“There is grief, shame and shock so often that come with an experience like this, plus the heartbreak of your body continuing, after the loss, to act as if it had a child to nurture.”
Kate Beckinsale opened up about her own tragic pregnancy loss while defending Chrissy Teigen.
Teigen shared the heartbreaking news on Wednesday that she and husband John Legend lost their baby Jack after a difficult pregnancy. While the cookbook author received mostly support and praise — for her vulnerability and for helping to break the culture of silence and shame surrounding miscarriages — some, however, cruelly criticized her for announcing the tragedy on her Instagram page alongside photos from the hospital room.
“I’ve noticed people criticizing @chrissyteigen for sharing deeply intimate photos of the loss of her baby,” Beckinsale wrote on her own Instagram on Friday. “As if there’s some protocol during soul-scouring calamity that, if not observed, emboldens people who do not know her or her family to say how she should be handling the unimaginable.”
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“Years ago, I lost a baby at 20 weeks,” she explained. “I had managed to keep my pregnancy quiet, and I absolutely collapsed inside and no one would have known. There is grief, shame and shock so often that come with an experience like this, plus the heartbreak of your body continuing, after the loss, to act as if it had a child to nurture.”
The actress then shared how her breast milk still came in with “no one to feed,” calling the experience the “loneliest, most soul destroying period of time.”
“I think it’s an honor to be allowed into another person’s grief,” Beckinsale continued. “Especially with a subject like this which so often puts a woman into that hall of mirrors state of life continuing as if the world hasn’t, for you, come to a bloody and terrible halt.”
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“Thank you for making sure it is abundantly clear how devastating this is, and how life-changing it can be,” she concluded the message. “Let’s let the grieving decide what’s right for them. Send support or keep quiet. This is a really hard time to bear. Blessings and hugs to all x.”
The “Serendipity” actress, who shares daughter Lily, 21, with ex Michael Sheen, also included a photo of an emotional message on a whiteboard in her post.
The poem reads, “Some babies are born to be angels and given Heaven instead, They are carried inside the hearts of broken-hearted parents and their families forever, Leaving to fly with wings in paradise, where nothing can hurt them, instead of learning to walk on Earth, We grieve for them and what they might have been, asking why we couldn’t be together.”