The 'Dancing With The Stars' pros share 5-year-old son, Shai.
Peta Murgatroyd and Maksim Chmerkovskiy are reflecting on their losses. The Dancing With the Stars pros open up in a new interview with People about Murgatroyd's three miscarriages, including one that happened while Chmerkovskiy was in Ukraine.
Murgatroyd recalls being rushed to the hospital as she battled COVID-19, not knowing she was pregnant. "I had no strength. I couldn't open a dishwasher. I couldn't open the fridge to feed Shai, to get him some toast," she explains, noting that she called 911 while the couple's 5-year-old watched. "It got so bad that my breath was starting to be affected. It was really dramatic."
At the hospital, Murgatroyd called Chmerkovskiy so he could hear what the doctor had to say, which was ultimately that -- unbeknownst to them -- she had been pregnant, but had already lost the baby. "He heard the doctor say, 'You're pregnant,' " she recalls, adding that her husband began to celebrate, not hearing the bad news.
"I ultimately had no idea [I was pregnant], which in hindsight was better for my recovery because I didn't have that super joyous moment of, 'I'm pregnant again!' " Murgatroyd explains. "I just had the moment of, 'You lost it.'"
Murgatroyd had contracted COVID while visiting Chmerkovskiy in Ukraine in hopes to conceive a baby. "I was like, 'Screw it. I'm going to fly to you in Ukraine. I'm ovulating soon. Let's make it happen,'" she says.
However, when she returned home, her body couldn't handle what was happening. "I felt like I was dying, but then I obviously knew what had happened," she shares. "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 -- who was in Ukraine for work -- said he felt "helpless" as all of this was unfolding.
Sadly, this wasn't the first time Murgatroyd had suffered a miscarriage. In 2020, she found herself in a bathroom stall at Whole Foods losing a baby at five weeks pregnant. "It was so shocking and so out of the blue. I had walked [into the store] and it just all started happening," she says. "I was petrified. I was trying to tell myself, 'It's going to be OK.' Of course, deep down, I knew."
"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," Murgatroyd continues. "That was something that will probably live with me for the rest of my life, being on that toilet by myself, knowing what was happening and not being able to stop it."
Chmerkovskiy recalls, "I think the darkest part is when the person you are in love with calls you and she says that she had a miscarriage in the bathroom, that's as dark as it can get."
Murgatroyd says she felt "completely embarrassed" and "ultimately ashamed" about what had happened. "With the trauma, I took a very long time to get over it," she adds. "It was months and months of crying most nights in bed by myself, crying in the shower, it was a lot of denial. What had I done wrong?"
Less than a year later, Murgatroyd once again miscarried, just days before she planned to surprise her husband with the news. "I had to call him and say, 'It's happened again,' " she recalls. "This was the first time that I heard him get really upset, which was hard to hear because I know how it affects him too."
Detailing his feelings, Chmerkovskiy says, "I try to do my best in supporting Peta. I'm a changed man because of this experience. 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."
Murgatroyd has since been diagnosed with Poly Cystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), which, according to The Mayo Clinic, is "a hormonal disorder common among women of reproductive age." The disorder causes ovulation issues and is among the most common causes of infertility.
Following the news of her miscarriages being made public, Peta took to her Instagram Story to thanks fans for the outpouring of support she received. She said she cried while reading the similar stories women have shared with her. "Gosh I am blown away by how strong we as women are," she said.
The pair -- who wed in 2017 -- are now working with a team of specialists in hopes to give Shai a sibling. "For the first time in nearly two years, I feel excited. I'm in a much happier place. I got answers."
RELATED CONTENT:
