CBS correspondent suffered miscarriage while covering wildfires: ‘I blamed myself’

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A CBS News correspondent opened up about suffering a miscarriage while on assignment in 2017 covering wildfires and the guilt she continues to wrestle with, despite doctors reassuring her that it was not her fault.

Mireya Villarreal, who penned a personal essay titled "'Did I cause this?' Getting past the stigma of miscarriages” for CBS News on Tuesday, said she vividly remembers standing on the ridge of a scorched hill in Yosemite National park in July 2017 when she began to feel stabbing pains.

She said after a 45-minute trek up the hill, rather than feel accomplished, she was cringing in pain near the C-section scar left by the birth of her son. She was nine weeks pregnant and hadn’t told any members of her crew, leading one to suggest she “must have eaten a bad burrito for lunch or some bad Mexican food on the way here.”

“I’ll always remember those words, uttered by a co-worker who had no idea I was pregnant,” she wrote. “I knew if I told any of the men on that crew what I was going through, they wouldn’t understand. I’d get that look – ‘Oh, you poor woman’ – and then word would get back to my managers. So I kept everything to myself.”

She said due to her location, there were no bathrooms nearby and she knew she was heavily bleeding.

“There were no bathrooms close by and I was worried I’d bleed through several layers of clothing and then everyone would see the pain I was going through on my bright yellow fire-retardant suit. But it didn’t, and for that, I’m thankful,” she wrote.

Villarreal said that her thoughts were racing as to whether she could save the baby or even get a doctor on short notice before her thoughts turned to wondering if she had caused it to happen and if it was her fault.

“In my line of work, the facts are all that matter,” she wrote. “But for some reason, in this situation, finding data and stats wasn’t easy. Blaming something or someone for the loss isn’t that simple. Sometimes, your body can’t handle the pregnancy. Sometimes it’s chromosomal abnormalities with the fetus. Food. Trauma. Stress. Sometimes there is no explanation — it just happens.”

“Through therapy, I’ve realized that grieving the loss of this child was important, no matter what stage of the pregnancy I was in,” she wrote. “But forgiving myself is just as important and something I’m still working on.”

Villarreal’s essay comes days after another journalist, NBC News 3 Las Vegas’ Michelle Velez, opened up about her molar pregnancy and cancer diagnosis. Both women shared their stories during National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, which is honored every October.

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