In an opinion piece titled 'The Losses We Share' published in the New York Times on Wednesday (November 25), Meghan Markle shared the heartbreaking news that she suffered a miscarriage in July. The Duchess of Sussex "felt a sharp cramp" while changing her son Archie's diaper.
"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," Meghan recalled in her emotional piece. "I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second."
Meghan was taken to the hospital after that, where Prince Harry stayed by her side. "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," she wrote. "Sitting in a hospital bed, watching my husband's heart break as he tried to hold the shattered pieces of mine, I realized that the only way to begin to heal is to first ask, 'Are you OK?'"
In her piece, Meghan talks about the stigma surrounding pregnancy loss. She shared the statistic from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that 10% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage."Losing a child means carrying an almost unbearable grief, experienced by many but talked about by few," the Duchess wrote. "Despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning."
Meghan ended her piece by reminding everyone that after this year we are all more connected than ever. "As much as we may disagree, as physically distanced as we may be, the truth is that we are more connected than ever because of all we have individually and collectively endured this year," she wrote.
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