Peta Murgatroydvividly remembers lying in the hospital bed, still reeling from the scene hours earlier at her Malibu home, where a team of medics had loaded her into an ambulance as her5-year-old sonwatched.
Murgatroyd, 35, had placed the call when she found herself lying on her little boy’s bedroom floor, completely unable to move after testing positive for coronavirus days prior.
“I had no strength. I couldn’t open a dishwasher. I couldn’t open the fridge to feed Shai, to get him some toast,” the pro dancer says while opening up exclusively to PEOPLE in an in-depth interview. “It got so bad that my breath was starting to be affected. It was really dramatic.”
In the hospital, Murgatroyd called her husbandMaks Chmerkovskiy, who wasthousands of miles away in Ukraine, and placed him on speaker phone as the doctor entered her room.
“I thought he was going to reveal some really bad news. I was like, ‘What’s wrong?’ His face dropped,” she recalls of that night in October 2021. “He said, ‘Did you knowyou were pregnant?’ "
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“I ultimately had no idea [I was pregnant], which in hindsight was better for my recovery because I didn’t have that super joyous moment of, ‘I’m pregnant again!’ " says Murgatroyd, who had started bleeding two days earlier but attributed it to her period. “I just had the moment of, ‘You lost it.’ "
But after contracting COVID during her trip, Murgatroyd says her body was unable to both fight off the illness and sustain the very early stages of her pregnancy. “I felt like I was dying, but then I obviously knew what had happened,” she says. “It was just all too much for my body and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t believe that this was happening to me.”
“To not be there [with her]… it’s crazy. It makes you feel helpless,” Chmerkovskiy tells PEOPLE.
Peta Murgatroyd poses at her Malibu home after revealing exclusively to PEOPLE that she’s suffered three miscarriages.Amanda Friedman
Unfortunately, the heartbreaking feelings of loss were all too familiar to Murgatroyd, who suffered her first miscarriage in a Whole Foods bathroom stall in the fall of 2020, five weeks into pregnancy. “It was so shocking and so out of the blue. I had walked [into the store] and it just all started happening,” she remembers. “I was petrified. I was trying to tell myself, ‘It’s going to be okay.’ Of course, deep down, I knew.”
For Chmerkovskiy, who wed his fellowDancing with the Starspro dancer in 2017, the first miscarriage was the lowest point in their relationship.
“I think the darkest part is when the person you are in love with calls you and she says that she had a miscarriage in the bathroom, that’s as dark as it can get,” he says.
“I was completely embarrassed, ultimately ashamed. I didn’t even know how to utter the words and have that sentence come out of my mouth: I had a miscarriage,” says an emotional Murgatroyd. “I’m somebody who prides herself on health and wellness. I exercise every single day. But as I came to realize, that doesn’t really go hand-in-hand with the reproductive system.”
Nine months later, Murgatroyd was pregnant again andmaking plans to fly to New Yorkto meet up with Chmerkovskiy and surprise him with the news. Days before she was scheduled to fly out, Murgatroyd miscarried.
“I had to call him and say, ‘It’s happened again,’ " she says, instantly tearing up. “This was the first time that I heard him get really upset, which was hard to hear because I know how it affects him too.”
Now, Chmerkovskiy admits to PEOPLE, “I never thought that two healthy, athletic people could be in a predicament like this. It’s a lot to process.”
“I try to do my best in supporting Peta. I’m a changed man because of this experience,” he adds. “I think that if you look around, you will find that most of your friends have had issues [trying to conceive]. I realized that this is more common and this is not being talked about.”
Peta Murgatroyd poses at home with husband Maks Chmerkovskiy and son Shai.Amanda Friedman
As Murgatroyd worked through her emotions, she became determined to seek answers.
“When? Why me? Why can’t Ihave another childwhen it was so easy in the past?” she says. “All of these questions just really bothered me and that’s what brought me to finally see a specialist.”
The couple is now working with a team of fertility doctors and has started the process of in vitro fertilization. They’re hopeful their son Shaiwill soon have the siblingthey have longed to give him
“For the first time in nearly two years, I feel excited,” says Murgatroyd, who doctors believe has polycystic ovary syndrome, a hormonal imbalance that can cause ovulation issues, leading to infertility. “I’m in a much happier place. I got answers.”
Adds Murgatroyd, “I don’t have any other words but hope and positivity. I’m crossing my fingers that this is going to work.”
Photographer: Amanda Friedman, Hair: Laura Rugetti/The Only Agency, Makeup: Denika Bedrossian/A-Frame Agency
source: people.com
