Meghan McCain revealed Friday she suffered a miscarriage a few weeks ago, adding to the grief she has experienced since the loss of her father last year.
McCain, who became pregnant “many months ago,” said she learned of the miscarriage the day the New York Times Magazine photographed her for a cover story about “The View.”
“I missed a few days of work. It wasn’t many, but given the job I have, it was enough to spark gossip about why I would be away from ‘The View.’ This was not supposed to be public knowledge. I have had my share of public grief and public joy. I wish this grief — the grief of a little life begun and then lost — could remain private,” she wrote for the New York Times.
“I am not hiding anymore. My miscarriage was a horrendous experience and I would not wish it upon anyone,” she said.
About 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage, though the actual number is thought to be higher because many miscarriages happen before a woman knows she is pregnant, according to the Mayo Clinic.
McCain, 34, said she originally blamed herself for the loss.
“Perhaps it was wrong of me to choose to be a professional woman, working in a high-pressure, high-visibility, high-stress field, still bearing the burden of the recent loss of my father and facing on top of that the arrows that come with public life. This is not a complaint. This is reality. I blamed my age, I blamed my personality. I blamed everything and anything a person could think of, and what followed was a deep opening of shame. This, I told myself, is the reason my body is a rock-strewn wasteland in which no child may live. This is my fault. Yet it is not my fault,” she wrote.
McCain said she now finds solace in believing her father, the late Sen. John McCain who died of brain cancer nearly a year ago, is with her unborn daughter.
“When my father passed, I took refuge in the hope that someday we would be united in the hereafter. I still imagine that moment, even as I trust that a loving God will see it happen. Now I imagine it a bit differently. There is my father — and he is holding his granddaughter in his hands,” she said.
