Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade's Oprah Interview
Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade Shared Their Surrogacy Journey With Oprah, and It's So Emotional
After Gabrielle Union and her husband Dwyane Wade welcomed a daughter — whom they named Kaavia — via surrogate in November, the new parents sat down for their first interview post-baby with Oprah Winfrey. During the special, Oprah at Home with Gabrielle Union, Dwyane Wade & Their New Baby, which airs on Dec. 8 on the OWN network, the pair shared their experience as parents as well as what it's like to have a child using a surrogate.
"You're finally a mother at 46," said Oprah. Although Dwyane and Gabrielle are over-the-moon about having a tiny new family member, they couldn't help but notice the backlash the new mom faced for posting a photo in a hospital bed even though she wasn't the one to physically give birth. "Everyone started talking about why she was acting like she just had a baby," said Dwyane.
Despite the fact that Gabrielle wanted to start a family, her Adenomyosis diagnosis — which is a type of endometriosis that occurs in the uterus — prevented her from carrying children herself. In her 2017 memoir We're Going to Need More Wine, the actress confessed that the emotional toll of having eight or nine miscarriages was too much to bear at times.
"For three years, my body has been a prisoner of trying to get pregnant — I've either been about to go into an IVF cycle, in the middle of an IVF cycle or coming out of an IVF cycle," she wrote.
But now that she's finally able to hold Kaavia in her arms, she's happy she embarked on the long journey to motherhood.
"I'm already getting choked up. It's still hard to let go," said Gabrielle. "I never wanted kids. Then I became a stepmom, and there was no place I'd rather be than with them," she said, adding that, "So then I thought, 'Well maybe I might be good at this, and maybe this is something I want to explore.' And I'm madly in love with this dude, so [having a baby] is something we could look into."
