Nancy Kerrigan Opens Up About Having Six Miscarriages

Olympian Nancy Kerrigan opened up about her past and revealed during Monday's episode of Dancing [...]

By Hunter Miller

Olympian Nancy Kerrigan opened up about her past and revealed during Monday's episode of Dancing With the Stars that she has had six miscarriages.

"Since I was 10 years old, I always wanted to have three kids by the time I was 30," the 47-year-old former figure skater said. "Sort of what my mom had done."

In September of 1995, Kerrigan got hitched to Jerry Solomon. The couple has three kids together, but her journey to motherhood was definitely not an easy one. Shortly after getting married, Kerrigan became pregnant and welcomed her son Matthew in 1996.

"Not long after having Matthew, we thought we wanted to have more kids so I got pregnant, but I had a miscarriage," she said. "It makes you feel like a failure."

After giving birth to Matthew, it was another eight years before Nancy became a mother for the second time. Over the course of eight years, Kerrigan revealed that she had six miscarriages.

"The first time that you go in and they tell you, 'Oh there's no heartbeat,' it's devastating," Kerrigan said.

To make matters worse, Nancy and her husband had to tell their son Matthew that he wouldn't be getting a sibling at that time.

"Once the pregnancy was far enough along that we actually told our son and he was so excited," she said, according to People. "How do you explain [a miscarriage] to a little kid? Having to tell them that it was now gone and they had to take it out? He asked why and we had to explain, 'Because it's dead. It's not alive anymore.' That was awful."

Despite the years of miscarriages, Nancy was determined to have the family she had always envisioned.

"Jerry asked me if I was sure I wanted to keep going. It was hard for him to see me hurting," she said. "But I wasn't ready to stop trying."

In 2005, Nancy welcomed her son Brian after undergoing in vitro fertilization treatment.

"I think about it now and remember we couldn't come up with a name for Brian," Kerrigan said. "I wonder if we probably were afraid to come up with a name because that makes you close and we could lose him."

Kerrigan then decided to undergo IVF treatment once again in order to have a third child.

"There were two eggs left and they said, 'Do you want both?' And we were, like, 'Oh.' Sometimes people get twins and that would have been okay before Brian, but we already had two now so we said no," she said. "They said, 'This one looks strong!' But then it wasn't strong and they said it didn't work. Then they said 'There's only this weak one left,' which is funny because our daughter Nicole is the complete opposite of weak."

Nancy then gave birth to her daughter Nicole in 2008.

Now that she and Jerry are "outnumbered" by their kids, Nancy says that her job is "being with my kids after school and asking them how their day was."

Up Next:

[H/T Page Six, People]

0comments
Start the Conversation

of