Emmy Rossum’s Shares ‘Super Responder’ Egg Retrieval With PMOS

Emmy Rossum was shocked when she received the results of her IVF egg retrieval.

“They woke me up from the harvest and said that I had 72 eggs,” Rossum shared this week on Call Her Daddy. Hearing those results was “trippy and bizarre,” Rossum remembered, especially since the Shameless actress had faced fertility issues due to polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS, formerly known as PCOS).

But it turns out, Rossum’s result may not be as rare as you’d think. People with PMOS actually have more eggs than normal, according to the American Medical Association. However, because ovulation is disrupted by hormone imbalances, these eggs stay immature within the ovaries. The ovarian follicles holding these eggs may respond well to stimulation medication during IVF treatment, per SAFE Fertility Group, which can result in a higher number of eggs getting retrieved. As Rossum put it, she was a “super responder.”

However, PMOS can also effect egg maturation and quality, which means those eggs might not all be viable.

For Rossum, though, there was a happy ending to her fertility story: after this “long journey,” she and husband Sam Esmail welcomed their daughter in May 2021. Their son was born in April 2023.

Rossum also opened up about her other PMOS symptoms, which included “debilitating” ovarian cysts in her 20s. She first tried to get pregnant naturally, then with intratuterine insemination — which involves placing sperm directly into the uterus during ovulation — then finally through IVF. “I had a kind of crazy journey to get pregnant,” Rossum reflected.

Rossum also experienced postpartum anxiety, which involved “very intense, intrusive thoughts,” she said. Though underdiagnosed (and not talked about enough), postpartum anxiety affects 1 in 5 women after giving birth, according to a 2018 study; Olivia Munn is another celebrity who’s spoken out about having the condition, calling it “incredibly difficult” and more challenging than battling breast cancer.

Despite the long journey and her fear of childbirth, Rossum said that the moment she saw her daughter for the first time, everything changed. “I was overtaken by the feeling of vulnerability,” she explained. “That this thing that we’ve been able to keep safe inside of you for so long is now outside of you, and it’s so vulnerable, and anything could happen to it.”