Normally it’s quips and one liners that we get from The Project presenter Josh Thomson. But last night on the show the comedian moved viewers and his co-presenters alike by opening up about his wife’s three miscarrriages and how “useless” he had felt watching her go through those experiences.
Thomson’s wife is pregnant with the couple’s first child, and due in a month’s time. However, Thomson was close to tears as he explained this was actually the couple’s fourth pregnancy:
“In a way it’s not our first its our fourth… I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose something that’s been growing inside of you but I know what it’s like to be the partner of of someone who has and I watched the person I love the most in the world go through something really horrible and I gave her as much comfort and hope as I could but ultimately I felt very useless.”
Thomson said he’d been encouraged to share his story by others who had appeared on the show and done the same.
He encouraged others to use the hashtag #MyBabyStory to talk about their difficulties trying to conceive a child.
This is not the first time a Three TV presenter has broken down on live television when talking about fertility struggles. In May last year both Amanda Gillies and Mark Richardson, from The AM Show, choked up when sharing their individual fertility struggles.
Richardson said, “We were trying for a wee while, it wasn’t happening so went down and got the test, and the problem was with me. My swimmers were a little slow… But within minutes of leaving the building after finding out I broke down in tears, it was awful. Sorry, it’s choking me up right now thinking about it.”
Amanda Gillies added to the conversation, saying, “I say to girls and particularly young girls, have your children early if you can. I waited. I shouldn’t have, and so I say to them, ‘Career you’ll always come back to but children you can’t so do it early…’
“I’m now 40, it’s probably not a happening thing and it’s a heartbreaking thing because as a woman you do feel like a failure.”
In an interview with NEXT magazine later, Gillies revealed, “If I’m honest with you, I couldn’t actually take part in the conversation, because I found it too hard at the time. But the boys both knew my situation, and I trust them both and completely adore them both.”
It was only after Mark had shared he and his wife Mary’s battle to conceive – and became choked up during the process – that Amanda realised she was willing to do the same.
“I thought, ‘If you’re strong enough to tell your stories, I should too.”
One in four women will suffer a miscarriage in their lifetime, and 75 per cent of all women who have three or four miscarriages will go on to have successful pregnancies.
Meanwhile a couple’s fertility begins to decline rapidly from the age of 35.
