“Driving home from the hospital with no baby,” Chrissy Teigen wrote on Twitter. “How can this be real.” It’s extraordinarily painful sentiment that will be sadly familiar to anyone who’s lost a baby. Teigan and her husband John Legend posted late Wednesday that they lost their third baby, a son, a few days after she had written about pregnancy complications. She also posted an image of her in the hospital bed, apparently weeping over her lost baby, who they’d named Jack.
— chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) October 1, 2020
“Jack worked so hard to be a part of our little family, and he will be, forever,” wrote Teigan. “To our Jack – I’m so sorry that the first few moments of your life were met with so many complications, that we couldn’t give you the home you needed to survive. We will always love you.”
Teigan, a cookbook author and model, is a regular and charming presence on Twitter, where she eschews the carefully cultivated brands other celebrities work hard to maintain with her stream of witty, self-effacing observations that peel the veneer off her high-profile marriage. The couple has two other children.
The U.S. has an unusually high infant mortality rate among developed nations, with about one out of every 100 pregnancies ending in stillbirth. The exact cause is often unknown, but researchers have learned the value of giving the parents of stillborn children time and space to grieve their loss. Many hospitals will offer photography (like the image Teigan posted), and small tokens of remembrance like a footprint or a lock of hair to help the families memorialize the small person who was briefly — and in a very real way, always will be — a part of them.
