“In the room I could see the outline of what looked like a jelly baby – just like in the movies.”
Laura Whitmore has discussed how miscarrying a recent unplanned pregnancy made her realise that she would like to have children.
The presenter, who has been dating Love Island VO Iain Stirling since 2017, said that she discovered that she was pregnant while in Italy.
Her initial response was: “Shit.”
“Or was it shit?” she wrote for Hot Press. “Age 33 and a third; in a relationship; owns own property – it’s hardly scandalous. My mother did it in far tougher circumstances. That much I knew.”
Once the pregnancy was confirmed, Whitmore said that she spent a lot of time considering her new life of sobriety in the lead up to her first scan.
She booked herself an appointment to ensure that she could get one as early as possible, but it was there that the doctor discovered that she had miscarried.
“In the room I could see the outline of what looked like a jelly baby – just like in the movies. Then silence. ‘I’m sorry there’s no heart-beat.’
“I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to react. Should I cry? Was I allowed be emotional for something unplanned? The things that go through your mind: actually, I had just spent two hours planning with the midwife earlier that day. That handbrake again. Things spinning.”
Whitmore wrote that she didn’t know that one in three women will miscarry a pregnancy during their lives.
“Now I’m part of that statistic,” she said.
“I hadn’t planned the pregnancy in the first place, so should I be sad? I was.
“That feeling was heightened because I felt I had to be sad alone: apart from a handful of people, no one knew. I had to deal with high intensity work situations without anyone around me knowing what was really going on inside my head. Although maybe that made it easier to deal with – because I wasn’t actually dealing with it.”
She said that the loss made her realise that she does actually want children. It also made her realise how many women are suffering in silence.
You can read Whitmore’s article in full here.
