Sometimes in life, you just need your mum – or someone who can give you all the unconditional TLC and comfort of a loving maternal figure. 

So it is for Chrissy Teigen, who suffered a devastating loss along with her husband John Legend recently, after miscarrying at 20 weeks. 

The model and presenter was rushed to hospital with a condition called partial placenta abruption in September, leading to the loss of the couple’s son, whom they named Jack. 

Posting a sweet photo of herself sitting on her mum’s knee, along with her daughter, Luna, this weekend, Teigen said the moment came out of “the recent story of the hardest 4 days of my life”.

Teigen was praised by miscarriage awareness campaigners after posting heartbreaking photos of the loss of Jack, her and Legend’s third child, on Instagram two months ago. 

“We are shocked and in the kind of deep pain you only hear about, the kind of pain we’ve never felt before,” Teigen wrote at the time. “We were never able to stop the bleeding and give our baby the fluids he needed, despite bags and bags of blood transfusions. It just wasn’t enough.”

Writing in an essay on Medium, Teigen later described how she got her husband, Legend, to take photos of the traumatic sequence of events, so that she could document it all. 

 “He hated it. I could tell,” Teigen wrote. “It didn’t make sense to him at the time. But I knew I needed to know of this moment forever, the same way I needed to remember us kissing at the end of the aisle, the same way I needed to remember our tears of joy after [the couple’s other two children] Luna and Miles. And I absolutely knew I needed to share this story.”

Charities were quick to praise Teigen’s bravery in sharing the experience of her miscarriage in such raw and unflinching detail. 

Around one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage, according to support organisation Tommy’s, although Teigen’s trauma of a late miscarriage is thankfully more rare. 

Either way, miscarriage is a kind of loss that many women find hard to talk about and share; not least because, in many cases, it exists as an unseen sadness that plays out before the 12-week mark at which many people choose to make their pregnancies public.

Teigen is well aware of the feelings of misplaced shame and stigma that often accompany such grief, saying that her pregnancy loss photos were for “the people who have lived this or are curious enough to wonder what something like this is like”.

The presenter’s photo of her cuddling up to her mum this weekend is also important; it tells us that, no matter how old or “adult” you are, everyone needs their mum (or the reassurance of a mother figure) in moments of grief or despair. 

With the heartwarming image, Teigen gives the message that it’s OK to be vulnerable when life knocks you for six. Instead of toughing it out or “pressing on”, you can find relief by opening up and seeking solace in the people closest to you: those loved ones who will shower you with hugs and comfort when nothing else will do. 

Have you or someone you loved suffered from a miscarriage? Seek confidential help and support with the Miscarriage Association or Tommy’s.

Images: Getty