Focused on their successful careers, Michelle and Barack Obama waited until their mid-30s to start a family. But they struggled to conceive. After suffering a miscarriage, the couple weighed their options as they sought to become parents. Fortunately, they were able to conceive both Malia and Sasha through in vitro fertilization. While their story had a happy ending, it was far from smooth. Undergoing IVF is hard on the body, both emotionally and physically.
For Michelle, it involved administering daily injections on herself. “Here I was alone in the bathroom of our apartment, trying, in the name of all that want, to screw up the courage to plunge a syringe into my thigh,” she wrote in her 2018 memoir, “Becoming.” The sacrifices proved worth it on July 4, 1998. “Malia Ann Obama, one of the two most perfect babies ever to be born to anyone, anywhere, dropped into our world,” she penned.
IVF also proved effective in conceiving Sasha two years later. “Natasha Marian Obama was born on June 10, 2001, at the University of Chicago Medical Center, after a single round of IVF, a fantastically simple pregnancy, and a straightforward delivery,” she wrote. Michelle’s decision to share her journey had an almost immediate impact. After her memoir, some fertility clinics saw an uptick in Black patients. “Black women don’t seek care at the same rate as white women,” Dr. Desireé McCarthy-Keith of Shady Grove Fertility said.
