It was only last month that Kate Mara and her husband Jamie Bell welcomed their first child together, but the actress recently revealed that wasn’t her first time being pregnant. During an appearance on Dr. Berlin’s Informed Pregnancy Podcast, Mara revealed she lost her first pregnancy after discovering she had a blighted ovum.
A blighted ovum is a type of early-stage miscarriage in which the fertilized egg doesn’t develop into an embryo. It can happen so early on in the first trimester that many women don’t even realize they were pregnant until it happens. Mara explained that she had, in fact, already learned she was expecting before the fateful incident. “It was the first time I’ve ever been pregnant, and I’ve never had that excitement and shock of being an almost mom,” the 36-year old revealed.
But, upon going to the doctor for her eight-week check-up, the celebrity and her partner received devastating news. “She couldn’t see the embryo, but she could see the pregnancy sac,” Mara explained of getting her first sonogram. “My doctor at the time said, ‘Maybe you are off with your timing.’ I was like, ‘I am so good with timing.’” They had to wait for a blood-test to officially confirm if she’d lost the child.
However, that wasn’t the end of the traumatic experience. Since Mara’s body had not yet passed the pregnancy, she had to get it medically removed. “[The doctor] said, ‘Basically, you’ve miscarried, but it just hasn’t left your body yet,’” the House of Cards alum explained on the podcast. She added that she was already three months along when her body finally miscarriage. “Everything just took so much time, by the time it was all over. It just dragged out forever.”
Even when Mara later discovered she was pregnant for a second time, she explained it was difficult to get as excited as she had already been. “It was weird, this bitter or sweet sort of,” the mother-of-one said. “I was so excited, but also sad that we weren’t as excited as we were the first time, because that was clear that it was a very different dynamic.”
Mara and Bell wed in 2017 after dating for two years. They welcomed their first child- a daughter- this past May. Bell is also a father to 5-year old son Jack, whom he shares with his ex-wife Evan Rachel Woods. The couple were married from 2012 to 2014. Mara has hinted that she wants a large family, as she comes from one herself, so we won’t be surprised if she makes another pregnancy announcement in the near future.