“We are shocked and in the kind of deep pain you only hear about, the kind of pain we’ve never felt before,” Chrissy wrote alongside a series of devastating photos of herself with husband John Legend and their son in hospital.
“We were never able to stop the bleeding and give our baby the fluids he needed, despite bags and bags of blood transfusions,” she went on. “It just wasn’t enough.”
“We never decide on our babies’ names until the last possible moment after they’re born, just before we leave the hospital,” she continued. “But we, for some reason, had started to call this little guy in my belly Jack. So he will always be Jack to us. Jack worked so hard to be a part of our little family, and he will be, forever. To our Jack — I’m so sorry that the first few moments of your life were met with so many complications. That we couldn’t give you the home you needed to survive. We will always love you.”
Chrissy went on to publish a personal essay where she detailed her pregnancy complications, reflected on the loss of Jack and thanked members of the public for their support, but since then she and John have grieved privately.
However, the pair have now sat down for a joint interview with Good Morning America in which they discussed their new charity project, but also opened up about their grief together for the first time.
Jon Kopaloff / WireImage
John began by saying that he was “grateful” that Chrissy had decided to share their experience so publicly because of the overwhelming support they’ve received since and the dialogue it’s opened up around pregnancy loss.
“I didn’t know that we could experience this grief and also share it, but when we did it really meant so much to so many people,” he said. “And it was such a powerful experience for me to learn that. I’m just grateful that my wife was courageous enough to do it.”
“I have thousands of letters written to me,” Chrissy added. “Obviously it’s so painful to go through something like this as a woman — something that was inside your body that you were nurturing. But obviously there’s a father involved, and
the support for the both of us has just been so beautiful. So incredible.”
“This has been a lonely time for so many people because we’re all separated physically in so many ways, and just the outpouring of people’s love and concern for us has truly been heartening and lifting for us,” John went on.
“The world is inherently good,” Chrissy agreed. “I believe people are inherently good, and it’s shown itself. As hard as it was, it is beautiful to see this side of it.”
Chrissy went on to address the backlash she received after posting the heartbreaking photos of her and John in hospital with Jack, reiterating as she did in her personal essay that she was unfazed by the criticism but adding that John had initially felt “uncomfortable” taking the images.
‘I don’t care if you were offended or disgusted,” she said. “I understand it could be that way for people, [but] it’s designed for the people that were hurting. John was very uncomfortable taking them.”
‘[Chrissy] felt like one of the ways we would carry on Jack’s memory was [to] take pictures of that moment,” he said.
“I was worried. I was like, I don’t want to commemorate this pain.”
“But the crazy thing about having a miscarriage is you don’t walk away with anything — you have this emptiness. And we wanted to take the photos so we had something to remember him by,” he added.
And John concluded by revealing that despite their grief, he believes that shouldering the tragedy together has ultimately strengthened them as a couple.
“I just know that I love my wife more than ever,” he said. “We’ve been through so many challenges together and they’ve made her stronger — and I know that doesn’t always happen when people go through tragedy.”
“I feel like the challenges we face together have made us feel even more sure about who we are together as a couple, and who we are as a family,” he explained. “When we committed to be together forever, we really hold that promise to heart.”
