YouTube Couple Announces Miscarriage Following Viral Pregnancy News

Sam and Nia, the popular vloggers whose online announcement went viral last week after Sam surprised Nia with the news that she was pregnant, posted a heartbreaking update this weekend, revealing that Nia had suffered a miscarriage.

In last week’s video, which got more than 11 million views, Sam secretly administered a pregnancy test using his wife’s unflushed urine after she told him her period was two weeks late. Then he let the cameras roll as he delivered the good news, to Nia’s apparent glee. But two days later, the couple posted a new video, confirming that they’d lost the baby. “We were just so overjoyed, and then it just — bam. It just hit us like a bomb,“ Nia says through tears. “And those of you who have experienced miscarriage before, I can relate now. I have felt my womb empty out. … The hardest part is just knowing that it’s really gone. There’s no question.”

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The recent video, posted on Saturday, has nearly 800,000 views.

In the post accompanying their video, the couple — whose previous viral moments include last year’s video of them expertly lip-synching “Love Is an Open Door” while driving — writes that they decided to share their experience in the hopes of helping others who may be similarly suffering. “There is a stigma regarding miscarriage that says we need to be alone in it and keep it private, but what happened is nothing less than losing a baby,” they wrote.  “The hurt and pain is real. It’s something that needs to be talked about and something that requires support from friends and family.”

Neither Sam nor Nia responded to Yahoo Parenting’s request for comment.

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Just last week, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, revealed in his online pregnancy announcement that he and wife, Priscilla Chan, had suffered three miscarriages and delivered similar sentiments about the need for a dialogue. “Most people don’t discuss miscarriages because you worry your problems will distance you or reflect upon you — as if you’re defective or did something to cause this. So you struggle on your own,” he wrote. “In today’s open and connected world, discussing these issues doesn’t distance us; it brings us together. It creates understanding and tolerance, and it gives us hope.”

Gil Weiss, MD, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at Northwestern University and an ob-gyn in Chicago, says that miscarriage is indeed something that needs to be discussed more in public. “It’s often the elephant in the room, something women only talk about amongst themselves in private. But it needs to be out there,” he tells Yahoo Parenting. “When it happens, people often feel like there is something wrong with them, and that’s not necessarily the case — miscarriage is very common, and it’s largely beyond your control. If you are smoking, or you have high blood pressure, for example, there are things you can do to improve your chances of having a successful pregnancy, but if you are young and healthy, there’s really nothing you can do. People need to hear about it and know they aren’t alone.”

But Sam and Nia’s video also raises the question of how soon is too soon to announce a pregnancy. “My patients ask me that all the time, and there’s no right or wrong answer,” Weiss says. “It’s great to tell people your good news if you want to share it, but if a test result later comes back abnormal or you lose the pregnancy, you’re sort of obliged to share that.”

The risk of miscarriage is highest in the first trimester, Weiss points out, so most people are more comfortable announcing their pregnancy after they’ve made it through the first 12 to 14 weeks. “When you are six to eight weeks pregnant, your chances of having a miscarriage are around 30 percent,” Weiss says. “From weeks eight to 10, that drops to around 10 percent. At 10 weeks, your chances are around 5 percent, and then after 12 weeks your chances are of miscarriage drop to 3 percent, which is an acceptable risk for most people when deciding if they want to share their news.”

Weiss says parents-to-be need to be aware that when they announce their pregnancy news, especially if they are sharing with an online audience, things can change. “You have to consider how you are going to share this with everyone and then realize that there is a potential downside to putting something on the Internet,” he says. “It can go viral, and we sometimes don’t realize how quickly that can happen.”

Still, Weiss says that Sam and Nia are likely helping other parents who have suffered similar losses. “If you don’t have problems sharing that kind of personal information with other people, then you can be someone speaking out about what no one talks about, and that’s so important.”

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