Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.Photo: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
Prince Harryis opening up about how he andMeghan Marklemourned a miscarriage in his memoirSpare.
In the book, the Duke of Sussex, 38, remembered how his wife, 41, showed signs of pregnancy loss on the “first morning” in their new home in Montecito.
After racing to the hospital, “the doctor walked into the room, I didn’t hear one word she said, I just watched her face, her body language. I already knew. We both did,” Harry writes.
The miscarriage happened in July 2020, when their sonArchie Harrisonwas 1.
Harry says he and Meghan “both wept” and that he “felt totally hopeless” as they left the hospital with their “unborn child.”
“A tiny package,” Harry writes. “We went to a place, a secret place only we knew.”
“Under a spreading banyan tree, while Meg wept, I dug a hole with my hands and set the tiny package softly in the ground,” Harry writes.
Chris Jackson/Getty
In November 2020, Meghan publiclyrevealed the pregnancy lossin an essay forThe New York Times. The Duchess of Sussex said the day “began as ordinarily as any other day,” but she felt a sharp cramp after changing Archie’s diaper.
“I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second,” she wrote.
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“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 explained, adding: “In the pain of our loss, my husband and I discovered that in a room of 100 women, 10 to 20 of them will have suffered from miscarriage. Yet despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning.”
“Some have bravely shared their stories; they have opened the door, knowing that when one person speaks truth, it gives license for all of us to do the same,” she wrote. “We have learned that when people ask how any of us are doing, and when they really listen to the answer, with an open heart and mind, the load of grief often becomes lighter — for all of us. In being invited to share our pain, together we take the first steps toward healing.”
The book jacket of Prince Harry’s memoir ‘Spare’.PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
The couple revisited thepainful memory of the miscarriagein their Netflix docuseriesHarry & Meghan, released in December.
“The first morning that we woke up in our new home is when I miscarried,” Meghan said on the show. At the time, she was suing the Associated Newspapers group after the publisher of theMail on Sundayand the MailOnline printed portions of a private letter she sent her father Thomas Markle in 2018.
From there,Prince Harrysaid that the stress of the litigation possibly caused the pregnancy loss.
Prince Harry.Jenna Jones
For more fromPEOPLE’s exclusive interview with Harry, check out this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday
source: people.com
