How Former President Barack Obama’s Daughters Live Now: They Shop at Yard Sales & Are Budget-Savvy

Former US president Barack Obama and Michelle Obama went through a challenging time to have their daughters Malia and Natasha, who is commonly called Sasha. Michelle opened up about her fertility challenges in her memoir “Becoming.”

She noted that even two committed people with deep love and great work ethics could not will themselves into being pregnant. When Michelle finally conceived, the author had a miscarriage weeks later.

She recalled her feelings at that time, “I felt lost and alone, and I feel l felt like I failed because I didn’t know how common miscarriages were because we don’t talk about it. We sit in our own pain, thinking that somehow, we’re broken.”

Michelle, who shared these details in an exclusive interview, eventually conceived her daughters via in vitro fertilization (IVF) after undergoing fertility treatments when she was 34 and 35.

Malia Ann Obama was born on July 4, 1998. Her sibling, Natasha Marian Obama, was born on June 10, 2001, after a single round of IVF. Her mother named her Sasha because she thought the name had a sassy ring.

After welcoming their kids, Michelle and Barack had to raise them in the public eye due to their high-profile political careers. Protecting kids from the public was challenging because of 24-hour news sites, gossip magazines, and celebrity bloggers looking for the tiniest bit of information.

Michelle remembered how tiny their daughters were when Barack became the president of the US. “It still moves me to tears to think about the first day I put them in the car with their Secret Service agents to go to their first day of school,” she narrated.

The author, who wondered what she was doing to her young babies, knew right then that her first job as first lady would be to ensure her children would be whole, regular, and cared for amid all the craziness that came with politics.

Years after Barack’s presidential term ended, he joked that his daughters have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from Secret Service agents accompanying them to dates and music concerts while talking into their microphones and wearing dark glasses. Barack went on to say that due to this trauma, the girls would probably never go into public service.