Broadway singer Laura Bell Bundy opens up about fertility struggles

When US Broadway star Laura Bell Bundy met husband Thomas Hinkle she felt she was finally ready to have children but things didn’t quite work out as she had hoped

The 40-year-old Legally Blonde singer has revealed the pair did not get pregnant after a year of trying and had to turn to IVF to help to conceive their son and the problems that came along with the subsequent pregnancy.

She told Parade.com: “I found out I had endometriosis, but I had viable eggs, so we just decided to go ahead and do the egg retrieval and the IVF.

“The timing was right for us, and we knew we probably wanted another child but it probably wouldn’t be until I was over 40, and then my eggs might not be as viable.

“So, we decided it was a good idea to just go ahead with the process.”

The further she got into the treatment, the more vulnerable she started to feel

“Anyone who has done IVF knows that you feel very vulnerable when you are going through it because you’re giving yourself all the shots, you’re asking your partner to give you shots, and when they’re not around, you have to stick this big needle into your butt or your stomach, and you go through all these different emotions.”

The couple was lucky, they retrieved 30 eggs and managed to get 11 good-quality embryos.

Things were looking good until her grandmother and father died soon after they had frozen their embryos.

Laura said she needed to give herself some time to grieve and so put fertility treatment on the back burner for a while.

When the doctors came to check her uterus and cervix for any issues the embryo might face implanting, they discovered a polyp that needed to be removed.

Once the surgery was completed it was all systems go. Luckily, the first embryo transfer worked and the couple was delighted to learn they were expecting a son, they named Huck.

But the first 12 weeks of the pregnancy was quite traumatic

“I started to bleed at eight weeks and again at ten weeks. The doctors managed to adjust my hormone medication to the correct level and the rest of the pregnancy was much healthier,” she says.

Huck was born in May 2019 and they are now a happy family of three.

But Laura feels that if there was a better support system in place for women she may have found out earlier that she could have addressed them before she felt she was running out of time.

Did you find out about your fertility issues in your late 30s or early 40s? What was your support network like? Do you feel fertility education should be taught in school? We’d love to hear your thoughts, head over to our social media pages, @IVFbabble on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.