A heartbreaking realization. Chrissy Teigen opened up about her devastating pregnancy loss, revealing she needed “medical intervention” to stay alive.
The Cravings cookbook author, 36, reflected on the loss of her and John Legend‘s son Jack, whom they were expecting in 2020, during Propper Daley’s A Day of Unreasonable Conversation Summit on Thursday, September 15. Teigen recalled the pain of losing her son at 20 weeks pregnant, noting that the situation became life-threatening.
“Two years ago, when I was pregnant with Jack, John and my third child, I had to make a lot of difficult and heartbreaking decisions. It became very clear around halfway through that he would not survive, and that I wouldn’t either without any medical intervention,” she said on Thursday. “Let’s just call it what it was: It was an abortion.”
Teigen continued: “[It was] an abortion to save my life for a baby that had absolutely no chance. And to be honest, I never, ever put that together until, actually, a few months ago.”
The couple, who share Luna, 6, and son Miles, 4, revealed in September 2020 that their third child passed away due to complications with Teigen’s pregnancy. “We are shocked and in the kind of deep pain you only hear about, the kind of pain we’ve never felt before,” the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model wrote via Instagram at the time, sharing black-and-white photos from the hospital. “We were never able to stop the bleeding and give our baby the fluids he needed, despite bags and bags of blood transfusions. It just wasn’t enough.”
As Teigen and her family have continued to grieve Jack’s death, they’ve spoken candidly about their struggles. Earlier this year, the 43-year-old Grammy winner admitted that he felt “hesitant” to share their experience with the world.
“It was difficult. … I think Chrissy was really right in encouraging us to share it because I think it really was powerful for a lot of people,” Legend said on BBC Radio 4’s “Desert Island Discs” in August. “Way more people than anybody realizes go through this. … I think it was a really powerful, wise decision by Chrissy to share it because it helped a lot of people.”
Two years later, the pair are still learning about the impact of their loss. Teigen revealed on Thursday that her abortion story clicked after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in June.
“I fell silent, feeling weird that I hadn’t made sense of it that way,” she recalled. “I told the world we had a miscarriage, the world agreed we had a miscarriage, all the headlines said it was a miscarriage. And I became really frustrated that I didn’t, in the first place, say what it was, and I felt silly that it had taken me over a year to actually understand that we had had an abortion.”
The former Lip Sync Battle cohost and the “All of Me” crooner have honored their late son several times over the years, hosting a blessings ceremony for Jack in September 2021. The following February, Teigen revealed that she was beginning the IVF process in hopes of conceiving another child, sharing a photo of the injections via her Instagram Story. She announced her pregnancy six months later.
“The last few years have been a blur of emotions to say the least, but joy has filled our home and hearts again. 1 billion shots later (in the leg lately, as u can see!) we have another on the way,” she captioned an Instagram photo showing off her bare baby bump. “Every appointment I’ve said to myself, ‘ok if it’s healthy today I’ll announce’ but then I breathe a sigh of relief to hear a heartbeat and decide I’m just too nervous still. I don’t think I’ll ever walk out of an appointment with more excitement than nerves but so far, everything is perfect and beautiful and I’m feeling hopeful and amazing. Ok phew it’s been very hard keeping this in for so long!”
