Olympic Gymnast Shares Heartwarming Pregnancy Announcement After Suffering Miscarriage
According to the nonprofit Tommy’s, approximately 25 percent of all pregnancies end in a miscarriage. That’s one staggering statistic.
Even if you take into account the charity’s assertion that some of those women don’t know that they’ve lost a baby, those numbers still account for a devastating amount of tragedy. So many women find themselves walking wounded, and many of us aren’t even aware.
Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson is one of those women, but when she lost a pregnancy in 2017, she took her struggle public as an encouragement to others.
Johnson had the heartbreaking experience of learning that she was expecting — and then learning hours later that she had lost the baby, according to PopSugar.
“We feel like a lot of people go through this, so we wanted to share it,” she and her husband, NFL player Andrew East, said on social media.
She has also shared about the emotional tsunami that rocked her in the aftermath of the news.
“I think one of the best things I was ever told through the whole process was when my doctor sat me down and said … ‘You didn’t do anything wrong,'” Johnson told Us Weekly.
“‘You didn’t do this.’ I feel like with a lot of miscarriages, women feel very, very guilty, like they didn’t eat the right things or they were around the wrong environment, and if you actually read into the science of it, that’s not true.”
Johnson has some good news to share with her fans. In a 10-minute YouTube video, she said that she’s expecting once again.
The couple also uploaded a celebratory picture to Instagram that showed a grinning East pointing to the belly of an equally smiley Johnson. The caption read, “@theeastbaby … we cannot WAIT to welcome you to the world and shower you with love.”
However, Johnson has admitted that trying again for another child terrifies her.
“It is really scary for us just because of what happened last time, but we’re praying that this one … that we make it all the way,” she said, according to the Daily Mail.
“I want to be so excited, and I am, but I’m also just very realistic that things can happen, and I’m just kind of taking it one day at a time. I know God’s got a plan for us.”
She added, “I can naturally feel my heart is guarding itself because I don’t want to go through that again. I was so new and naive to that whole situation that it was just raw emotion.”
Not everything is heavy in Johnson’s house. She has begun listening to Mozart, hoping that strains of classical music will make their little one brilliant.
The soon-to-be parents are also taking time to pump one another up. They’ve heaped praise on one another via social media.
“You’re going to be an awesome daddy,” Johnson told East. “You’re going to be the best dad.”
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