Idina Menzel Shares Details From Her Private IVF Journey
The singer says having a child with husband Aaron Lohr "wasn't meant to be."
Idina Menzel is “fortunate” to have a wonderful 13-year-old son. But in her new documentary, Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?, the beloved singer and actor shares her emotional journey to conceive another child, which ultimately ended in heartbreak.
Menzel, 51, shares her son Walker with ex-husband Taye Diggs, but married fellow Broadway star Aaron Lohr in 2017 and decided to try to have another baby. Initially, Menzel didn’t think Lohr wanted children, but once he began co-parenting Walker, she saw what a wonderful father he was.
"So I wanted that for him,” she told People in an interview about her Disney+ documentary, which streams December 9 and shows scenes from Menzel's personal life and 2018 national tour. Fans also get to witness “emotional” and “physical” moments of the Frozen star at doctors appointments and receiving in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments, which Menzel admitted was her idea to include.
"No matter what the outcome, I just wanted women to feel seen in this film and people to understand what we go through," she said of fertility struggles. "It was important to me to forgo the privacy of that and allow people to have a little window into that experience."
Idina Menzel with her son, Walker, in 2019.
In the documentary, Menzel questions how the IVF injections will affect her voice and stamina on stage, but continues on with the process. Unfortunately, a pregnancy never happened, but, four years later, Menzel said she and Lohr have “moved beyond that” and accepted the journey.
"I think going through all that, you're so exhausted by it that finally, it becomes apparent like, 'I don't want to do this anymore and it just wasn't meant to be,' and you're resolved in that," the former Wicked star told People. "I have this amazing son and I was fortunate enough to have him. And the pregnancy was pretty easy and I conceived easily, and there's a lot of people that don't even get to have that."
Idina Menzel and her husband, Aaron Lohr.
On top of her documentary, Menzel recently appeared in Disney’s Enchanted sequel, Disenchanted, and continues being the soundtrack of many parents lives thanks to voicing Elsa in Frozen and Frozen 2.
