The actress and her husband, Brad Hall, share two adult sons.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus is opening up about a painful moment in her life. During the most recent episode of Lemonada Media's Wiser Than Me, the 62-year-old podcast host revealed that she suffered a pregnancy loss when she was 28.
Louis-Dreyfus married Brad Hall in 1987. Two years later, came her first pregnancy.
"When I was about 28, I got pregnant for the first time and I was crazy happy," she recalled. "I got pregnant easily. I felt very fertile, very womanly. And then, quite late in the pregnancy, my husband Brad and I discovered that this little fetus was not going to live."
Louis-Dreyfus said that the loss was not only "emotionally devastating," but got even worse when she "developed an infection" that landed her in the hospital.
Amid that "complete nightmare," Louis-Dreyfus' mother, Judith Bowles, flew out to be with her. In honor of Louis-Dreyfus' podcast guest, food writer Ruth Reichl, the host revealed how her mom's cooking helped to heal her during that challenging time.
"After a couple of days, I finally got out of the hospital and I came home to recuperate, but I wasn't allowed to get out of bed yet. I was, as they say, bedridden," Louis-Dreyfus remembered. "But my mom cooked. She made this incredible, cozy chili in a cast iron skillet with cornbread on top, in the pan. She and my husband Brad set up a little card table at the foot of the bed."
"The smell of that cornbread and the chili was so wonderful. It just filled the room and the whole house and my heart, really," she continued. "Because, here's the thing. I couldn't eat. I wasn't yet allowed to have solid food. But, it didn't matter. It was the best meal ever and I didn't even eat it. The making of it was so comforting, it was so embracing."
Looking back on it, Louis-Dreyfus said it's "one of my greatest memories around food, even though it has sort of an odd kicker, really."
Louis-Dreyfus and Hall went on to have two children, Charlie, 25, and Henry, 30. Watch the video below for more on the actress' family.
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