The Hills: New Beginnings star Whitney Port recently opened up about a rather taboo topic: her miscarriage.
In a new Instagram post, she revealed,
“This is really hard for me to write. Two weeks ago, I had a miscarriage. The amount of various emotions I felt in the past couple weeks have been extreme… from shock to sadness to relief, which led me to guilt for feeling that relief.”
She added,
“My identity has been shaken in regards to who [I am] as a mom and human being. I’m currently in the process of learning to accept that my feelings are valid no matter what they are. Whether people feel the same way as me or not. They are my personal emotions that are the result from my own journey.”
Port went into more depth on her podcast With Whit where her husband Tim Rosenman interviewed her on the topic. She revealed that although she was excited to give their soon-to-be two-year-old son Sonny a sibling, she felt selfish that she wasn’t truly ready to be pregnant again.
“I felt scared of all the sacrifices, and what I was going to have to go through again to have this child… I felt extremely ashamed and guilty that I felt that way – layers of shame and guilt that make it so hard to talk about.”
In the beginning, her pregnancy was going according to plan. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago when she went on vacation that she started bleeding. At first, she wasn’t too alarmed as she went through bleeding with her first pregnancy. But this time, the bleeding didn’t stop.
After getting an ultrasound, the doctor told her that her pregnancy wasn’t viable. In the podcast, she called herself a “monster” for being relieved by the news.
“When I found out that the pregnancy was possibly not viable I thought to myself, Maybe this is sort of a relief. I felt professionally like I was in one of the busiest times of my life, and I did feel that the timing was really terrible to be pregnant. So there was part of me when we were in limbo that was like, If this isn’t going to happen then I think I’m OK with it.”
She also feared that her husband would think less of her if he found out her true feelings. Luckily, Tim was incredibly understanding of what Whitney and her body were going through. He told her,
“I can appreciate how complicated those feelings are… your reservations about having a baby make total sense. They’re your feelings, and I really do validate them.”
But one of the most surprising things about her ordeal is how little she (and countless other women) knew about miscarriages. Her doctor gave her three options to deal with the miscarriage — she could let nature take its course and allow the miscarriage to continue naturally, take a pill to speed up the process, or have a surgery called a D&C which cleans out the uterus by scraping along the uterine lining.
“I didn’t even know that I had to make a choice to do something about it — I thought my body did it on its own.”
In the end, she decided to have the D&C.
Though she feels sad over the miscarriage, Whitney hopes that by being transparent about her experience, she can help other women going through the same thing.
“We have consciously decided to have these types of conversations because it has become so important for people to be able to feel their feelings and not feel guilty. I feel I have a responsibility so you guys don’t feel alone, and how I felt in my head when it was happening.”
Women are often made to feel like they need to act a certain way when they’re pregnant, like they should be jumping for joy through every moment. So the fact that Whitney was willing to be so candid about fears of being pregnant and her sense of relief when she had her miscarriage is a big deal. A celebrity came forward with something so intimate that affects millions of women and said, “it’s okay to feel like this and you’re not alone.”
Open and honest conversations are key to showing women that miscarriages don’t have to be a taboo subject. And doctors need to make it a point to prepare women for miscarriages in the same way they prepare them for pregnancies. You can watch the entire episode of With Whit below.
