Elisabeth Röhm is an actress best known for her role as Serena Southerlyn on NBC’s Law & Order. Her next film, Joy, which will be released this month, reunites her with American Hustle co-stars, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, and Bradley Cooper. Röhm is also a writer and blogs regularly for People.com about motherhood. It was there that she revealed her struggle to get pregnant with daughter Easton, now 7. Her book, Baby Steps: Having the Child I Always Wanted (Just not as I Expected), came out in 2013 and details her journey with IVF. Here we talk to her about the book, what advice she has for women who may be struggling with infertility, and why it’s so important for women to be informed about their bodies.
What prompted you to write Baby Steps?
I discovered at 34 that I had fertility issues and that if I wanted to have a child I needed to do IVF pretty aggressively, which came as a shock to me. We kept it to ourselves; we only shared it with our very closest family members. But after talking to a girlfriend who was on her third miscarriage and who felt like she needed to get some help, I decided to tell her I had done IVF. There was this instant feeling of connection in telling the truth about it and this relief in being able to help her find the right doctor. We need to move the ball down the field of talking about infertility openly and not being ashamed of it, if we’re experiencing it. I started blogging about it for People.com and the response was so tremendous, I really couldn’t believe it. This wasn’t the direction I intended to go, but suddenly I saw this wave of letters of positive feedback and a friend suggested that I write a book. It’s an epidemic in this generation—so many women struggle with infertility and so many keep it a secret. Isn’t it time to change the consciousness about it?
What is the book about?
The book is really more memoir than anything because my IVF story really isn’t the worst story in the world. I found out I had issues and I acted very quickly and I was still 34, not 38 or 40. I transferred four embryos and had only one pregnancy. It happened for me on the second try and that’s not a harrowing experience at all, many people go through far worse with IVF. So the book is in part a journey toward motherhood and a lot about my childhood. Also, my mother died when Easton was 2, so as I was going through the journey of motherhood, I lost my own mother and I think had to step into a new level of adulthood. It really is more about becoming a woman than struggling with IVF. But, it has a lot of the elements of the journey of IVF.
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Did the passing of your mother affect your approach to raising Easton?
Before she died, my mother gave me the greatest compliment of all, she said, “You’re a natural.” My mom was a natural, she was an incredible mother, a stay-at-home mom, and I got her all the time. We didn’t have to struggle with separation, which is something I go through with Easton; it’s very hard to be away from her. But at the same time Easton gets a good example of how big the world is and how many options she has to scale whatever mountain she wants. I think that although I was grieving very deeply when my daughter was 2 years old, it also made me very mature on a different level. Life consists of all these milestones but when you lose your parent, there’s a transition of stepping into the role of being a matriarch when that happens. I wasn’t as indecisive as I had been in the past. There was no calling your mom for advice. I stepped into a more empowered place even though I was grieving.
Anything that surprised you about the IVF process?
It was extremely hard on my relationship because you feel as if there’s something wrong with you and then of course between you as a couple, no matter how supportive you are of one another, whomever has the fertility issues, the other one feels like there’s something wrong with them too.
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What advice do you have more moms struggling with fertility?
Go easy on yourself. If you’re discovering that you have fertility issues, there are a lot of versions of modern family and there’s only so much your body can go through. But go for it! There’s a lot of support out there, a lot of amazing doctors, and a lot of amazing advancements. But what I’d really say to the younger generation, the reproductive generation that want to be parents some day, is to take all the time you want to have the career you want, to establish a foundation to not be spread between family and work, take the time to pick the right partner, but think ahead. Ask your doctor to give you certain tests because it’s like the breast exam—there was a time when people didn’t do that. The more we become advocates for ourselves as women by saying, “I need to have my hormone levels checked and my fertility reserve checked,” then you can advocate for your future family. Empower yourself with information and knowledge and ask for what you need, so you won’t be surprised at 38 if you discover that you’ve got some complications. Infertility in many ways is a disease, but it’s something you can hedge your bets on if you empower yourself with knowledge about your body. That’s really why I wrote the book. I wanted to create a call for action and I’m still talking about it.
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