what made her want to take her personal experience public.
“I think now it’s much more open, but I think it’s open because people are talking about it. It’s not an easy path, and I think a lot of it’s hidden, and there are a lot of things out there. As much as ‘it takes a village’ when you have children, I think now ‘it takes a village’ to have a child,” Molly explained.
She then added, “I just think it’s really important to be there for women. I researched a lot, I worked with really good doctors, I learned a lot — and I wanted to share that information and I don’t want it to be some dirty little secret.”
Molly married Scott Stuber in 2011 and together they have three children — five-year-old son, Brooks, two-year-old daughter, Scarlett, and seven-month-old son, Grey. Before tying the knot, the Las Vegas alum froze her eggs and before conceiving naturally, she tried IVF two times.
“Honestly I got pregnant on my honeymoon! I think because we had froze, and because I had in the back of my mind a safety blanket — a safety net — I got pregnant,” she previously shared in a video for her YouTube channel, later adding, “We tried IVF twice with Scarlett. I was just about to do another round, and there you go, there was Scar!”
When I first saw this headline, it surprised me. Not only did I know that Molly had three kids but I knew she had an unexpected pregnancy at an age when people find it harder to conceive. It seemed like she’d has no fertility problems but I’d forgotten there was three years between Brooks and Scarlett. If Molly got pregnant on her honeymoon, she probably assumed that’s how quickly it would happen every time so when it didn’t, it likely made her nervous. And, I think she’s spot on with the fact that her having a backup plan removed a lot of stress that can complicate conception issues. Somebody out there is in the same headspace Molly was and because they’ve only been trying for a year, probably many people are telling them not to worry about it. So it’s great that Molly is talking about this because if someone had a plan and it’s not happening like they thought it would, it weighs on them. It’s especially nice to hear that Scarlett was a natural pregnancy because not everyone has the means to go through IVF more than once. Maybe that gives some couples a little hope.
I also like that Molly is bringing up Secondary Infertility, not being able to conceive after a having a biological child. I don’t think people talk about this enough and I, personally, know three women who experienced it. One finally had her son eight years after her daughter, the other is still trying ten years after her first child. The third did IVF but it took several rounds before it resulted in a live birth. One of the biggest problem they faced was that most people told them to just be happy they had one child. Infertility of any kind is deeply emotional for the couple. I think shedding light on all aspects of it will educate people which will hopefully lead to more sensitivity. Being denied a child you’d hoped for is painful, regardless of any other circumstances.
Photo credit: WENN Photos and Instagram
On the other hand, there is nothing more annoying than someone who has the miracle baby story when you’re struggling with infertility. Saying “I froze my eggs so I had a back up so then I could destress” doesn’t strike me as a very helpful thing to say.
I’d also query how and why she managed to have 2 rounds of IVF with only a 3 year age gap between kids. Given it takes a year or so for your hormones to settle down post partum and it takes 9 months to actually gestate she can’t have been trying naturally for more than six months to a year before jumping to ivf. Seems a little ott.
I started fertility treatments 5 months after my first and 5 months after my second child. My doctors at the fertility clinic (and it’s one of the best in Canada) all said as long as there’s a one year gap in between births, it’s safe (for me, at least…other womens’ situations may be different). I’ve heard of waiting longer, but time was of the essence in my case.
Right – but did you get pregnant on your honeymoon with your first? It just seems odd to freeze your eggs and jump straight to ivf when you don’t have any known fertility problems. To me, her story just sounds like she’s not actually infertile at all – she just had a slightly longer gap between children 1&2 (and then clearly got pregnant almost immediately with no 3). So she hasn’t really shared any kind of actual struggle! If I was hecate’s friend who went 8 years between children I’d find that an irritating faux-concern-y story, not an actual helpful experience.
I don’t think it’s odd at all. Maybe she did the test that tells you about your ovarian reserve and didn’t like what she saw? Or she just hit 35, wasn’t in a relationship, and thought she’d hedge her bets. She was 39 with her first; you don’t want to take chances if you know you want 3 kids.
But why shouldn’t she tell her story the way it happened? She’s under no responsibility to make anyone feel better and I don;t think she meant to make you feel bad. I think your comment was a little mean spirited.
“Honestly I got pregnant on my honeymoon! I think because we had froze, and because I had in the back of my mind a safety blanket — a safety net — I got pregnant,”
Sorry, but this follows the line of thought that if you just relax and forget about it, it’ll happen! Not helpful. Whether intentional or not, she’s talking about infertility and should know to choose her words more wisely. That is NOT how getting pregnant works. Far too much attention is paid to stress and relaxing. Plenty of stressed people get pregnant easily. Plenty of relaxed people don’t.
