Gabrielle Union’s Infertility Struggle: ‘I’ve Had 8 or 9 Miscarriages’

Actress Gabrielle Union revealed that she’s suffered multiple miscarriages trying to start a family with NBA star husband Dwyane Wade.

In a excerpt from her new book We’re Going to Need More Wine, and a PEOPLE exclusive.  The Being Mary Jane star opens up about her failed IVF treatments.

“I have had eight or nine miscarriages,” Union, 44, writes in the book. “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.”

Union’s character Mary Jane Paul, a news anchor, has discussed IVF and even did a cycle during the show’s third season.  Union herself has spoke on it in the past, but never revealed she too has struggled with IVF treatments.

Union and Wade jumped the broom back in August 2014.  She admitted that Wade didn’t see more children as part of their future, and she not wanting children at all, before convincing Dwyane into having more.  “I never wanted kids,” she tells PEOPLE. “Then I became a stepmom, and there was no place I’d rather be than with them.”  She’s currently helping her husband raise his nephew Dahveon Morris, 16, and sons from a previous marriage Zaire, 15, and Zion, 10.  Wade’s third son Xavier, 3, conceived with another woman while Wade and Union were broken up, lives with his mother.

When asked how it’s been dealing with infertility in the public eye Union said, “for so many women, and not just women in the spotlight, people feel very entitled to know, ‘Do you want kids?’” she says.  “A lot of people, especially people that have fertility issues, just say ‘no’ because that’s a lot easier than being honest about whatever is actually going on.  People mean so well, but they have no idea the harm or frustration it can cause.”  She continued on by saying, “once a month I look like I’m in my second trimester because I’m bloated.  It leads to the questions and it leads to the rumors and anytime I go into a doctor’s office I feel like I’m a member of SEAL Team Six undercover because I don’t want people to speculate.”

As for her and Dwyane’s future as parents. Union writes that she and Wade “remain bursting with love and ready to do anything to meet the child we’ve both dreamed of.”

To hear more of her story be sure to pick up her book We’re Going to Need More Wine, which is out October 17.