Emmy Rossum Opens Up About Fertility Struggles and the ‘Trippy’ IVF Result That Left Her Shocked

Angelique BrenesThu, July 9, 2026 at 12:57 AM UTC

0

Emmy Rossum attends the PEN America 62nd Annual Literary AwardsCredit: Michael Loccisano/Getty -

Emmy Rossum opens up about her fertility struggles, revealing she conceived through IVF after years of trying to get pregnant

The actress says she was shocked to learn doctors retrieved 72 eggs during a single IVF cycle, calling the result “trippy and bizarre”

Rossum also reflects on her labor, postpartum anxiety and the overwhelming emotions she felt after welcoming her first child

Before diving into motherhood, Emmy Rossum says her path to becoming a parent was anything but straightforward.

While appearing on the Wednesday, July 8, episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, the actress reflected on her years-long fertility journey, revealing she was diagnosed with PCOS — which was recently renamed polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) — and struggled to conceive before ultimately becoming pregnant through IVF.

“Postpartum anxiety for me was very, very rough, like very intense, intrusive thoughts,” Rossum said. “And I had had a kind of crazy journey to get pregnant, where I have [PMOS], so I had very debilitating ovarian cysts throughout my 20s, and tried to get pregnant naturally. It didn’t happen. Tried IUI, didn’t happen, and then tried IVF, and it happened in a big way.”

Rossum, 39, said she underwent just one egg retrieval cycle, but was stunned by the results because of a side effect associated with PMOS.

Emmy Rossum holds her baby and poses with her pregnant bellyCredit: Emmy Rossum/Instagram (2)

“I only did one harvest, but a kind of side effect of [PMOS] is that you can kind of become a super responder, so they woke me up from the harvest and said that I had 72 eggs, which was trippy and bizarre,” she said.

The Shameless alum said finally welcoming her daughter felt especially emotional after what she described as a long road to pregnancy.

“So it had been a long journey to get to meet my daughter, and then when I finally had it was also towards the end of Covid, so I had been able to keep the pregnancy private the whole time,” she said.

Rossum and her husband, Sam Esmail, welcomed their daughter on May 24, 2021. They later expanded their family with the birth of their son in April 2023.

Elsewhere in the interview, Rossum recalled initially dismissing the signs that she had gone into labor with her daughter, despite experiencing contractions.

“I was pregnant with my daughter, and I knew that I was due, and I was very much in denial that I was in labor the first time,” she said. “I remember, I like gave my husband a haircut, I was cleaning the house, I ordered some Thai food, and I had some contractions, but I was kind of like, ‘it’s probably fine.’”

Rossum admitted she was also afraid of giving birth because of her family’s history.

“I was definitely scared of childbirth. My mother’s mother had died in childbirth, so that narrative was very in the back of my head, or my psyche somewhere,” she said.

Advertisement

Still, one thing took priority before she was ready to head to the hospital.

“What was in the front of my psyche, was I was not going to go into labor until after the Knicks game,” Rossum said. “I was laboring over a large kind of exercise ball in full labor, as I’m watching the Knicks game, and in this photo, my mom is next to me on the couch, being like, ‘I really think you should just like go get the epidural,’ and I was like, ‘Nope, I’m gonna watch this game, and I’ll go when I’m fully dilated.’ ”

Rossum previously shared photos from that day, including one of herself leaning over an exercise ball while watching the game, joking that her love of the Knicks made the timing fitting. She also revealed she unexpectedly craved chicken wings despite never having eaten them before, followed by a sandwich and Pad Thai, before giving birth.

— sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

She said she labored through the night at home because her contractions never became close enough together for her to think delivery was imminent.

“I actually labored the whole night before I went to the hospital in the morning. My contractions never got any closer together than like eight minutes, so I didn’t think I was very close,” Rossum recalled. “I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do much more of this,’ and then finally, I woke my husband up, and I was like, ‘We gotta call an Uber.’ ”

Emmy Rossum’s Daughter Holds Her Baby Brother in Sweet First Photo of the SiblingsCredit: Emmy Rossum/Instagram

“He was like, ‘should I get the playlist ready?’ and I was like, ‘I don’t want the playlist anymore,’” she said.

The couple ultimately took an Uber to the hospital — something Rossum previously revealed nearly resulted in her giving birth in the backseat after she unknowingly reached nine centimeters dilated during the ride.

Looking back on the moment her daughter arrived, Rossum said the experience immediately shifted her perspective.

“Oh my God, that’s a person,” she recalled thinking the first time she held her. “I was overtaken by the feeling of vulnerability that this thing that we’ve been able to keep safe inside of you for so long is now outside of you, and it’s so vulnerable, and anything could happen to it.”

Rossum’s new project, Furious, premieres on Hulu on July 27.

on People

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”