Halsey opened up recently about how she’s been diagnosed with the painful disorder endometriosis, where tissue that normally lines the uterus grows on the outside instead. The singer is only 24-years-old and tweeted that “I have endometriosis. I’ve had 3 miscarriages, 4 surgeries, pretty much in pain every day of my life.” But endo wasn’t the cause of her miscarriages a doctor explains. “A woman would not miscarry from endo. Endo in and of itself will not give any real bearing on miscarrying, only on trying to get pregnant,” Dr. Peter Weiss, an OB/GYN at Rodeo Drive Women’s Health Center in Beverly Hills who treats women with endo extensively tells HollywoodLife.com EXCLUSIVELY.
If anything, endometriosis makes getting pregnant all the more difficult. “Endometriosis is associated with infertility. Many women who have endometriosis will have a harder time getting pregnant. Not every woman will have a hard time, but it is a risk factor. A history of endometriosis can make it much more difficult for a woman — even at a younger age — to get pregnant. It also depends on the degree of the endometriosis. Endometriosis can be mild or quite severe which can also play a role in getting pregnant.” Dr. Andrea Reh, a board certified reproductive endocrinologist at Shady Grove Fertility, EXCLUSIVELY tells HollywoodLife.com.
We asked Dr. Reh about why Halsey attributed her miscarriages to endo, even telling a story on The Doctors about how she literally miscarried onstage in the middle of a concert and began bleeding heavily. “Endometriosis is one risk factor why women miscarry, but it would be hard to say that that’s the cause without excluding other reasons first. There’s other risk factors involved and most likely it may be genetic, meaning the embryo itself was abnormal,” she explains. Halsey did say on The Doctors that her mom explained away the heavy and painful periods she had all her life to something that ran in her family.
As for Halsey’s multiple miscarriages at such a young age, Dr. Reh says “Any woman that has two or more miscarriages, we recommend them undergoing an evaluation with a specialist to rule out other causes such as genetic causes, the uterus itself, or hormonal causes.”
“The biggest risk of women with endometriosis is just getting pregnant in the first place,” she tells us. “We are seeing that women with endometriosis who get pregnant do have a higher risk of miscarriage and they also have a higher risk of complications in pregnancy. They have a higher risk of bleeding, of preterm delivery, ectopic pregnancy which is where the embryo grows outside the uterus and typically in the fallopian tube, and will sometimes need a C-section and have a baby that’s of a lower birth rate.” Sadly, “Once a woman with endometriosis is pregnant there’s not too much she can do to avoid a miscarriage,” Dr. Reh explains.
Halsey is not alone in her struggle with endo. Celebrities who have battled endometriosis and still gone on to have children include Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi, 48, and actress Susan Sarandon, 72. While for others like Lena Dunham, 32, the pain became too debilitating and she underwent a hysterectomy to have her uterus removed. Dancer/actress Julianne Hough, 30, recently revealed that she has endo and that it has created a struggle in her sex life with husband Brooks Laich.
