Meghan Markle’s tragic miscarriage announcement

Meghan Markle has revealed that she and Prince Harry went through the miscarriage of their second baby in July this year.

The news comes via an article, written under her own name for The New York Times, in which she describes the pain of realising her second pregnancy was ending, and the moment she and Harry held hands, devastated, in hospital.

“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?”,” Meghan writes.

After what she describes as an ordinary day, Meghan, 39, says she had just changed baby Archie’s nappy when she felt a “sharp cramp” and dropped to her knees.

“I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second,” she writes.

“Hours later, 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.”

Meghan, who is credited by the newspaper as “Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex”, explains that she chose to write about the experience to open up a wider conversation about miscarriage – an often-taboo tragedy that is frequently hidden from view.

She explains that it wasn’t until the miscarriage that she and Harry learned how common an experience it is – between 10 and 20 per cent of women will suffer pregnancy loss.

“Yet despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning,” Meghan writes.

She goes on to explain she believes it is only by sharing these once-private stories that miscarriage can shed its taboo status.

In January, the couple announced their plans to step down as senior members of the royal family.

Meghan and Harry moved to Los Angeles shortly before the coronavirus lockdown began following a short stint in Canada.

They said that they wanted to become "financially independent" and split their time between the UK and North America.

Following this, they were forced to drop their Sussex Royal brand and repay taxpayer money that was spend on renovations on Frogmore Cottage.

Royal reporter for the Daily Mirror and co-host of Pod Save The Queen podcast Russell Myers also revealed on the Channel 5 documentary Meghan and Harry: The New Revelations that he also believed the lack of photos tipped the couple over the edge.

"The lack of photograph of them during the Queen's Christmas speech obviously had an effect on them... They felt it was a slight, they felt put out."

Additional reporting by Marni Dixit.

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