Gabrielle Union Says Dwayne Wade’s Ability To ‘Have Children So Easily, While I Was Unable To, Left My Soul Shattered’ As She Opens Up About Surrogacy Journey

Gabrielle Union Says Dwayne Wade’s Ability To ‘Have Children So Easily, While I Was Unable To, Left My Soul Shattered’ As She Opens Up About Surrogacy Journey

Gabrielle Union is speaking on her personal matters in her upcoming book!

Tomorrow (Tuesday, Sept. 14th), Gabrielle Union‘s next book, You Got Anything Stronger? will be released to the world. The book is a follow-up to her 2017 best-selling memoir, We’re Going to Need More Wine.

To prepare for the book’s upcoming release, Gabrielle Union released an excerpt. In the snippet, she notably opens up about her surrogacy journey. Initially, Gabrielle Union discusses her past miscarriages and her desire to get pregnant:

“I had been through an adenomyosis diagnosis and more miscarriages than I could confidently count… I wanted the experience of being pregnant. To watch my body expand and shift to accommodate this miracle inside me. I also wanted the experience of being publicly pregnant. I would shake off the distrust society has for women who, for whatever reason–by choice or by nature–do not have babies. I had paid the cost of that for years, and I wanted something for it.”

She also dishes on how her fertility issues affected her marriage with NBA star Dwyane Wade. Gabrielle Union revealed her struggles were intensified by the fact that Dwyane Wade, who has three children from before their marriage, was able to have children so easily:

“The experience of Dwyane having a baby so easily–while I was unable to–left my soul not just broken into pieces, but shattered into fine dust scattering in the wind.”

Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union

Later, after coming to the decision to explore surrogacy, Gabrielle opened up about some of the underlying issues she saw at the start of the American surrogacy process:

“At the top of the surrogate food chain were married, white, American women who have their own kids. The belief is that if they are married, they have a built-in support system, and if they have more than one child, there’s proof they can do the job. On the message boards, people can be anonymous, so they rank surrogates by race. I got the sense a lot of white families-to-be were more comfortable with brown people as surrogates—Latina and South Asian—who were often classified as ‘breeders.’ Now, I am Black, and I am used to hearing how people speak of women of color, but this was some Handmaid’s Tale s**t.”

She continued to speak on the early stages of the surrogacy process:

“We chose the most ethical agency we could find, and answered most of their questions about prerequisites with ‘We don’t care.’ Religion, active lifestyle, diet. Two months later, in early December, we were presented with a surrogate who seemed to check all the boxes. We were introduced over the phone, but the conversation was made awkward by the fact that we couldn’t reveal our identities to protect the anonymity of both parties.”

Gabrielle Union then revealed what happened when she met the prospective surrogate, Natalie, in person:

“The door opened. Like a blind date, you look everywhere at once, knowing you are being looked at, too. The first thing I noticed was a nose ring. Oh, I thought, she’s a cool-a** white girl.“

Later, after Natalie became pregnant, Gabrielle Union spoke on how the first ultrasound went:

“Natalie lay down for Dr. Baek to pass the ultrasound wand over the bump. ‘There she is,’ she said. And she was. There. Here. This very clear little baby in there. Her big-a** head, her spine, her little heart pumping, pumping, pumping. Determined to live. It was suddenly incredibly real. Dwyane took my hand, and there was so much happiness on his face, I lost it. My cry was a choke stopped up in my throat, tears streaming down.”

She continued, revealing she became emotional after remembering how many miscarriages she had endured before that moment:

“It was grief. I’d had so many miscarriages. I say the following with the caveat that I am steadfast in being pro-choice. I was on a fertility journey at 44. The smallest cell was weighted with the expectation of life. A zygote was a baby, just on potential alone. When one of my eggs was examined, that was a baby. When Dwyane got a sperm analysis, that was a baby. Every swimmer was our baby. But when I miscarried in the first trimester, I never thought I had lost a baby baby. I had never let it count. Looking at the screen, I understood how many potential babies I had lost. That’s why I was crying. A floodgate of grief and sorrow overcame me, threatened to drown me.”

In early November 2018, Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade‘s daughter, Kaavia, was born. After sharing her emotional reaction to becoming a mother, Gabrielle opened up about some lingering questions she’s left with:

“I will always wonder if Kaav would love me more if I had carried her. Would our bond be even tighter? I will never know what it would have been like to carry this rockstar inside me. When they say having a child is like having your heart outside your body, that’s all I know. We met as strangers, the sound of my voice and my heartbeat foreign to her. It’s a pain that has dimmed but remains present in my fears that I was not, and never will be, enough.”

What do you think about Gabrielle Union’s revelations? Comment down below to let us know.

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