Together with her basketball-star husband, Dwyane Wade, Gabrielle Union, welcomed daughter Kaavia James via surrogate in November 2018 when Union was 46 and Wade was 36. Though Kaavia’s long-awaited arrival was joyous, Union recently shared that using a surrogate had an extreme emotional cost.

The actor and advocate reflected on the process and why, at the time, it felt less like a medical solution and more like a personal defeat.