Jennifer Aniston opens up about her IVF struggle: Challenging road for me

Actress Jennifer Aniston has opened up about her struggle with getting pregnant and IVF treatment for the first time in a candid interview. 

For years, rumours suggested that Aniston and Brad Pitt divorced as she chose career over starting a family with the actor. While speaking to Allure magazine recently, Aniston rubbished the reports and stated she did try to get pregnant and that it was a 'challenging road for me, the baby-making road.'

"All the years and years and years of speculation… It was really hard," she noted. "I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it. I would have given anything if someone had said to me, 'Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favor.' You just don't think it."

Aniston said the assumptions around the cause of her divorce from Pitt in 2005 were hurtful. 

"It was absolute lies," said Aniston about the "narrative that I was just selfish... I just cared about my career. And God forbid a woman is successful and doesn't have a child. And the reason my husband left me, why we broke up and ended our marriage, was because I wouldn't give him a kid."

Aniston did not mention the specific years when she tried for IVF and instead just mentioned that she underwent treatment "several years ago." The 'Friends' star said that at 53 she had no regrets on how things worked out in her life.

"Here I am today. The ship has sailed," she said, adding, "I actually feel a little relief now because there is no more, 'Can I?' I don't have to think about that anymore."

"I would say my late 30s, 40s, I'd gone through really hard s***, and if it wasn't for going through that, I would've never become who I was meant to be," said Aniston. "That's why I have such gratitude for all those s***y things. Otherwise, I would've been stuck being this person that was so fearful, so nervous, so unsure of who they were. And now, I don't f***ing care."

Aniston said she felt "best in who I am today, better than I ever did in my 20s or 30s even, or my mid-40s."

A few years back, Aniston had mentioned in an op-ed how gossip around her personal life had impacted her. 
"Here's where I come out on this topic: We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child. We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies. That decision is ours and ours alone," she wrote. "Let's make that decision for ourselves and for the young women in this world who look to us as examples. Let's make that decision consciously, outside of the tabloid noise. We don't need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our own 'happily ever after' for ourselves."

Added Aniston at the time, "I have grown tired of being part of this narrative. Yes, I may become a mother some day, and since I'm laying it all out there, if I ever do, I will be the first to let you know. But I'm not in pursuit of motherhood because I feel incomplete in some way."