Claire Danes shares the fear and beauty of a surprise pregnancy

Actress Claire Danes, who underwent IVF to conceive her second son with husband Hugh Dancy, shared the shock, fear, and beauty of her surprise pregnancy with their third child, a daughter, when Danes was 44.

Key Takeaways:

• Claire Danes has two sons with her husband, Hugh Dancy.

• Her second son was born after two rounds of IVF.

• Danes became unexpectedly pregnant at 44 and had a strong emotional reaction, saying she felt shame.

• She welcomed daughter Shay in 2023, who she describes as "dreamy" and "the best."

The Details:

In an interview for Amy Poehler's podcast Good Hang, Danes said she had a "meltdown" when she learned she was pregnant at an age at which she didn't even think pregnancy was possible and after having gone through several rounds of IVF to have her second son, Rowan, born in 2018. Her first son, Cyrus, was born in 2012.

"I didn't know it was physically possible," she said. "I was 44. And actually Rowan (her second-born son) was very hard-earned. I had to do two rounds of IVF. I just was so unlikely."

She had been out with a friend at a spa and told her friend she felt that she might be pregnant. "I wasn't going to say anything and finally I admitted it. I totally lost my mind last night and just decided I was pregnant. I went down this crazy rabbit hole and finally looked up 'what are the odds of naturally conceiving at 44' and they're like less than 1% — one percent. I was like 'so that obviously is ridiculous," she recalled telling her friend.

That's when her friend told her that she had a dream that she herself was pregnant, but she was in Danes' body.

The next day, Danes took a pregnancy test. "It was like bold, caplock PREGNANT and I burst into tears," she said. She added that she "called my ob-gyn in convulsive tears. It was a pure ... it was all meltdown."

Previously, she told Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett on their Smartless podcast, that the pregnancy made her feel shameful. "It was weird," she told them. "Suddenly I felt like a funny shame... like I was naughty. Like I had been caught fornicating past the point I was meant to."

She said, "None of this was by design." Perhaps it wasn't by her design, but it was by God's design.

But, as Danes discovered, becoming pregnant in your 40s is a gift. "And then this beautiful girl emerged and she's the best and none of it was up to me and I'm just delighted," said Danes. "Shay, my baby, she's very kind of in her head and dreamy."

The Bottom Line:

Danes' emotional reaction to becoming pregnant is normal, especially in a society that has separated sex from pregnancy and treats women over 35 as too old to have a baby naturally. Women who get pregnant via IVF at that age are typically celebrated, while women who become pregnant naturally are often made to feel as though they've done something wrong, as if they should have tried harder to avoid pregnancy. Some women have been pushed into abortions after becoming pregnant in their 40s because they feel they are now too old, or they are scared to "start over" with a new baby because their other children are school-age or older.