Oops double post somehow sorry.
The timing between her children doesn’t mean anything regarding fertility treatments. I have the same fertility doctor that Molly does and with her age and the difficulties she was having time is of the essence so it is the doctor’s practice to start as quickly as is safely possible. Most fertility doctors won’t see patients until they’ve been trying on their own for a year (our doctor included) so by the time you see them it’s time to get straight to business. That’s just my experience of how things worked with her doctor so hopefully it will help with any confusion about age gaps. I’m in total agreement about how insensitive some people can be when talking to someone struggling with infertility. Every time someone told me to just relax and it would happen naturally I wanted to punch them in the face. For the record that never worked for me… perhaps I should have punched them in the face it might have relived enough stress to be helpful lol.
^Absolutely right. This pissed me off. She somehow managed to brag to women struggling with infertility with her annoying miracle story (and believe me, when you are struggling, somehow everyone wants to tell you at least a couple of those, including women getting pregnant without ovulation or with only one Fallopian tube) … AND she managed to convey the very disturbing and disheartening narrative of “Relax and it will happen”, which is something that makes women who are unable to “relax” feel guilty and not good enough. Well, no. This is exactly why some people should never, ever talk about infertility. Sorry but she did NOT struggle. She had three children very easy and close to one another. Just shut up, Molly, and go spend time with your “miracles” who seem totally NOT hard earned.
Anyone watch the Real Housewives of Orange County? Did anyone else think Megan went overboard with the IVF thing? I felt like it was a slap in the face to women who really struggle with infertility. She wasn’t infertile. Her husband froze his sperm so she did IVF to become pregnant faster but she acted like it was such a big deal and she was such an inspiration.
Sorry if that’s a little off subject but it really irritated me and I never experienced infertility so I can’t imagine how angry it made women who really have trouble conceiving.
A had a friend who did this; she was 39, and her husband traveled for work 80% of the time. IVF sucks no matter why you’re doing; I can’t imagine anyone doing it just for funsies.
I totally understand that. I don’t think Megan was doing it for fun but the way she acted was how a person would act that had serious struggles with infertility. Like she was so emotional and traumatized over it. She was milking it basically.
I think it’s bizarre that a woman with three kids talks about “infertility”, I believe it’s for attention. Just another Hollywood attention seeker, “Look at me, I’m perfect, I have it all”…That’s my personal observation.
Me too. I clicked on this thinking oh this is good, someone talking how difficult it is not to conceive and its more of this “here’s my three kids but I really struggled” sh*te. I would like to hear from someone who had had multiple rounds and failed and where do you go from here. and yes, anyone who is unable to conceive and have one child is going to completely disregard secondary fertility. You would give your right arm to have one so stop whinging. As the Hound said, your lips are moving and you are complaining!
“One of the biggest problem they faced was that most people told them to just be happy they had one child.”
It comes off as strange for sure…I mean she has three kids and they are all pretty close in age. I have a cousin who wants a baby so bad. She’s done IVF half a dozen times, conceived naturally four times no miscarried them all by four months. Her and her husband have been doing it for ten years. That’s true infertility.
I think a lot of women don’t realize that even if you are completely fertile it can still take a year or more to conceive naturally
Uh it sounds more like, “yeah I have kids, but I have empathy for those who struggle, so I looked into it to open the subject up.” I don’t see anything more than that, like when any celeb or businessperson discusses a charity cause to bring it some attention.
The general assumption of if it didn’t happen to her, she can’t care about it is strange. I have gone thru two miscarriages and a late term stillbirth, and I have two friends who have had fertility issues, and I think the subject can be discussed by Sims, because it might do someone good. Period full stop. Even if it is part of her blog business — the way posting this story here is part of this blog’s business. Maybe she will learn along the way, too.
A colleague who is 9 months pregnant (will be her third child) and will require a C section this time per her dr was just saying we are kind of programmed to think about is Baby Gap and nursery decor, the cute part, while the serious side stays under wraps in whispers, or is confined to internet searches. So…..without knowing Sims’ full medical history w IVf etc, and we don’t, maybe her topic choice isn’t a bad one.
This doesn’t sound like an actual infertility issue. This sounds like a woman who was able to quickly and easily become pregnant with her first, so expected to get pregnant again just as quickly and easily. She has 3 children and didn’t actually require assistance for any of them–she just sounds like she was impatient trying to get pregnant with her daughter.
