Tori Roloff is looking back on a difficult moment in her motherhood journey.
On a new episode of her podcast Raising Heights, which she co-hosts with husband Zach Roloff, Tori, 33, emotionally recalled experiencing a miscarriage in 2021 before welcoming their son Josiah, now 2.
Although Tori says the couple got pregnant “very quickly” when they began trying for their third baby, they received the devastating news at their 8-week checkup.
“It was not on my radar that something was wrong,” Tori recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘This pregnancy is really easy, this is going really well.’”
However, the mom of three says her ultrasound tech told her that her baby didn’t have a heartbeat, even though she technically wasn’t supposed to.
“I immediately started crying,” she remembers. “This isn’t happening. This isn’t real. There is no way this is happening to me.”
After she learned that her baby didn’t have a heartbeat anymore, Tori says that her doctors let her know that she had the choice of letting the pregnancy pass naturally or having a procedure known as a D&C (dilatation and curettage).
According to the Mayo Clinic, a D&C involves removing “tissue from your uterus” so doctors can “treat certain uterine conditions — such as heavy bleeding — or to clear the uterine lining after a miscarriage or abortion.”
“I can remember just being so mad at my body after that,” Tori says. “I had what was called a missed miscarriage, which means that my body didn’t realize that the baby passed on. So I was left with the decision with how do you want to move forward ’cause it had been three weeks, because that’s where the growth had stopped.”
Tori ultimately went through with the D&C and chose to share her miscarriage with her family and the crew on their show, Little People, Big World.
“Three kids, you get kind of excited, you announce it a little earlier,” Zach says. “You get a little bit more excited and you jump ahead a little bit. That’s what I remember telling the TV people, the family.”
The couple initially revealed on camera that they were having another baby, so they had to share their heartbreaking news with the show, causing them to relive the tragedy.
“Sharing things on camera that’s sensitive in the form of reality television is tough because it has to fit into their storyline or their structured episode,” Zach explains. “They can’t show at 20 minutes, they can’t share a 20-minute explanation, which we feel is necessary to understand your point of view. That’s what makes it tough.”
“They won’t do it the justice that it needed,” continues Tori. “This is our baby. To me, when you get pregnant, that’s a baby. So when we lost that baby, that was like we just lost a part of our family.”
Eight months later, in November 2021, the couple announced that they were pregnant again. In May 2022, they welcomed their son Josiah.
“We didn’t tell people that I was pregnant with Josiah until I was halfway done,” Tori explains. “Because I didn’t want to go through that again, and we have to backtrack.”
Now, the proud mom of three says she can’t imagine not having their son Josiah in their life.
“It’s hard to picture our life now without Josiah. That’s very difficult for me to picture where we would be without him and how much I’m obsessed and I love him,” Tori says. “He would not be here if it wasn’t for everything that happened. One day, we’ll get to meet our baby.”
