Emmy Rossum gets candid about her fertility struggles as she recalls 'long journey' to motherhood

Emmy Rossum got candid about her fertility struggles as she reflected on her 'long journey' to motherhood.

The 39-year-old actress, who married producer Sam Esmail nearly a decade earlier, opened up about the topic during Wednesday's episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast. 

Rossum and Esmail are parents to two children: a daughter born in May 2021 and a son who was welcomed two years later. 

The Shameless star talked about how she had initially tried to conceive naturally, but eventually turned to IVF.

'And I had a kind of crazy journey to get pregnant, where I have PCOS, so I had very debilitating ovarian cysts throughout my 20s,' she explained to host Alex Cooper. 

PCOS was formerly known as Polycystic ovary syndrome but has since been renamed as Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS). 

'And tried to get pregnant naturally. It didn't happen. Tried IUI, didn't happen, and then tried IVF, and it happened in a big way,' Rossum recalled. 

The actress said that a side effect of PMOS 'is that you can kind of become a super responder.' 

After she underwent one harvest, Rossum expressed that 'they woke me up from the harvest and said that I had 72 eggs, which was trippy and bizarre.'

She added, 'So it had been a long journey to get to meet my daughter, and then when I finally had it was also towards the end of Covid, so I had been able to keep the pregnancy private the whole time.' 

The Phantom Of The Opera star welcomed her first child, a daughter, in May 2021 and had gone into labor during a Knicks game. 

'I was pregnant with my daughter, and I knew that I was due, and I was very much in denial that I was in labor the first time.'

Rossum explained that she had been 'over a large kind of exercise ball' amidst 'full labor' while watching the match. 

Her mother had been over at the time and suggested that her daughter go to hospital and get an epidural. 

'And I was like, "Nope, I'm gonna watch this game, and I'll go when I'm fully dilated,"' she said. 

The actress stated that she 'labored the whole night before I went to the hospital in the morning' since her 'contractions never got any closer together than like eight minutes.' 

Once it got to the point to where she felt like she could not 'do much more of this,' she told her husband to call an Uber. 

Rossum explained that she became nine centimeters dilated on the ride to the hospital which almost caused her daughter to be born in the vehicle.

The star had been 'overtaken by the feeling of vulnerability' the moment she met her baby girl. 

'That this thing that we've been able to keep safe inside of you for so long is now outside of you, and it's so vulnerable, and anything could happen to it.' 

Rossum briefly touched on her struggle with postpartum anxiety which 'was very, very rough, like very intense, intrusive thoughts.' 

The Daily Mail has reached out to reps for Rossum for comment, but has yet to hear back.

Last month in June, the actress shared a throwback photo to Instagram that had captured the moment she was in labor five years earlier while watching the Knicks game. 

'Five years ago, I was fully in labor with my daughter, sweating over a yoga ball through contractions and refusing to go to the hospital until after the Knicks game,' she penned in the caption. 

Rossum remembered that the Knicks 'lost 107-105, but I was not going to the hospital til that game was over-over!'

She then celebrated the New York Knicks winning the 2026 NBA Championships, and wrote she had 'been waiting for this moment for as long as I can remember.' 

Back in 2024, the actress reflected on taking a break of acting to focus on raising her children on the Today show, per People. 

'You did something really cool, you took time off to spend a lot of time raising your kids, and now 4 years later, here we are,' host Hoda Kotb told the star.  

'It's incredible Especially being on-stage in a live theater performance, there's nothing quite like it,' Rossum replied, referring to her role in the play Walden at the time. 'It really has reaffirmed my love of this art, it is incredible.' 

The mom-of-two has been keeping and recently took on a leading role in the new Hulu series Furious. 

The crime thriller is set to hit the streaming site on July 27 and the cast also includes Scott McNairy, Jake Lacy as well as Lola Petticrew. 

The premise is: 'FBI agent Alice Black (Rossum) is on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating female serial killer. 

'Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur,' per IMDB.