Meghan Markle is not alone. In an op-ed published by The New York Times on Wednesday, November 25, the former actress, 39, revealed that she and her husband, Prince Harry, 36, lost their second child in July 2020. The mother-of-one is in the company of other celebrities like Beyonce, Carrie Underwood, and so many more, who have opened up about their past pregnancy losses. Here’s what those women, including Meghan, revealed about their painful experiences:
Meghan Markle
Meghan also took the time in her piece to de-stigmatize the conversations about miscarriages. “Some have bravely shared their stories; they have opened the door, knowing that when one person speaks truth, it gives license for all of us to do the same,” she continued. “We have learned that when people ask how any of us are doing, and when they really listen to the answer, with an open heart and mind, the load of grief often becomes lighter — for all of us. In being invited to share our pain, together we take the first steps toward healing.”
Christina Perri
Prior to the loss of her daughter, Christina revealed in January the loss of her 11-week-old baby. “I am so sad but not ashamed,” the “Jar Of Hearts” singer wrote of her earlier loss. “I am ever reminded how amazing and powerful women are at making life and at healing. To all the mothers who have been here and who will be here, I see you and I love you.”
Chrissy Teigen
After experiencing pregnancy complications for several weeks that led to her hospitalization, Chrissy Teigen, 34, revealed on social media that she had lost her unborn son, whom she and John Legend had named Jack. “We are shocked and in the kind of deep pain you only hear about, the kind of pain we’ve never felt before,” she wrote in a September 30 Instagram post, sharing black and white photos of herself crying in her hospital bed. “We were never able to stop the bleeding and give our baby the fluids he needed, despite bags and bags of blood transfusions. It just wasn’t enough.”
Chrissy had had experienced continual bleeding from a weakened placenta following 10 days of doctor-ordered bedrest. She was admitted to the hospital on September 27 for blood transfusions and monitoring. She documented her hospital stay on social media, sharing the day before her miscarriage that she had a large blood clot and was “scrambling” to hear Jack’s heartbeat.
Carrie Underwood
Carrie, 37, revealed on CBS Sunday Morning that she suffered three miscarriages in two years. ““We got pregnant early 2017, and didn’t work out,” she said in the 2018 interview. After suffering her second miscarriage in 2017 and another in 2018, she explained, “At that point, it was just kind of like, ‘Okay, like, what’s the deal? What is all of this?'”
She later told Women’s Health, “For my body to not be doing something it was ‘supposed to do’ was a tough pill to swallow. It reminded me I’m not in control of everything.” Speaking openly about miscarriage felt like “a weight lifted off my shoulders. It’s not a dirty secret. It’s something many women go through.”
Beyonce
Beyonce, 39, said in her 2013 HBO special Life is But a Dream that having miscarriages before daughter Blue Ivy was “the saddest thing I’ve ever been through.” She later told Oprah that “there are so many couples that go through that and it was a big part of my story. It’s one of the reasons I did not share I was pregnant the second time, because you don’t know what’s going to happen. And that was hard, because all of my family and my friends knew and we celebrated. It was hard.”
She opened up about the experience again in 2019 to Elle, saying that the miscarriages helped her reprioritize. “I began to search for deeper meaning when life began to teach me lessons I didn’t know I needed,” Beyonce, now a mother of three, said. “Success looks different to me now. I learned that all pain and loss is in fact a gift… Being ‘number one’ was no longer my priority.”
Nicole Kidman
Nicole Kidman, 53, suffered multiple miscarriages during her marriage to ex-husband Tom Cruise. “From the minute Tom and I were married, I wanted to have babies,” she told Vanity Fair in 2007. “And we lost a baby early on, so that was really very traumatic. And that’s when we would adopt Bella.” Nicole and Tom would later also adopt a son, Connor. She also has two biological daughters with husband Keith Urban.
Mariah Carey
Mariah Carey, 50, revealed that her first pregnancy during her marriage to ex-husband Nick Cannon ended in miscarriage. “It’s been a long journey. It’s been tough because I’ve been trying to hold on to a shred of privacy,” Mariah said in 2010 while pregnant with her twins, Moroccan and Monroe. ““It kind of shook us both and took us into a place that was really dark and difficult,” Mariah told Access Hollywood of her miscarriage. “When that happened… I wasn’t able to even talk to anybody about it. That was not easy.”
Nick described the moment they found out Mariah’s pregnancy ended. “Literally the day we were supposed to travel to Aspen, we had an ultrasound with the OB/GYN and unfortunately that was the time where he said, ‘I’m sorry, but this, you know, the pregnancy is unsuccessful,’ and that moment for me, even though it was emotional for both of us, that’s when I really saw the strength in this woman right here,” Nick recalled. “To see, literally, not only did she handle it so well… and then to get on a plane and have to spend Christmas with friends and family?”
