The Obamas open up about their multiple miscarriages

Former first lady Michelle Obama waited until after she and her husband, Barack Obama, were out of the White House to reveal details regarding their prior attempts at building a family.

According to Nicki Swift, the Obamas have opened up about their past desire to grow their family and the setbacks they encountered, including several miscarriages.

During a podcast interview, Barack Obama explained that the couple didn't rush into building a family at first. Instead, he said, they focused on their careers.

"We had this nice stretch of about three years where she was doing her thing in her career, and I was doing mine," the former president told Bruce Springsteen in a podcast interview.

He added, "Then we started trying to have kids. Took a while. Michelle had a couple of miscarriages, and we had to kind of work at it."

It was noted that he and Michelle were married over five years before they found out they were expecting their first child, adding that the pregnancy didn't come as a surprise.

"There had been this six-year stretch in which probably for about half of it, we had been trying, so there was no surprise to it," Barack Obama said.

Nicki Swift noted:

While Barack went light on the details of their fertility struggles, Michelle painted a more harrowing picture in her memoir. In the book, she revealed that after suffering a devastating pregnancy loss, she had to go through in vitro fertilization (IVF) to conceive her daughters.

In her memoir, Becoming, Michelle Obama provided more nitty-gritty details of their attempts to have children and how their careers impacted the situation.

"Our attempts at procreation took place not in service of important monthly hormonal markers but rather in concert with the Illinois legislative schedule. This, I figured, was one thing we could try to fix," Michelle Obama said.

She added explained that after their first positive test, she had a miscarriage that "left me physically uncomfortable and cratered any optimism we felt."

The former first lady added, "Seeing women and their children walking happily along a street, I'd feel a pang of longing followed by a bruising wallop of inadequacy."

In a later interview with Good Morning America, Michelle Obama said, "I felt like I failed because I didn't know how common miscarriages were because we don't talk about them."

Many have speculated that there's a small chance Michelle Obama could be a potential replacement for President Joe Biden in the 2024 election, though if that's even remotely the case, she hasn't dropped a single hint about it.