In a moving essay published by Glamour today, Big Bang Theory actress Melissa Rauch both announced that she is pregnant and revealed that she suffered a miscarriage.
In the candid piece, the 37-year states that she is overjoyed by the prospect of becoming a mom, but continues to struggle with the fear of losing another pregnancy.
“Here is the only statement regarding my pregnancy that doesn’t make me feel like a complete fraud: “Melissa is expecting her first child,” Rauch writes.
“She is extremely overjoyed, but if she’s being honest, due to the fact that she had a miscarriage the last time she was pregnant, she’s pretty much terrified at the moment that it will happen again.”
The actress adds:
“She feels weird even announcing this at all, and would rather wait until her child heads off to college to tell anyone, but she figures she should probably share this news before someone sees her waddling around with her mid-section protruding and announces it first.”
With humor and admirable frankness, Rauch went on to write that she was filled with conflicting emotions in the months following her first pregnancy, often experiencing pangs of grief when friends would announce that they were starting families.
“It’s not that I wasn’t happy for these people, but I would think, ‘Why are these shiny, carefree, fertile women so easily able to do what I cannot?"”
She adds:
“And then I’d immediately feel guilt and shame for harboring that jealousy—one might call this “the circle of strife.” (A song I imagine is somewhere deep in the extended director’s cut of The Lion King.)”
Rauch opens up about the ways in which the loss of an uborn child is unique and requires a unique kind of mourning:
“What I realized, though, is that because this kind of loss is not openly talked about nearly as much as it should be, there really is no template for how to process these emotions,” she writes.
“You’re not necessarily going to a funeral or taking time off from work to mourn, but that doesn’t change the fact that something precious has been unexpectedly taken from your life.”
Rauch concludes the essay with a message of support to other women have endured what she’s endured:
“So, to all the women out there who are dealing with fertility issues, have gone through a miscarriage or are going through the pain of it currently, allow me to leave you with this message: You are not alone. And, it is perfectly OK to not be OK right now.”
Important words from a strong woman.
Read Rauch’s entire essay here.
And as always, you can watch The Big Bang Theory online anytime at TV Fanatic.