Is it me, or do I feel like infertility has become a new bandwagon? I know that it is a real struggle for many women, and that many of those women feel it’s a failure on their part (which is absolutely not the case!). But, stories like this, Kim K using it as a fake plotline for her show, and others I’ve read recently make me feel like it’s a bandwagon celeb bloggers are using to garner mommy sympathy. It’s the new breastfeeding struggle, or the “It was SO hard to lose my pregnancy weight. See? I’m just like you!” It makes me uncomfortable feeling like women could be using something as devastating as infertility to get more clicks.
I think a lot of people don’t realize that even if you are completely fertile, that it can take a year or more to conceive naturally. I didn’t really realize it until I started trying to have my second child that, recently found out I was pregnant after a year of trying very hard lol.
I think these c list celebrities just need something to complain about, I always find it hard to believe when they talk about having post partum depression, trouble losing baby weight, trouble conceiving, breastfeeding…I don’t know..maybe I’m just a cynical bitch lol
It would have been better if she actually used the medical term Secondary Infertility to describe not being able to get pregnant within 6 months of trying after already having a live birth.
Many people aren’t aware you can struggle with subsequent pregnancies. What bothers me about how this is reported (I am not sure if it is how it was shared by Simms), but it would have been great if she acknowledged she has the resources to use the assistance of fertility treatment to have more babies. I live near one of the best fertility treatment centres in Western Canada, and a significant number of their patients are there for secondary infertility.
Freeze those eggs, ladies!! You may not need them, but if you do, you’ll be glad to have them around. Better to freeze them than to rush into a relationship and/or kids before you are really ready.
Easier said than done. Not only do you have to go through the painful and costly egg harvesting…you then have to pay for the monthly storage every month until you decide you no longer need them. Not something most 20-somethings can necessarily do.
I have zero knowledge in this area, but there is this about the egg freezing industry
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t_dqqTZacBA
Yes! What M. said. It took me over a year to conceive my second, which I miscarried at 6 weeks. 4 months later, I was frustrated and anxiety-ridden at my ob’s office and told that the miscarriage reset the clock and despite how long that took, they wouldn’t do anything for me until a year after the miscarriage because you “did get pregnant, it just wasn’t viable.” I guess my point is that for “regular” people who are trying after having a normal first pregnancy, they don’t rush into anything.
I also didn’t get my period back until my son’s first birthday, and we didn’t start trying until 2 cycles later. The second pregnancy finally happened when my son was 2.5 years old.
Okay…. By my math, this woman had children at 44, 42, and 38. That isn’t the definition of infertility, it’s the definition of “past my childbearing years” which makes this whole lament narcissistic and ridiculous. Neither gender was meant to have viable and genetically normal kids until the day they die. Welcome to science, nature, and the way it is.
I wouldn’t phrase it nearly so harshly as you did, but I was basically thinking the same thing. It sucks if you want more kids and can’t get pregnant when you’re over 40, since plenty of women are still able to do so–I have an aunt who had a “whoops” at 40. However, I don’t really think of it as “secondary infertility” unless you’re under age 38 or so.
I’m probably done having kids–I am 39 and have two. However, if we decided to try again and it didn’t happen, I might be sad but you know … I’m 39. And I had minor fertility issues before having my first kid in my early 30s, so I’m not at all trying to be insensitive to the plight of the infertile in saying so.
I have a slightly slow thyroid; after all the fun fertility workup stuff and a year of frustration, I conceived my first kid after a week on synthroid. Just throwing that in there for anyone else who might have “unexplained” infertility. My thyroid numbers were actually in the normal range so that two other OBs completely ignored them, but the reproductive endocrinologist was like, “hmm, that’s normal but higher than we want to see it.” And the rest is history and all that.
*neither sex
Honestly, secondary infertility is hell. I’ve written repeatedly, and found amazing support, on this blog, about our struggles to get pregnant the first time, the joy we shared when we found we were pregnant with our second (after trying for a while), and the despair we’ve gone through over the last year after a second trimester miscarriage of our second son. It took us a long time to agree that we will try again-I lived in the pit of despair for months. Every time I saw a baby I was in the fetal position. Two of my close friends were pregnant in the last year and sharing their joy was very bittersweet. It’s incredibly hard, and the men (or female/non-binary partners who aren’t pregnant) have a different experience than when you feel like your body is failing, even though you both are devastated. I wish I had frozen my eggs when I was young and healthy-I am 36 now, and working hard to be in the best shape of my life by next July so we can try again with a perfectly healthy body, even though it will technically be a geriatric pregnancy.
