Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, reveals she had a miscarriage

London (CNN) – Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, revealed she was pregnant with her second child, but suffered a miscarriage in July.

In an editorial for the New York Times, the Duchess wrote that she “felt a severe cramp” while changing the diaper of her first child, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, who she had with her husband, Prince Henry, in 2019..

“I fell to the ground with him in my arms, humming a lullaby to keep us both calm, the cheerful melody contrasted with my feeling that something was wrong,” Meghan wrote.

“When I hugged my first child, I knew I was losing the second.”

Meghan describes the difficulty of losing a child

The former actress and member of the British royal family described the difficulty of losing her second child and reflected on her last year’s suffering in a deeply personal piece.

“I lay down on a hospital bed, holding my husband’s hand. I felt the wetness on her palm and kissed her knuckles, wet from our tears. Staring at the cold white walls, my eyes went glassy. I tried to imagine how we would be healed, “he wrote.

He referred to an interview on a royal tour in late 2019 where he held back tears after a reporter asked him “Are you okay?”

“Sitting on a hospital bed, watching my husband’s heart break as he tried to hold my broken pieces, I realized that the only way to start healing is to first ask, ‘Are you okay?'” She wrote Meghan.

“Losing a baby means carrying almost unbearable pain, experienced by many but few talk about,” she said. “In the pain of our loss, my husband and I discovered that in a room of 100 women, 10 to 20 of them had suffered a miscarriage. Yet despite the striking similarity of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, filled with (unwarranted) shame and perpetuates a cycle of lonely pain.

Pandemic, racism and more

The Duchess also referred to the human impact of the pandemic and the movement against structural racism and police brutality that defined 2020. “Health quickly turns into disease. In places where there used to be community, there is now division, ”he wrote.

And he referred to the proliferation of disinformation and the aftermath of the 2020 US election. And he added: “We are not just fighting for our views on the facts; we are polarized that the fact is, in fact, a fact. We disagree that science is real. I disagree as to whether an election has been won or lost.

“As much as we disagree, no matter how physically estranged we are, the truth is that we are more connected than ever because of everything we have endured individually and collectively this year,” he concluded.

Harry and Meghan stepped away from their roles as members of the royal family earlier this year, moving to North America, and often defied intense coverage of their lives by the tabloid media.