Gabrielle Union Opens Up In New Book About Dwyane Wade Fathering Child

It’s been nearly eight years, and honestly we’re astounded that Gabrielle Union is even now speaking publicly about the soul shattering truth about Dwyane Wade fathering a son with another woman.

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Earlier this week we shared part of Union’s surrogacy story from an essay she published in Time Magazine as part of an excerpt from her new memoir “You Got Anything Stronger.”

The magazine also includes some words from Union on a subject she’s never addressed before. Dwyane’s now 7-year-old son Xavier:

In 2013, before we were married, Dwyane had a baby with another woman. It should go without saying that we were not in a good place at the time that child was conceived. But we were doing much better when he finally told me about the pregnancy. To say I was devastated is to pick a word on a low shelf for convenience. There are people—strangers I will never meet—who have been upset that I have not previously talked about that trauma. I have not had words, and even after untold amounts of therapy I am not sure I have them now.

Union and Wade began dating in 2008 and survived their 2013 break to eventually wed in 2014, but in her book she acknowledges that she struggled when Wade wouldn’t allow her to use the drug Lupron to help her conceive, because the intense side effects included early menopause and brittle bones. She says she felt his words were an “acknowledgment of failure” despite being meant out of “concern.”

It’s at this point that Union’s trauma was truly illuminated:

“The experience of Dwyane having a baby so easily while I was unable to left my soul not just broken into pieces, but shattered into fine dust scattering in the wind,” she explains. “With desperate hands, we gathered what we could to slowly remake me into something new.”

That’s really something. Think about all the things that were said when the world learned Wade had a son with another woman, think of how those things must have hurt even more when Gabrielle was trying her hardest to conceive. She says she suffered more miscarriages than she could “confidently count.” The title “You Got Anything Stronger” hits even harder after learning all of this.

The couple, who celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary last month, welcomed their daughter Kaavia via surrogate in 2018. Wade also is dad to Zaire, 19 and Zaya, 14 from his marriage to ex-wife Siovaughn. He’s also his 19-year-old nephew Dahveon’s guardian.