Somehow Holding It Together

A friend brought Nicole Kidman’s motherhood issues to my attention yesterday. She has my sympathy for many reasons, even though she is an adoptive mom and also had her youngest child via a gestational surrogate – neither of which I am supportive of – but I do understand the challenges she has endured.

Given that Tom Cruise does have a daughter with Katie Holmes, I would assume that the infertility issues were mostly on Nicole’s side of things. One can’t really talk about Tom Cruise without Scientology coming up. I have a very dear friend, who once posted the most gorgeous images every single day (even some she created herself) to my other WordPress blog – Gazing in the Mirror. She is deep into Scientology and even inspired me to want to look at it (I even bought some books) but I just really couldn’t get into it. Some of the health aspects were intriguing to me.

As a mother who’s daughter grew up raised by my ex-husband and a step-mother, I know the difficult balancing act required to maintain any kind of relationship at all under those circumstances. In an article from August 2021 posted at LINK> Now To Love – Nicole never gave up on the possibility of reunion with her adopted children, Bella, 28, and Connor, 26, even after suffering further heartache as she missed out on her daughter’s wedding in 2015.

The two young adults still maintain strong ties to their 59-year-old father’s beloved Scientology – the religion that originally took Nicole’s children from her by discouraging contact. The siblings kept their distance from Nicole due to her alleged ex-communication status as an “SP” [Suppressive Person] following her divorce from Tom. Now that they’re technically adults, they are free to make their own choices. Cruse had legal custody of the two adoptees after the divorce.

“Bella sent out an olive branch to Nicole a couple of years ago by using her name in her clothing brand [Bella Kidman Cruise]. “That meant the world to Nicole,” says our source. “She’s shown nothing but respect for those kids, and she kept to the agreement she made with Tom, who took full custody.” “Nicole really went out on a limb talking about them, but it was important for them to know, even in an indirect way, that it wasn’t what she wanted. And it seems it worked.”

As to the gestational surrogacy. The two younger children are shared with Nicole’s husband, country singer Keith Urban. An article about Nicole’s struggle to have children is in this article, LINK> Nicole Kidman’s Fertility Treatments, IVF and Surrogacy. Though there is separation for the child who developed in another woman’s womb, Nicole’s two daughters with Urban a fully genetically related. As a mother who had two sons via egg donor IVF conception, I can understand wanting a second child as a companion to the first one and wanting them to have that common genetic bond.

Kidman has been open about the difficulties she has faced conceiving. During her marriage to Cruise, she suffered a number of miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy, which occurs when the fertilized egg is implanted outside of the womb, resulting in the fetus not surviving. After her marriage to Urban and a year of trying to conceive, thanks to technologically advanced fertility treatments, Kidman was able to become pregnant and give birth in 2008 to her first biological child, Sunday Rose. 

Three years later, in 2011, the couple announced the birth of their second child, who was gestated via a surrogate. Kidman and Urban are the child’s biological parents (her egg and his sperm), the embryo was implanted in the gestational carrier’s uterus. Their second daughter was born on December 28th 2011 in Nashville and given the name Faith Margaret.

May the two girls be as happy together as siblings as my two sons are and may Nicole continue to develop an ongoing relationship with Bella and Connor.