Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his paediatrician wife Priscilla Chan have announced they are expecting a baby girl, after dealing with three miscarriages.
Zuckerberg used his Facebook timeline to tell his followers of the happy news, but also to raise awareness of the stark reality of losing an unborn child.
He said in a statement “Priscilla and I have some exciting news: we're expecting a baby girl!”
Priscilla and I have some exciting news: we're expecting a baby girl!This will be a new chapter in our lives. We've...
Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Friday, 31 July 2015
Describing the pregnancy as a “new chapter” in their lives, he went on to reveal: "We've been trying to have a child for a couple of years and have had three miscarriages along the way.”
Zuckerberg added that he and Chan had found the miscarriages to be "lonely" experiences, but that their friends helped them to realise theirs was not an isolated case.
“You feel so hopeful when you learn you're going to have a child. You start imagining who they'll become and dreaming of hopes for their future. You start making plans, and then they're gone. It's a lonely experience," he said.
Highlighting how miscarriages are usually dealt with in hushed tones, he went on: “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.”
“When we started talking to our friends, we realized how frequently this happened — that many people we knew had similar issues and that nearly all had healthy children after all.
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“We hope that sharing our experience will give more people the same hope we felt and will help more people feel comfortable sharing their stories as well.”
Zuckerberg added that he and Chan now feel confident enough to reveal that they are expecting, as “our pregnancy is now far enough along that the risk of loss is very low.”
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Jokingly suggesting that he hopes his daughter will continue the family business, he added: “In our ultrasound, she even gave me a thumbs up “like” with her hand, so I'm already convinced she takes after me.”
Zuckerberg and Chan married in 2012 at a 100-person ceremony in Palo Alto, California, following a nine-year relationship. The couple met when she was a freshman and he was a sophmore at Harvard.
