Few famous people raised such a stir and captured so much public attention as the American actress Meghan Markle when announcing her relationship with British Prince Harry. Her engagement, wedding, pregnancy and the birth of her first child Archie in May 2019, were followed by millions of people around the world.
And although she and her husband renounced their royal duties, her second pregnancy would have been another bombshell news. Unfortunately, that was not the case and we have found out about him now, when the Duchess of Sussex has published an open letter in the New York Times, explaining that she suffered a miscarriage in July while playing with her eldest son. His moving and sincere words make visible the pain that many women feel after going through a pregnancy loss.
“I tried to imagine how we would heal ourselves”
“It was a morning in July that began as ordinarily as any other day: I make breakfast. I feed the dogs. I take vitamins. I find the missing sock. I pick up the rebellious pencil that had rolled under the table. I put my hair in a ponytail before taking my son out of his crib ”.
Thus begins Meghan Markle’s story about the morning she suffered a miscarriage and which is part of the open letter published today November 25 in the New York Times. The actress still signs as Duchess of Sussex, a noble title that she and her husband are about to lose, after deciding to move away from commitments as members of the British royal family and move to live in the United States.
The couple did not make this second pregnancy public, so Meghan’s words are the first news on the subject, so the details of the events impact even more:
“After changing her diaper, I felt a strong cramp. I dropped to the ground with him in my arms, humming a lullaby to keep us both calm, the happy melody in contrast to my feeling that something was not right. “
Prince Harry’s wife continues to explain that “hours later, I was lying in a hospital bed, holding my husband’s hand. I felt the moisture on her palm and kissed her knuckles, wet with our tears. I tried to imagine how we would heal ”.
You never really know how, but most women who have suffered a gestational loss, and even more so if they have already experienced motherhood, manage to find a memory that allows them to overcome the hardest trance a mother has to go through. And so does Meghan, aware that what she says can help other anonymous women.
In her case, a trip to South Africa while nursing Archie and trying to make a strong image to the public, even though she was exhausted:
“‘Are you OK?’ a journalist asked me. I answered her honestly, not knowing that my words would have an impact on so many new moms and anyone who, in their own way, had been suffering in silence. My spontaneous response seemed to give people permission to speak their truth. But it wasn’t answering honestly that helped me the most, it was the question itself. “
“An almost unbearable grief, of which few speak”
This is how the Duchess of Sussex explains what the loss of a son means and how she and Prince Harry lived it:
“In the grief of our loss, my husband and I discovered that in a room of 100 women, between 10 and 20 had suffered an abortion. Yet despite the astonishing coincidence of this grief, the conversation remained taboo, plagued with (unjustified) shame, and perpetuates a cycle of lonely mourning. “
So, “sitting on a hospital bed, watching my husband’s heart break as he tried to hold up the broken pieces of mine, I realized that the only way to begin to heal is to first ask, ‘Are you okay? ‘ “.
And, from there, she decided to take a step forward and make her abortion public, addressing all those women who have gone through a gestational loss because “by being invited to share our pain, together we take the first steps towards healing.”
Via | New York Times
Images | Gtres
In Babies and More | Meghan Markle and Prince Harry share a sweet video for the first birthday of their baby Archie, the emotional project that raises awareness and makes pregnancy and neonatal losses visible
