Paloma Faith quit as a coach on The Voice UK after the IVF treatment she was undertaking at the time made her feel “quite unstable”.
The pop star, who released her fifth album Infinite Things in November, appeared on the ITV singing competition in 2016 and recently returned as a judge on the children’s spin-off.
Faith, 39, said the experience of having hormone treatment while filming left her “over-sensitive and fragile” and contributed towards her decision to leave after one series.
She told Radio Times: “I was doing my first course of IVF at the time and no one knew, including my management.
“I found that scary because I’d never experienced it before. And the hormones you have to take make you feel quite unstable.
“The process is for egg retrieval, so it makes you produce more eggs. For every period you release one egg, but I was gearing up to release 14.
“So… 14 times more emotions and hormones than a normal period. So I was a bit all over the place and over-sensitive and fragile – and no one knew.”
The London-born singer welcomed her first child, a daughter, with her long-term boyfriend, the French artist Leyman Lahcine, in December 2016, although they initially decided not to reveal the child’s gender in a bid to maintain their privacy.
She welcomed her second child in February after six rounds of IVF.
Faith, who celebrates her 40th birthday in July, said the music world still struggled to provide support for women and older people.
She said: “The industry is full of people who’d like to think they weren’t ageist or sexist. What’s expected of you is the reason a lot of our beloved female pop stars haven’t had children.
“Or when they have, it’s been under the radar, or not spoken about. Hiding in toilets to change breast pads and things like that.”
Read the full interview in Radio Times, out now.