Peta Murgatroyd is opening up about suffering pregnancy losses.
In a new interview with PEOPLE, the “Dancing with the Stars” pro — who shares 5-year-old son Shia with Maksim Chmerkovskiy — revealed she’s suffered multiple miscarriages in less than two years, including having one while Maks was overseas in Ukraine.
Peta, 35, shared that last fall she had traveled to visit Maks, 42, in Ukraine — who was serving as a judge on the country’s version of “Dancing with the Stars” at the time — after she realized she was going to be ovulating.
“I was like, ‘Screw it. I’m going to fly to you in Ukraine. I’m ovulating soon. Let’s make it happen,'” she said she told Maks.
The professional dancer contracted Covid-19 during the trip, and while at the couple’s Malibu home days later, she suffered a miscarriage. However, she didn’t even know she was pregnant at the time.
Detailing the health scare, which occurred in October 2021, Peta said she called an ambulance after she was lying on Shia’s bedroom floor — and couldn’t move, seemingly believing that her symptoms were all due to Covid.
“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 recalled. “It got so bad that my breath was starting to be affected. It was really dramatic.”
When she got to the hospital, the Peta Jane Beauty founder said she called Maks in Ukraine and put her husband on speaker phone.
The doctor came into the hospital room at that moment. “I thought he was going to reveal some really bad news. I was like, ‘What’s wrong?’ His face dropped. He said, ‘Did you know you were pregnant?'”
As for Maks, he misheard the doctor’s words, believing he revealed the exciting news that Peta was expecting. “He heard the doctor say, ‘You’re pregnant,'” Peta told People.
However, the Latin dancer had, unfortunately, suffered a miscarriage, telling the publication that she was unaware that she was pregnant, and shared that she had started bleeding two days prior but believed it was her period.
“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!'” Peta explained. “I just had the moment of, ‘You lost it.'”
She opened up about having to battle Covid as well as a pregnancy loss.
“I felt like I was dying, but then I obviously knew what had happened,” Peta 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.”
“To not be there [with her]… it’s crazy. It makes you feel helpless,” Maks told People.
It marked the third miscarriage Peta had suffered within almost two years, experiencing the first pregnancy loss in the fall of 2020.
The New Zealand-born Australian shared that she suffered her first miscarriage while in a Whole Foods bathroom stall.
“It was so shocking and so out of the blue. I had walked [into the store] and it just all started happening,” said Peta, who had been five weeks into her pregnancy. “I was petrified. I was trying to tell myself, ‘It’s going to be okay.’ 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,” she added. “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.”
Maks reflected on the heartbreaking loss as well, describing the first miscarriage as the “lowest point in their relationship.”
“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,” said the “DWTS” pro, who married Peta in 2017.
As for Peta, she said she felt “completely embarrassed” and “ultimately ashamed” over her pregnancy loss. “I didn’t even know how to utter the words and have that sentence come out of my mouth: I had a miscarriage …. I’m somebody who prides herself on health wellness. I exercise every single day. But as I came to realize, that doesn’t really go hand-in-hand with the reproductive system.”
“With the trauma, I took a very long time to get over it,” she added. “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?”
Peta said she went on to suffer her second miscarriage nine months later. After finding out she was pregnant, she shared that she was going to fly to New York, where Maks was, to tell him the exciting news.
Unfortunately, Peta said had a miscarriage, just days before her flight.
“I had to call him and say, ‘It’s happened again,'” she recalled, with People noting that she was visibly emotional. “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.”
Maks said, “I never thought that two healthy, athletic people could be in a predicament like this. It’s a lot to process.”
“I try to do my best in supporting Peta. I’m a changed man because of this experience,” he shared. “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.”
Meanwhile, following her three miscarriages, Peta said she ultimately decided to visit a specialist.
She and Maks told the magazine that they are working with fertility doctors and have begun in vitro fertilization (IVF). According to Peta, doctors think she has Polycystic ovary syndrome (POCS), which is “a condition in which the ovaries produce an abnormal amount of androgens, male sex hormones that are usually present in women in small amounts,” according to Johns Hopkins.
Peta said she’s now optimistic. “For the first time in nearly two years, I feel excited. I’m in a much happier place. I got answers,” she said. “I don’t have any other words but hope and positivity. I’m crossing my fingers that this is going to work.”
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