Minnie Driver Recalls Doctor Calling Her 'Barren' at 18 Before Pregnancy with 'Miracle' Baby at 37

Minnie Driver opened up about her unexpected journey toward motherhood during an appearance on The Healthy Baby Show podcast with Shazi Visram

Photo: Minnie Driver/Instagram

Minnie Driver is getting candid about her unexpected journey to motherhood.

The 52-year-old actress appeared on The Healthy Baby Show podcast — alongside host Shazi Visram and parenting expert Dr. Aliza Pressman — where she opened up about having her first child, son Henry, in 2008 after being told she couldn't have children.

"I was told I couldn't have children when I was 18," she explains on the show. "This awful doctor just came into the room and he literally compared my uterus to the u-bend in a toilet and was like, 'Nothing's going through there. You won't be having children.'"

"So I believed him and I believed him through my whole life," the actress says.

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Driver says the doctor referred to her as "barren," calling the comment an "absurd" way to describe a woman who couldn't physically carry a child.

"What a ridiculous thing to tell them that they are empty, if that's what barren means, it means dead. A barren landscape, without fertility. It's crazy," she adds.

Driver says she was shocked to learn nearly 20 years later that she was going to be a mom.

"When I was 37, I woke up on January the 1st with the flu and I was so bummed," Driver says, noting she was at a low point in her life. "I was like, I've got the flu. I had just recently broken up with someone who was nice but wasn't my partner. I didn't have kids. I didn't have a job. I don't know. And then I found out I was pregnant."

"My sister was like, I think you're pregnant. I was like, 'Don't be ridiculous. I'm barren,' " she continues. "So, I got pregnant and then went, 'This is a miracle.' This is a miracle like through and through. I always loved an adventure, and here was this great late stage adventure."

Minnie Driver/Instagram

Driver later gave birth to her "miracle" son Henry at 38 years old. Additionally on the podcast, the actress says she learned to not have anymore expectations when it comes to motherhood.

"It's only us that apply all of our strictures and dogma to what it should look like. And my mother said you should bury the word 'should' in the backyard," Driver says.

"Everybody is subject to the vagaries of circumstance, and all we can do is build our strength at becoming these fluid, flexible kind of judo type people/parents with what life throws at us," she adds.

The Healthy Baby Show is a weekly podcast on parenting, child development and maternal health. New episodes launch every Wednesday.