TL; DR-I’m happy when ANYONE talks about infertility, even if their experience is mild compared to other people’s. It’s not a competition to see who has been through the worst hell-it’s a journey many of us walk in some way or another, and all voices should be welcome.
I’m so sorry, LLGM. I lost my first ever pregnancy at the age of 40, which was the result of 3 rounds of IVF following years of TTC. That was only at 9 weeks, but it was still hell. I can only imagine what a second-trimester loss was like. We got lucky — I got pregnant again on my next round of IVF a couple of months later, as I was turning 41, and that pregnancy is now my toddler. I hope you get lucky a second time and are able to have that second child you are dreaming of. Try not to worry too much about being a smidge over 35 — I know it’s not optimal, but lots and lots of us have healthy babies after that point! Best wishes to you.
Her kids are very nice looking. I never used birth control and my kids were twelve years apart. I never considered myself to be infertile. It was just timing to me. It would have been nice to have my kids closer together but it just wasnt in the cards.
I do find her ‘infertility’ very eye-rolling. I mean her last two are less than two years apart and she was in her 40’s and naturally conceived them both! If anything that means she has above average fertility!!! As many women cannot even conceive in their 40’s at all.
Also this whole topic is a sore spot for me. I have secondary infertility and have had five miscarriages. Actually found out this weekend I am pregnant again but I don’t even feel anything right now because I don’t even want to be happy about it. I already had two prior miscarriages this year and I just feel like why bother getting excited when I’ll just end up getting hurt. I’m doing my best to ignore it (while following pregnant diet guidelines of course).
*hugs* Pinetree I’m so sorry. Been there, done that.
Thank you both so much!
This doesn’t sound like ‘infertility issues’ at all. She conceived all 3 kids naturally but not at the EXACT second she commanded…? So weird and frankly, insensitive for everyone else who is really have a hard time conceiving.
Absolutely, it was disgustingly selfish and self-promoting to put all of this out there. She is not helping, she’s damaging, and I say this as someone who has struggled with infertility for 3.5 years now.
I am 37, never been pregnant, married 5 years going on 6—been off birth control the entire time. Diagnosed with stage IV endometriosis. My situation is completely bleak. While I felt like the luckiest gal to find the best RE in the world and a super duper customer service oriented fertility center, after successfully making 9 non PGD/PGS tested embryos my husband put the breaks on the process and we separated for 6 months. Because of that move—pulling the plug on our family planning when we came so close and our separation I learned maybe it wasn’t meant to be. I started to ask myself if it was worth to keep peddling up a creek with no paddle for something that may not even materialize (if I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant anyway, or carried the embryo to full term) would it be worth it. My answer was I don’t know. I just have to give it to God. And that was the most liberating thing for me. I don’t know if I would be happy if I had a baby. I don’t know if being a mom is right for me. I didn’t want to be one of those women who proverbially gets married for the wedding. Anyhow, my husband and I are trying to patch things up but I will never be the same. We will never be the same. But strangely I’m healing and feeling very blessed about all the things that are right in my life and that gives me peace.
I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through, Delilah. I also have endometriosis and diagnosed infertility. I’ve been through IVF, but new studies show that the best treatment for endometriosis related infertility is excision surgery with an endometriosis specialist. The hormones given during IVF accelerate the growth of the endo, so it’s very counterintuitive. After my last excision surgery with a great specialist, I was able to conceive naturally, although I did miscarry. We’re doing six months of Visanne to give my body (and heart) a break before trying again. I know how hard both the disease and the fertility struggles are on a marriage, and I wish healing to you and your husband. My main piece of advice is that an RE is a not an endo specialist and they will always recommend IVF when that is no longer seen as the best course of action by endo specialists. Even if it’s not to conceive, excision surgery (with a specialist – my first one wasn’t and it was a mistake) is the best treatment for endo, especially if it’s deep-infiltrating. All the best to you.
I’m glad someone’s talking about it but I don’t think this is the right person.
There are people out there who truly suffer with infertility and it is so heartbreaking. I have been TTC for 5+ years now and have joined the TTC/infertility instagram world. Some of the couples on there endure such heartbreak and unfortunately not everybody leaves with a baby.
I recently came across a song called ‘Bottle by my bed’ by Sunny Sweeney. It so beautifully and eloquently depicts the pain caused to a person by an inability to have a child. check it out