Chrissy Teigen opens up about losing baby in emotional essay: "Utter and complete sadness" - CBS News

In late September, Chrissy Teigen shared a heartbreaking post announcing that she and her husband, John Legend, had lost their unborn son.

On Tuesday, nearly a month later, Teigen opened up for the first time about the miscarriage, which she described as "utter and complete sadness.".

"It feels right to begin with a thank you," Teigen wrote in an essay on Medium.

Teigen described her third pregnancy in detail, revealing that she was 20 weeks along when she had an epidural and was induced to deliver their son, who they had already named Jack.

"In bed, I bled and bled, lightly but all day, changing my own diapers every couple of hours when the blood got uncomfortable to lay in," Teigen wrote, joking about her newfound passion for the world of adult diapers. .

A post shared by chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) on Sep 30, 2020 at 8:58pm PDT.

The picture Teigen referred to — which she says she instructed her mother and Legend to take — was shared to Instagram when she first announced the pregnancy loss.

She said Legend "hated" taking the photos, but added that she "needed to know of this moment forever" and "needed to share this story." .

"I cannot express how little I care that you hate the photos," Teigen wrote, addressing the criticism.

as the loss of a baby before the 20th week of pregnancy, and stillbirths, which are characterized by the 20-week mark and beyond, are much more common than many people assume — however, they are rarely spoken about publicly, and celebrities are often criticized for showcasing them. .

According to the CDC, "about 1 pregnancy in 100 at 20 weeks of pregnancy and later is affected by stillbirth, and each year about 24,000 babies are stillborn in the United States." The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists estimates about 10% of pregnancies end in miscarriages.

Teigen said that Jack's ashes are in a box — they will eventually be used as soil for a tree at the family's new home, "the one we got with his room in mind," she wrote.

Teigen wrote that the kindness she has received — from messages online to a checkout woman silently adding flowers to her shopping cart at the grocery store — "have been nothing short of beautiful."