Emmy Rossum Opens Up About Fertility Challenges

 got candid about her struggles as she reflected on her 'long journey' to motherhood.

The 39-year-old actress, who , opened up about the topic during Wednesday's episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast. 

Rossum and Esmail are parents to two children: a daughter born in May 2021 and a son who was welcomed two years later. 

The Shameless star talked about how she had initially tried to conceive naturally, but eventually turned to .

'And I had a kind of crazy journey to get pregnant, where I have PCOS, so I had very debilitating ovarian cysts throughout my 20s,' she explained to host Alex Cooper. 

PCOS was formerly known as Polycystic ovary syndrome but has since been renamed as Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS). 

'And tried to get pregnant naturally. It didn't happen. Tried IUI, didn't happen, and then tried IVF, and it happened in a big way,' Rossum recalled. 

The actress said that a side effect of PMOS 'is that you can kind of become a super responder.' 

'You did something really cool, you took time off to spend a lot of time raising your kids, and now 4 years later, here we are,' host Hoda Kotb told Rossum