Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, has opened up about suffering a miscarriage of her second child.
“I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second,” she wrote in the emotional first person account for the New York Times.
The former ‘Suits’ actress, who has son Archie with Prince Harry, recounted what she experienced in July.
“I felt a sharp cramp. I dropped to the floor with him in my arms, humming a lullaby to keep us both calm, the cheerful tune a stark contrast to my sense that something was not right,” she wrote.
“Hours later, I lay in a hospital bed, holding my husband’s hand. I felt the clamminess of his palm and kissed his knuckles, wet from both our tears. Staring at the cold white walls, my eyes glazed over. I tried to imagine how we’d heal.”
In her article, Meghan wrote about the plight of the world amid the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement and dealing with loss.
“This year has brought so many of us to our breaking points. Loss and pain have plagued every one of us in 2020, in moments both fraught and debilitating,” she wrote.
Meghan’s announcement comes close after another publicly mourned miscarriage – that of model and writer Chrissy Teigen and her husband, singer John Legend in October. Teigen documented her difficult third pregnancy and the loss of her son Jack on social media.
Markle lamented how discussing miscarriages was still seen as taboo.
“Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few. In the pain of our loss, my husband and I discovered that in a room of 100 women, 10 to 20 of them will have suffered from miscarriage. Yet despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning,” Meghan wrote.