Selena Gomez has opened up about the fact she may not be able to carry her own children, due to some risks associated with the medication she takes for bipolar.
The singer, 30, has been on medication since experiencing psychosis in 2018 and revealed she cries when thinking about the fact it may stop her from carrying a baby.
Speaking in a new interview with Rolling Stone, Selena admitted she sat in a car and cried after visiting a friend who was trying to get pregnant.
Due to the fact she needs to stay on two types of medication to manage her bipolar, Selena revealed: ‘That’s a very big, big, present thing in my life,’ but vowed to become a mother one way or another, adding: ‘However I’m meant to have them, I will.’
According to the NHS, the risks of taking bipolar medicines during pregnancy are not well understood, and certain types are not recommended for pregnant women due to a risk of harm to the baby.
Certain medications can cause birth defects including neural tube defects, heart defects and developmental delay or neurobehavioral problems according to WebMD.
Selena revealed that she had experienced suicidal thoughts from her mid-twenties, after finding her life didn’t pan out the way she had envisioned it as a child.
She explained: ‘I’m going to be very open with everybody about this: I’ve been to four treatment centres.
‘I think when I started hitting my early twenties is when it started to get really dark, when I started to feel like I was not in control of what I was feeling, whether that was really great or really bad.’
The highs and lows she experienced could last for weeks or months without a specific trigger, sometimes manifesting as insomnia lasting for several days, or manic episodes in which she was convinced she needed to buy everyone she knew a car.
Selena added: ‘I grew up thinking I would be married at 25. It wrecked me that I was nowhere near that — couldn’t be farther from it. It was so stupid, but I really thought my world was over.
‘I never fit in with a cool group of girls that were celebrities. My only friend in the industry really is Taylor [Swift], so I remember feeling like I didn’t belong.’
She admitted she never felt completely happy and was not fulfilled by material things because ‘I just didn’t like who I was, because I didn’t know who I was.’
Selena initially combatted the psychosis by taking whatever medication she was given at treatment, but eventually fine-tuned her dosage with the help of a psychiatrist, who removed all but two of her medications. She has also delved deep into her mental health journey on her new Apple TV+ documentary, Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me which is released on November 4.
She admitted she wasn’t sure whether to release such an intimate look at her journey until she saw the reaction to a test screening, adding: ‘I was like, “OK, if I can just do that for one person, imagine what it could do.” Eventually I just kind of went for it. I just said, “Yes.”‘
