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Sherri Shepherd Shares Fertility Struggles

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Feb. 12 2008, Published 6:45 a.m. ET

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While it seems like actresses all over Hollywood are seemingly announcing pregnancies left and right, it's not always easy for some to get pregnant and no one knows that better than Sherri Shepherd. Dying to be a mother, The View co-host struggled to conceive naturally with her estranged husband Jeff Tarpley and eventually turned to fertility treatments four years ago, she tells Entertainment Tonight.

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"It was hard because you go through guilt that something is wrong with you, or maybe you waited too long," she says. "It was a lot of shots, a lot of false pregnancies, and a lot of tears."

The couple finally conceived fraternal twins — a boy and a girl — but the joy soon turned bittersweet as she miscarried her daughter. Things didn't get much easier when Sherri delivered son Jeffrey three and a half months early on April 22, 2005 (which also happens to be her birthday).

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"He was very premature, born with severe brain bleeding on both sides," she says. "He also had a hole in an artery near his heart and in his intestine. He weighed one pound, ten ounces and the doctors predicted that he would have severe cerebral palsy. We thought we were going to lose him."

Jeffrey was tranferred to the ICU for three months and put on oxygen and a heart monitor. Her son's fight for life deeply affected the 40-year-old to the point where she questioned the future of her career.

"There was one point where I thought I would never get on stage and make people laugh again. I thought I would never smile again."

Today Jeffrey is a happy and healthy boy. "He has no cerebral palsy, his brain functions, but he's just slower in learning. He's our little miracle, except when he's having a tantrum, then the miracle flies out the window!"

For more on Sherri, tune in to ET tonight!

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