Los Angeles, Jan 22 (IANS): Actress Naomi Watts doesn't know how she got pregnant after being told she was menopausal in her 30s.

The actress, who tied the knot for the first time in 2023 with 'Watchmen' actor Billy Crudup, was trying to get pregnant years ago with her former partner actor Liev Schreiber -- when tests revealed she was almost menopausal.

Naomi went on to have her and Liev's first child Sasha, who was born in 2007, followed by their second, Kai, in late 2008, despite the warning it could mean she would never conceive, reports aceshowbiz.com.

Their arrivals came after the actress was told she might need a donor egg to have a baby, and also after a series of failures for Naomi to get pregnant using multiple other fertility methods.

A profile of the actress in the latest issue of Marie Claire said she still doesn't know if her sudden fertility was down to one of the alternative treatments she explored or "a wonderful set of eggs that suddenly came down for me."

Despite her fertility, Watts said she was hit by "hardcore" symptoms of menopause once she stopped breastfeeding in her early 40s.

She added she is convinced the impact of the condition, which can effect memory and cause so-called "brain fog", would be made far more high-profile if it was suffered by men.

Watts hit out, "If it was a male thing and that (symptoms like brain fog) was a regular symptom, we'd accept it so much more easily but somehow women have been taught to hold on to these secrets and suffer through them and soldier on."

"We shouldn't have to. The more it's understood in every arena of life, not just the household, not just the relationship but in the workplace, the more we can find ourselves operating from empathy. It's not a disease, it's not a failure. It's just something that was always supposed to happen."