Anne Hathaway is opening up the realistic expectations she had when trying to conceive in her 40s.
“There’s always hope until there’s not, but when you get to a certain age, that hope looks like it’s 1 percent to 2 percent,” Hathaway, 43, recently told Access Hollywood at the Odyssey premiere in New York City. “We just decided to see where life took us with a very, very healthy, realistic expectation, which was very low.”
Hathaway and her husband, Adam Shulman, announced in June that they are expecting their third baby. (The couple already are parents of sons Jonathan, 10, and Jack, 6.)
“We’re overjoyed because we just know from personal experience that not everybody gets this, and certainly not when you want it — sometimes not ever,” Hathaway told Access Hollywood, referring to her past pregnancy loss. “It’s a blessing that we do not take for granted.”
The Oscar winner has previously been candid about her fertility challenges.
“For everyone going through infertility and conception hell, please know it was not a straight line to either of my pregnancies,” Hathaway wrote via Instagram in 2019 while announcing her pregnancy with Jack. “Sending you extra love.”
Nearly five years later, Hathaway revealed that she suffered a miscarriage in 2015 while playing a pregnant character in the off-Broadway play Grounded.
“Given the pain I felt while trying to get pregnant, it would’ve felt disingenuous to post something all the way happy when I know the story is much more nuanced than that for everyone,” she told Vanity Fair in 2024 of her 2019 statement. “The first time it didn’t work out for me. I was doing a play and I had to give birth onstage every night.”
Hathaway initially kept her loss private.
“It was too much to keep it in when I was onstage pretending everything was fine,” she recalled to the outlet at the time. “I had to keep it real otherwise. So when it did go well for me, having been on the other side of it — where you have to have the grace to be happy for someone — I wanted to let my sisters know, ‘You don’t have to always be graceful. I see you and I’m with you.’ It’s really hard to want something so much and to wonder if you’re doing something wrong.”
Amid her pregnancy with baby No. 3, Hathaway has continued doting on her two sons.
“The thing about boys is they don’t make any sense until you get the stamina up, then once you get your stamina up, they’re a breeze,” Hathaway joked to Access Hollywood about life as a boy mom. “The thing about boys to remember is that they have feelings, and so to make sure to make space for their feelings to help them learn how to name them. I think sometimes we think about that more in the realm of girls, but it’s just as important to give that emotional foundation to boys.”
Read the full article here
