- Chrissy Teigen launched a campaign encouraging women to be open about their fertility challenges.
- The campaign, launched during National Infertility Week, also helps couples find specialists.
- Teigen conceived her first two children with IVF and suffered a pregnancy loss last year.
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Chrissy Teigen announced a new campaign, "Fertility Out Loud," Monday to encourage women to be more open about their fertility issues and to help them find support.
The 35-year-old model and cookbook author and her husband, musician John Legend, conceived their first two children with the help of in vitro fertilization.
In September 2020 while pregnant with the couple's third child, Teigen was put on bed rest, then hospitalized for severe bleeding related to a weak placenta. After undergoing "bags and bags" of blood transfusions, she suffered a pregnancy loss in October and documented her heartbreak on social media.
Teigen has said she's vulnerable on social media about her challenges to help other women feel less alone and combat the stigma associated with infertility. According to her campaign, 1 in 8 couples struggle to get or stay pregnant.
"I feel like the more we're open about talking about something, the more normalized it becomes," she told USA TODAY. "I'm happy to be the one to be able to yell loudly from the rooftops and talk about my uterus and talk about my everything. If that's going to make other women feel that they can do it too, then I will be that person and I'm happy to do it."
Her campaign, a partnership with RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association and Ferring Pharmaceuticals, launched during National Infertility Awareness Week, April 18-24. The campaign helps people find fertility specialists near them, and guides them on what to look for in a team or clinic. It also "decodes" insurance policies, and offers other resources and support.
"This was obviously a no-brainer to be able to speak to women that are going through the issues that I went through, the confusion that I went through as a young woman struggling with infertility, to be able to give them this safe haven," Teigen told Reuters.
"There is still a stigma attached to it. There is still this privacy that people want with it and this shame or guilt."