Whitney Port opened up about the struggles she’s facing amid her motherhood journey, revealing why she still doesn’t feel “complete.”
“I don’t think motherhood looks like what I imagined,” the Hills alum, 40, said in an interview with Spread the Jelly published on Thursday, January 29. “I never thought I’d be a mom to an only child. I always knew I wanted more than one. I didn’t picture this, and that’s been a little weird for me. My identity as a mom doesn’t feel fully solidified yet because I feel incomplete. I really do.”
Port and husband Tim Rosenman wed in November 2015 and welcomed son Sonny, now 8, two years later. After welcoming Sonny, Port and Rosenman, 46, have struggled to expand their family.
“I’m trying to come to a place of acceptance with having one child, because I haven’t been able to get pregnant with a second,” she continued. “We’re still on the journey and still trying. But it feels like there’s a piece of my motherhood pie that isn’t complete.”
Port confessed that she feels “insecure” as a mom because she is a mother of one.
“This sounds awful, but there’s this feeling like one isn’t enough — or that it’s not as hard, or not as much to balance, or not the full picture,” she explained. “And I carry that insecurity. I’ve done a lot of work around it. Most of the time, I’m able to tell myself, ‘OK, if it’s just the three of us, that is wonderful.’”
While Port feels “so grateful” she was able to have Sonny, there is a “part” of her “that doesn’t feel complete.”
Port has had her fair share of struggles amid her journey to expand her family. She has suffered multiple miscarriages and underwent fertility treatments.
“It’s been seven years of trying since Sonny. I got pregnant about a year after he was born, and then it was miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage. I was getting pregnant but the pregnancies weren’t sticking,” she reflected. “Eventually, I was told my chances would be better with a fertility doctor. I went to one who came highly recommended and started the process of egg retrieval, freezing embryos, and IVF.”
Port recalled going through the retrieval process but was unable to complete a transfer after getting “really sick with a stomach virus” that led to a tear in her esophagus.
“After I physically recovered, I realized I had hit a physical and emotional rock bottom,” she said. “All the stress from years of trying, the miscarriages, the anxiety around the transfer not working — it had been four years at that point.”
Port and Rosenman discussed the idea of surrogacy. Port, for her part, hadn’t considered the option since she was “afraid of the judgment.”
“I felt like I hadn’t done everything yet, so I didn’t deserve that option. I rejected the idea for a while,” she admitted. “Then I started talking to people who had used surrogates and had similar experiences. I decided to take my power back and see it as a privilege; I don’t need to keep putting my body through this after six years of trying. I was 41 and I was losing myself.”
The couple found a surrogate and did “two transfers” but both failed. At one point, the surrogate was “pregnant for 11 weeks” before suffering a miscarriage. Since that tragic loss, Port shared that she and Rosenman went back to the drawing board.
“We decided the best thing to do was to change all the variables. We switched doctors, did a new round of egg retrieval and embryo freezing, and found a new surrogate,” she said. “Now we’re at the point of contracts with the surrogate and hoping to do a transfer by the end of this year. That’s where we’re at right now.”
