Padma Lakshmi Was Told It Was Impossible to Get Pregnant Naturally Due to Endometriosis

Padma Lakshmi is looking back on her experience with pregnancy.

On a new episode of PEOPLE's podcast Me Becoming Mom, the Taste the Nation host, 51, opens up about her early thoughts on wanting children and feeling "devastated" when she was told she might not be able to conceive naturally.

"For a long time, I think as many women, I wasn't sure I wanted to be a mom in my twenties," she tells Zoë Ruderman, Head of Digital at PEOPLE. "But then that changed as I grew older and I always thought I would be a mother. I always knew I wanted to be a mother. But it wasn't a concrete idea, I think, until much later."

The Taste the Nation: Holiday Edition, which is streaming on Hulu now, star says when she was later diagnosed with endometriosis, a condition in which the uterine lining grows outside the uterus, she was told it "would be very difficult, if not impossible, to become pregnant naturally."

"That put the issue very front and center in my mind and I was devastated. I really didn't know if I was going to be able to have children, and I knew I wanted to have children," she explains.

Subscribe to our new 12-episode weekly podcast, Me Becoming Mom, to hear celebrity moms open up exclusively to PEOPLE about their extraordinary roads to motherhood.

"Also once I finally got pregnant, it was such a surprise and such a joy. I didn't motherhood would be so fun," she adds. "I think I was just so elated that my body had through for me."

Lakshmi welcomed daughter Krishna Thea with Adam Dell in 2010. At the time, she did not share the identity of Krishna's father.

Elsewhere in the episode, Lakshmi says it was "mortifying" when speculation about her baby's father became a major news story.

"It certainly was icky when the press started snooping around in various countries — not just America, but in India, England, Australia," she recalls. "At that time, it was splashed all over the newspapers and it was mortifying."

The 12-episode weekly Me Becoming Mom podcast explores the various roads to motherhood through different interviews with both celebrity guests and experts in the field. Topics on the show include IVF, adoption, surrogacy, single parenthood, same-sex couples, home births, pregnancy loss, unexpected and surprising birth stories, among other subjects.

Guests on the show include Alyssa Milano, Hoda Kotb, Jillian Michaels, Shawn Johnson East and more.

Lakshmi currently hosts the holiday edition of her hit show Taste of the Nation, is available in Hulu.

Like previous episodes of Taste the Nation, each episode of the new special will highlight unique traditions through the lens of a different immigrant culture and city, like Korean New Year in Los Angeles and Cuban Christmas in Miami.

Lakshmi, who executive produces the series, started the show to uncover the roots and relationship between America's food, humanity and history — highlighting stories that challenge notions of identity, belonging, and what it means to be American along the way.

The Top Chef star considers this series her passion project. "This is what American food looks like. This is the original. This is the real America," she's previously said.

Taste the Nation: Holiday Edition is available on Hulu now.