The Bachelor couple Arie Luyendyk Jr. and Lauren Burnham have shared that Lauren recently suffered a miscarriage with the couple's second child.
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Lauren and Arie, who fell in love on The Bachelor's 22nd season, posted a near 30-minute YouTube video on their channel on Sunday, revealing they recently struggled through a miscarriage.
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"This isn't our typical positive vibes type of video," Lauren said at the start of the video.
The couple apparently began documenting this heartbreaking journey when Arie was pretty confident Lauren was pregnant again because of how she was acting.
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Arie said Lauren either loved him or hated him, but Lauren was not convinced she was expecting, although she admitted to having emotional highs and lows probably due to being quarantined.
Lauren therefore bought two pregnancy tests and decided to put a plus sign on one of them as a prank. She decided, however, to actually take the other test in order to be confirm or refute Arie's suspicion.
When Lauren pranked Arie, the couple shared some laughs and Arie joked it was a "rotten" thing to do -- but then Arie noticed her other test was showing a positive sign as well.
"Did you just try to prank me but you're actually pregnant?!" Arie asked his wife.
"I don't know!" Lauren replied in shock. "Seriously? I'm like sweating so bad. I'm so hot... How does it backfire on me like that?! What are the odds?!"
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As a result, Lauren bought another test to double check, and she admitted she might "have a panic attack" if it's positive since their daughter Alessi was only 11 months old at the time.
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But the test did, in fact, reveal Lauren was pregnant.
"I had an inkling because of how you were acting but I feel like at the same time, I was shocked, and we were both like, 'Oh my gosh, too soon.' But then we were both really happy," Arie told the camera.
Arie and Lauren embraced in the video and Lauren cried in his arms from a mixture of fear and excitement. Arie gushed, "I knew it!"
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"Guess we're a family of 4 pretty soon!" Lauren said as she cuddled with their daughter, who just celebrated her first birthday on Friday.
The couple then explained in the video, "We made so many plans," including moving into a new house with more space.
"We were planning to share our journey through pregnancy with you, but unfortunately we didn't get the happy story we had hoped for," the couple added.
During Lauren's first doctor appointment, Arie waited in the car due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. They were told Lauren's ultrasound showed that their fetus looked to be about five weeks along, but Lauren and Arie estimated he or she "should have been eight weeks."
"We were really confused by that," Lauren explained. "But our doctor assured us that it could be a number of things and not to panic about it."
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When Lauren reunited with Arie, she shared, "I didn't get the best of news. The ultrasound showed I was a lot less far along than I thought I was... It could mean I'm just not as far as long as I was, it could mean I ovulated late, or it could mean that it's not a viable pregnancy."
Lauren was upset, but Arie stayed optimistic this was just one of the many stressors that come along with a pregnancy. And he was right at first, because Lauren's hormone levels were rising properly and Lauren felt "reassured."
But at Lauren's second doctor appointment, the baby appeared to be six weeks old, which didn't make sense for Lauren.
"I got bad news again and the baby was measuring only five days more than the last ultrasound, which was two weeks prior... I was expecting to see an 8 week old-ish baby, and now we're measuring at 6 weeks exactly, so that means we've made 5 days progress in the span of 14 days," Lauren explained.
"I don't even know what to say," Arie noted.
"It's not the easiest news to take in," Lauren added, while fighting back tears.
The couple had to go through another whole week of waiting and "wondering," and Arie confessed he was "speechless."
The couple then went to the doctor again on May 28, the day before Alessi's first birthday, only to find out Lauren had suffered a missed miscarriage, the most common miscarriage in which an embryo dies but is not physically miscarried.
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Lauren's doctor explained her hormone levels were still up because her body hadn't yet recognized the loss yet.
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"It's been a roller coaster of emotions going from scared at first a little bit because it was so soon, then happy, then just stress and worry for weeks on end, and then obviously today was the bad news," Arie told the camera.
"It's something that you can never really prepare for. We've prepared for good and bad news while trying to stay positive at the same time. It's consumed our thoughts for the last month. It's been hard holding this back from everybody."
And Lauren admitted, "I was really excited to tell you guys that we were pregnant, and I feel like this is the best way for us to tell the whole story without having to go through it and talk through it."
Although their story "doesn't have the happiest outcome," Arie noted, "It's important for us to document this and show you that you're not alone."
"Hopefully the next time you see a video with the word pregnancy it's positive and it's good news. I'm still processing this whole thing, and I think you are too, [Lauren]. We'll get through this," Arie concluded.
Arie and Lauren met on The Bachelor's 22nd season, but Arie chose Becca Kufrin and proposed marriage to her instead during the Final Rose Ceremony, which aired in March 2018. (Lauren finished as the runner-up).
Weeks after getting engaged, Arie decided to dump Becca because he claimed he was still in love with Lauren, and so he begged Lauren for a second chance.
After Lauren decided to take Arie back, the real estate agent and pro racing driver proposed marriage on The Bachelor: After the Final Rose in March 2018.
The couple then moved into their first home together in Phoenix, AZ, in April of that year.
The pair announced they were expecting their first child together in November 2018 and revealed two months later they had a baby girl on the way.
Arie and Lauren got married at Haiku Mill in Maui, Hawaii in January 2019 and then welcomed Alessi on May 29, 2019.
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