Celebrities open up about harrowing miscarriages and heartbreak of losing a baby

Dealing with the heartbreak and trauma of losing a pregnancy is a grief that never leaves you.

And it’s more common than many think with around one in four pregnancies in the UK ending in miscarriage.

A new Channel 5 documentary Miscarriage: Our Story, on tomorrow looks at several raw and personal accounts of men and women who have suffered the loss of a pregnancy.

The show also tells the stories of celebrities who open up about their own heartbreaking experiences of miscarriage.

Eastenders star Lacey was 29 and seven weeks pregnant when she suffered her first miscarriage. She had started bleeding heavily and suffered stomach cramps.

Lacey, who plays Stacey Slater in the BBC soap explained: “In my gut I knew it wasn’t right.”

Adding: “I went back to work the next day, carried on like nothing had happened, which actually makes me really sad now looking back. I was probably walking around feeling so heartbroken yet nobody would have had a clue.”

“There’s this whole taboo about not speaking about pregnancy and keeping it a secret until your 12 weeks and we sort of said it’s so early so don’t tell anybody.”

Having a baby was important for her and her husband Matt, who she married in 2017 and the pain of losing a much wanted child was heartbreaking.

“I just felt so empty. I’ve gone from being so excited and we waited so long for this baby to feeling numb I guess.”

Lacey fell pregnant again.

She said: "We got to seven weeks again and the same thing happened and it was so much worse than the last time. It was so much more blood.

"I was so stressed out because we found out that there was still a tiny bit of the foetus left stuck in the lining of the cervix so therefore you can’t try again but I mean we’re talking about something that is the size of a grain of rice and I think for us that was really horrible because I felt like there’s still a bit of this baby stuck inside me and you know you just want it out.”

Finally after four months, she had an operation to remove the fetal tissue.

Lacey then fell pregnant again but as before, she started to bleed again seven months into her pregnancy.

She explained: “I was sitting at home on Sunday and I started bleeding so I was like oh here we go again.”

Her doctor carried out a scan and told her the baby was still there but that he was prescribing her progesterone as her levels were low.

Lacey said: “Right up until the end I thought until I have the baby in my hands and she’s breathing and alive and kicking then I can’t relax.”

Their baby girl, Dusty, was born in July 2019. Lacey and Matt are also expecting another child due in February.

She said: "I feel so lucky to have her really. She’s changed our lives in so many ways. I feel a bit emotional. She’s incredible she really is.”

Lacey, 32, feels strongly that miscarriage should be talked about openly.

She said: "Had I opened my mouth and asked someone a simple question of have you ever experienced anything like that I would have known that actually I would have had a handful of people to speak to and I wouldn’t have been lonely at all."

Jane married actor Robert Beck in 2005 and they have two sons, Harry and Sam, but when she fell pregnant for a third time there was heartbreak for the couple.

Jane explained: "I was actually folding clothes up for a friend who was pregnant at the time and it just said kind of a bit sad to put these away and my husband just said ‘well, you know if we get pregnant again we’ll just buy some more’ and I thought OK, so that obviously promoted a conversation and then quite soon afterwards we found out that we were pregnant for the third time so we were obviously really happy.”

The couple weren’t prepared for what they would be told at the 12 week scan.

Jane said: "I remember lying down and she said, I won’t turn the screen around but don’t be worried, and then the room went really quiet.

"I just had a feeling, I knew something wasn’t right. And I remember she said you are pregnant, and that’s when my heart just sank because I knew that it had probably gone wrong, or the baby had died.

"Then they confirmed that that was it. but she didn’t turn the screen around, and I always remember this. She didn’t and I just wanted to see it, whatever stage it was at. i just wanted to see”

It took Jane three years to fully open up about how she was feeling.

She said: "I don’t know why it just festered and lingered for a long time and I couldn’t find the words. I suppose for somebody who never stops talking it’s quite unusual for me.”

Well meaning people would tell her not to worry as she already had two children.

Jane said: “Of course they’re my worlds and of course it goes without saying but at the same time I just felt I know but I wanted that baby. I wanted that baby as much as my other children."

Natasha met her husband Justin at an awards ceremony and they married in 2005. After focusing for so long on her career, starting a family was a priority for the couple.

After falling pregnant, Natasha was having her scan when she saw the crestfallen look on the sonographer’s face.

She said: “He just said ‘I’m so sorry would you like some time to yourself’.

“It just took me ages to understand that he meant that the pregnancy wasn’t going to work and then he left me in the room with Justin and it just kind of sunk in that actually that excitement was just for nothing.”

The devastating news floored Natasha, who had longed so much for a baby.

She said: “Just that sense of being a barren woman.That’s what haunted me, that I was never going to be able to make him a father. It just broke my heart.”

Natasha was referred to the recurrent miscarriage clinic at Saint Mary’s Hospital in London.

The 48-year-old went on to have two children, Arlo and Angelica.

She said: “After all the sadness and the fear I just couldn’t believe that there had been this miracle. Any baby is a miracle anyway but for me it just felt like this was the most monumental miracle that these two babies were in our lives."

Izzy and husband Harry, a drummer with McFly, started trying for a family three or four months after they got married.

Izzy suffered with polycystic ovaries which make it difficult to conceive naturally, the couple decided to try IVF. After falling pregnant, their dreams were soon shattered.

She explained: “It was Christmas Day night and I woke up it must have been about three-o’clock in the morning and there was just a really little bit of light coming through the curtains and I went to the loo and it was just like a horror scene just this bright red and the physical sensation of having a miscarriage of actually passing a baby even at seven weeks and three days it was.

"I’ll never forget that that physical feeling. It just fell and I just knew and I couldn’t look I just didn’t I just remember shouting to Harry it’s gone we’ve lost the baby.”

Izzy was devastated and the pain deepened when she saw families out with buggies or saw pictures of babies in magazines.

She said: “You can’t help but feel responsibility you can’t help but think what if I can’t give Harry a family. What if I can’t give his mum and dad grandchildren. My parents grandchildren.”

On her second IVF attempt in 2015 is he became pregnant again and gave birth to daughter Lola in January 2016.

Izzy explained: “She was in my arms and it was just so surreal and magical and terrifying all at once.”

The couple went on to have a son kit in 2017.

Miscarriage: Our Story will be broadcast on Channel 5 at 10pm on Thursday 15th October, and coincides with International Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. Miscarriage Association offers support and information to anyone affected by the loss of a baby in pregnancy. Call 0192 4200 799

More On

PregnancyMiscarriageLacey TurnerNatasha KaplinskyJane DansonChannel 5