Bethenny Frankel
Bethenny Frankel, 49, opened up about her miscarriage in a poignant 2012 essay for Glamour. “Everyone knows someone who’s had a miscarriage,” she wrote. “I’ve read that as many as a fourth of all pregnancies end in one. A few years ago a friend of mine told me she’d miscarried, and I remember saying, ‘Oh God, that’s terrible.’ But I didn’t really get it: how many feelings you cycle through in a matter of minutes. How depressing the process is, and how anticlimactic — the exact opposite of having a baby.”
Halsey
Halsey, 25, found out she was having a miscarriage onstage. The “Without Me” singer, who suffers from endometriosis, said on a 2018 episode of The Doctors, “Before I could really figure out what that meant to me and what that meant for my future… the next thing I knew I was on stage miscarrying in the middle of my concert. The sensation of looking a couple hundred teenagers in the face while you’re bleeding through your clothes and still having to do the show, and realizing in that moment… I never want to make that choice ever again of doing what I love or not being able to because of [endometriosis].”
Michelle Obama
Former First Lady Michelle Obama, 56, opened up about having a miscarriage and struggling to conceive in her 2018 memoir, Becoming. Miscarrying, she wrote, left her “physically uncomfortable and cratered any optimism we felt. I felt like I failed, because I didn’t know how common miscarriages were, because we don’t talk about them. We sit in our own pain, thinking that somehow we’re broken. I think it’s the worst thing that we do to each other as women, not share the truth about our bodies and how they work, and how they don’t work.”
Gabrielle Union
Gabrielle Union, 47, wrote in her 2017 memoir We’re Going to Need More Wine that she has suffered “eight or nine” miscarriages. The actress, who just welcomed daughter Kaavia Wade, wrote that “for three years, my body has been a prisoner of trying to get pregnant — I’ve either been about to go into an IVF cycle, in the middle of an IVF cycle, or coming out of an IVF cycle.”
She criticized people who ask people when they’re having kids. “For so many women, and not just women in the spotlight, people feel very entitled to know, ‘Do you want kids?’” she wrote. “A lot of people, especially people that have fertility issues, just say ‘no’ because that’s a lot easier than being honest about whatever is actually going on. People mean so well, but they have no idea the harm or frustration it can cause.”
Meghan McCain
Meghan McCain, 34, just had her first baby days ago, but The View host suffered a devastating miscarriage in the past. She wrote in an essay for The New York Times in 2019 that she found out while doing a photoshoot with her co-hosts. Now, looking back at the photos, “I see a woman hiding her shock and sorrow,” she wrote. “I have had my share of public grief and public joy. I wish this grief — the grief of a little life begun and then lost — could remain private. I am not hiding anymore. My miscarriage was a horrendous experience and I would not wish it upon anyone.
Pink
Pink, 41, revealed in a 2019 interview that she got pregnant when she was 17, and had decided to keep the baby. She unfortunately suffered a miscarriage, though. “When that happens to a woman or a young girl, you feel like your body hates you and like your body is broken, and it’s not doing what it’s supposed to do,” she said. “I’ve had several miscarriages since, so I think it’s important to talk about what you’re ashamed of, who you really are and the painful (expletive). I’ve always written that way.”
Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow, 48, told You magazine in 2013 that her two children, Apple and Moses Martin, had begged for a younger sibling. She did get pregnant with a third child, but the pregnancy ended in miscarriage. “My children ask me to have a baby all the time. And you never know, I could squeeze one more in. I am missing my third. I’m thinking about it,” Gwyneth said, “But I had a really bad experience when I was pregnant with my third. It didn’t work out and I nearly died. So I am like, ‘Are we good here or should we go back and try again?’”
Wendy Williams
Wendy Williams, 56, said in a 2015 special that she “fought tooth and nail to be a mother. I suffered several miscarriages including two at five months. That’s when you have the clothes already picked out, the nursery is already painted. They ask you do you want a funeral or do you want the cremation?” She and ex-husband Kevin Hunter ultimately welcomed a son, Kevin Jr., who is now 20.
“We went through that not once but twice, me and my husband. So our Kevin is a hard-won child,” she added during her American Masters: The Women’s List appearance. “I would’ve loved to have had more children but I don’t want to test my blessing. Being a mother is for me. It’s not for everybody. It’s for me.”
Hilaria Baldwin
Hilaria Baldwin, 36, has suffered two miscarriages, both in 2019. She shared an emotional Instagram post after the second miscarriage, revealing she had lost the baby at four months. During the video, Hilaria cried and explained the situation to her then-six-year-old daughter, Carmen Baldwin. She wrote in the caption, “We are very sad to share that today we learned that our baby passed away at 4 months. We also want you to know that even though we are not ok right now, we will be. We are so lucky with our 4 healthy babies — and we will never lose sight of this.”
Christie Brinkley
Christie Brinkley, 66, revealed in a 1998 interview with Good Housekeeping that she has had three miscarriages. The mother of two said, “After the first miscarriage, I tried to take the attitude that it was my body’s way of telling me that this pregnancy wasn’t meant to be, and that it was better for everybody. But after the second one, it was really devastating. Four months is a lot of living with that little life in you — thinking about it, eating right for it, nurturing it and all of a sudden, it dies.”