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Dancing with the Stars couple Peta Murgatroyd and Maksim Chmerkovskiy revealed they experienced a miscarriage while the latter was in Ukraine. In an interview with People, the pro dancers said the devastating news was the third time they suffered a miscarriage in the past two years.
Murgatroyd, who had tested positive for COVID-19 days prior after traveling to Ukraine, was at home with the couple's 5-year-old son Shai in October 2021 when she found herself unable to move on the floor of their Malibu home. She was able to call an ambulance which took her to the hospital where she learned some devastating news: She had been pregnant but miscarried. She recalled when the doctor delivered the news.
"I thought he was going to reveal some really bad news. I was like, 'What's wrong?' His face dropped," she said. "He said, 'Did you know you were pregnant?'"
Murgatroyd had called her husband, who was in Ukraine at the time, so he could listen to what the doctor had to say. However, he began to celebrate when he misheard the doctor tell Murgatroyd "you're pregnant" and had to learn the devastating truth.
"I felt like I was dying, but then I obviously knew what had happened," she said. "It was just all too much for my body and I couldn't do it. I couldn't believe that this was happening to me."
Chmerkovskiy added, "To not be there [with her]... it's crazy. It makes you feel helpless."
While heartbreaking for the couple, Murgatroyd said not knowing she was pregnant at the time was "in hindsight better for my recovery because I didn't have that super joyous moment of, 'I'm pregnant again!' I just had the moment of, 'You lost it.'"
This was the couple's third pregnancy loss since 2020. Murgatroyd revealed that she suffered her first miscarriage while shopping at a Whole Foods, saying of the "shocking" experience: "I was sitting in the bathroom sobbing. I'm surprised nobody walked in because I was crying so heavily and wailing, one of those deep cries," adding that that moment will live with her the rest of her life.
Nine months after the traumatic experience, she discovered she was pregnant again and wanted to fly to New York surprise Chmerkovskiy. However, days before the trip, she lost the pregnancy and had to break the news again, which she said "was the first time that I heard him get really upset."
"I try to do my best in supporting Peta. I'm a changed man because of this experience, he said, adding that the experience has shaped how he looks at fertility issues. "I think that if you look around, you will find that most of your friends have had issues [trying to conceive]. I realized that this is more common and this is not being talked about."
The couple are now working with a team of fertility doctors to one day welcome a sibling for Shai, with Murgatroyd saying she's in "a much happier place" and is "crossing my fingers that this is going to work."