'Dancing with the Stars' pro Peta Murgatroyd reveals she's had three miscarriages trying for Baby No. 2

Dancing with the Stars pro Peta Murgatroyd has revealed she's suffered three miscarriages in two years, the latest of which occurred while Maksim Chmerkovskiy was out of the country.


Peta, who has served as a professional partner on Dancing with the Stars on and off since 2011, recently told People that she has been struggling to keep a pregnancy after welcoming her first child, her son Shai, with husband Maksim Chmerkovskiy in January 2017.

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Peta, 35, recalled having her third miscarriage in October 2021, when Maksim was away working in Ukraine as a judge on their version of Dancing with the Stars.

Peta said that days after testing positive for coronavirus, she found herself on the floor of her five-year-old son's bedroom, unable to move. She therefore called an ambulance to her Malibu home and was hospitalized.


"I had no strength. I couldn't open a dishwasher. I couldn't open the fridge to feed Shai, to get him some toast. It got so bad that my breath was starting to be affected. It was really dramatic," Peta told People.

"I felt like I was dying, but then I obviously knew what had happened. It was just all too much for my body and I couldn't do it. I couldn't believe that this was happening to me."

Once at the hospital, Peta called Maksim and the pair spoke to a doctor using Speakerphone.

"I thought [the doctor] was going to reveal some really bad news. I was like, 'What's wrong?' His face dropped. He said, 'Did you know you were pregnant?'" Peta shared.

Maksim, 42, apparently began to celebrate the news.


"He heard the doctor say, 'You're pregnant,'" Peta recalled.

But Peta was actually being told she had lost the baby, which Maksim clearly misheard.

"I ultimately had no idea [I was pregnant], which in hindsight was better for my recovery because I didn't have that super joyous moment of, 'I'm pregnant again!'" said Peta, who began bleeding a couple of days earlier.

"I just had the moment of, 'You lost it.'"

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Maksim told People that the situation was "crazy" and he felt so "helpless" that he couldn't be by his wife's side during this difficult time.

"I haven't had depression; I would just call it some bad days, wondering when and why me? [I asked myself], 'Why can't I have another child when it was so easy in the past?'" Peta lamented.

As for Peta's other two miscarriages, she experienced her first loss in Fall 2020 followed by another miscarriage nine months later in 2021.

In Fall 2020, Peta went through a miscarriage five weeks into her pregnancy while shopping at a Whole Foods grocery store.

"It was so shocking and so out of the blue. I had walked [into the store] and it just all started happening. I was petrified. I was trying to tell myself, 'It's going to be okay.' Of course, deep down, I knew," Peta said.


Peta admitted that she ended up in the store's bathroom "sobbing" and devastated.

"I'm surprised nobody walked in because I was crying so heavily and wailing, one of those deep cries. That was something that will probably live with me for the rest of my life, being on that toilet by myself, knowing what was happening and not being able to stop it," Peta said.

Maksim called that first miscarriage the "darkest" point in their marriage. (The pair tied the knot in July 2017).

"I think the darkest part is when the person you are in love with calls you and she says that she had a miscarriage in the bathroom, that's as dark as it can get," Maksim admitted.

Peta opened up about feeling "completely embarrassed" and "ultimately ashamed" in that moment.


"I didn't even know how to utter the words and have that sentence come out of my mouth: I had a miscarriage," Peta said.

"I'm somebody who prides herself on health and wellness. I exercise every single day. But as I came to realize, that doesn't really go hand-in-hand with the reproductive system."

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Peta took "a very long time" to get over that trauma, adding, "It was months and months of crying most nights in bed by myself, crying in the shower, it was a lot of denial. What had I done wrong?"

The couple sadly suffered their second pregnancy loss nine months later.

"I had to call him and say, 'It's happened again,'" Peta told the magazine, tearing up. "This was the first time that I heard him get really upset, which was hard to hear because I know how it affects him too."


Peta apparently told herself at the time that she'd try to get pregnant again but would stop if she had to endure a third miscarriage.

"I said to myself after the second miscarriage, 'If there's one more, that's it. I'm not doing this again. I'm not doing it to me. I'm not doing it to [my family]. I don't want to go through this again.' Because it's so mentally taxing and just all around traumatic," the pro dancer explained.

"And at three, I kind of had my answer, like, that was my limit."

Following the October 2021 miscarriage, Peta consulted with a fertility expert.

"They can never say, 'This is 100 percent the issue,' but they do believe I have PCOS, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, which was a shock to me. I don't have any cysts on my ovaries, at all, but I do have hormonal imbalances that are maybe causing the eggs to not mature enough before they're released," Peta told People.

"There was concrete evidence in my bloodwork that something was off and something wasn't right."


Peta said she felt so happy at the time having received answers and all the information she needed to move forward and make some big decisions for her family.

Peta then decided to undergo IVF, with all of its medications and injections, in attempt to have a second child and give Shai a sibling.

"I chose [to try IVF]... I definitely could've pushed on and kept trying for the next couple of years to have a healthy natural pregnancy. And chances are, I might've got that because my egg count is good and there are a lot of things that are fine," Peta said.

"But ultimately, I knew within myself that I wasn't going to be happy waiting another couple of years, and what if that didn't work? I would've wasted another two years... when I know something is wrong."

Peta disclosed how everything is "so far, so good" and her chances of getting pregnant again look "really, really promising."

Peta gushed about finally feeling "excited" for the first time in nearly two years.


"I feel like I'm in such a better place. I honestly don't feel like I have anxiety right now because I feel like I have answers. Before, it was all the anxiety and stress, and now I have... hope and positivity. I'm just crossing my fingers... that this is going to work," Peta explained.

And now that Peta's recent health history has been publicly disclosed, she said she feels like she "can breathe now."

"I feel like I'm not carrying this huge burden and this backpack of trauma. It's just, like, I can let this secret out and have everybody know, and that's kind of what I wanted with this [interview]," Peta said.

"I just wanted everybody to know because on social media, it's the No. 1 question I get asked every single day -- it's, 'When are you going to get pregnant? Why aren't you pregnant? Why aren't you having more babies? Don't you want that for Shai?' There's a lot of that."

Peta said one question in particular really stuck a chord with her.

"There was one comment in particular, like, 'How could you not?' [And that question] threw me off a ledge. I was like, 'If only you knew what was actually going on with my family, you would never say that,'" Peta noted.


And in the meantime, Maksim shared how he is doing his absolute best to support Peta.

"I'm a changed man because of this experience," the former Dancing with the Stars pro and guest judge added.

"I think that if you look around, you will find that most of your friends have had issues [trying to conceive]. I realized that this is more common and this is not being talked about."

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Maksim and Peta also went through another challenging time earlier this year when Maksim had to flee Ukraine in late February after Russia's "terrifying" invasion. It took over a week for Maksim to return home to the United States and reunite with his worried wife.

Dancing with the Stars will stream its upcoming 31st season this Fall on its new home, Disney+.







About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski