Claire Holt Reveals How Husband Helped Her After Miscarriage: He Was ‘In The Trenches’ With Me
Nine months after her ‘devastating’ miscarriage, Claire Holt wants to keep the conversation about infertility going. She talked to HL EXCLUSIVELY about her and her husband’s difficult journey to conception.
Claire Holt, 30, and her husband Andrew Joblon, 35, are expecting a baby boy, but the road leading up to this exciting news was not an easy one. In fact, the couple, who tied the knot in August, suffered a tragic miscarriage a few months before their wedding. Claire received countless supportive messages on social media after revealing the “devastating” news to her followers, but she had a lot of support closer to home as well. “What Andrew was so amazing at was giving me a shoulder to cry on and allowing me to share how I felt,” the mom-to-be revealed to HollywoodLife.com EXCLUSIVELY. “He wasn’t encouraging me to hold my head up and march forward. He validated my feelings and was right there with me.”
On top of that, Andrew also came home from work with stories for his wife about other families who had been through the same thing. “This helped me to grieve and feel like I wasn’t alone and within a larger community,” she said. “I wasn’t isolated.” This “collective healing” is exactly what Claire is hoping to accomplish through her partnership with Ava, a medical technology company focused on women’s reproductive health. Celebrities like Jana Kramer, 35, have used their Fertility Tracker bracelet to conceive after miscarriages — and Claire is hoping that her partnership with them will spark more dialogue about infertility because it wasn’t talked about when she was growing up.
“There’s not a lot of conversation about how difficult it can be to conceive,” Claire admitted. “I was on birth control from the age of 16 and thought I’d come off of it and get pregnant.” Although she remembers being told that 35 was the magic number and women were good to go as long as they conceived before then, that wasn’t the case for the actress. “It can be difficult for two healthy people, let alone people suffering from complications.”
I took this photo 10 days ago, as I waited for surgery after my sweet little baby lost its heartbeat. I sent it to my fiancé in the waiting room to show him that I was ok. I wasn’t. I’ve never felt more broken in my life. I debated sharing this so soon and I’m still frightened about making such a private struggle public, but I’m doing it anyway because it's important. After my D & C, I spent hours on the internet searching for women who had been through it. I was desperate to find someone, anyone, who could relate to what I was feeling. Someone to tell me that the depression and hopelessness were normal. That it wasn’t my fault. That I wasn’t broken forever. I found a community of women who shared my exact experience. Who were open and vulnerable about miscarriage, something that isn’t often or openly discussed. It breaks my heart to think that losing a baby feels like something we have to keep to ourselves. Why is it any different than the death of a loved one? How is it any less meaningful? Here is what I have learned as I begin to crawl out of the dark hole: support is everything. I could not have survived this without the unconditional love of my partner. Despite his pain, he was my rock and my safety net. I will never know how to thank him. I also found that opening up to people is crucial. As soon as I told my story, almost everyone I spoke to told me theirs – their own, their wife’s, their sister’s. So many people go through it and understand the breadth of pain, yet so few people talk about it. Finally, I want to share a blog post that resonated with every part of me. You can find the link in my bio, @leandramcohen of @manrepeller articulates the emotional rollercoaster with an eloquence that I could never possess. To anyone out there who has been through a miscarriage, I understand you. I share every bit of your pain and you are not alone. Please be kind to yourself and I hope that you will be comfortable sharing your story too.
A post shared by Claire Holt (@claireholt) on
After all that she’s been through on her journey to parenthood, it’s amazing to see Claire sparking such honest conversations about infertility — and to see her rocking a beautiful baby bump! She and Andrew announced that they were expecting in October and couldn’t be more excited to for their baby boy. “I can’t wait to smother him with kisses,” she said. In her Instagram announcement, which Claire hoped made other women “hopeful,” she admitted that her miscarriage had made her “infinitely more grateful” for the baby in her belly.
In fact, she wouldn’t take the painful experience back! “It was devastating and heartbreaking and something I never saw myself facing,” she said, “but it taught me about myself and other people and what we need to do as women.”
Clearly, this Vampire Diaries alum is going to be an amazing mom. We can’t say congrats enough!
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