Laura Prepon Reveals Devastating Decision to Terminate Her Second Pregnancy in New Book

Actor Laura Prepon gets very candid about motherhood in her new book and describes the hard decisions she’s had to make as one. The book, You & I as Mothers, is a guide for mothers that encourages women to be honest and open about the difficulties many moms face.

In a new interview, ahead of the book’s release, Laura shared, “I feel in order to have a real conversation about motherhood, you need to share truths and talk about what’s really going on.”

Laura Prepon opens up about past struggles to create space for other moms to do the same.

Laura does indeed get real describing the heartbreaking decision she had to make about her second pregnancy. She decided to share her story to help others feel like they have someone else who has gone through a similar situation and faced very tough decisions around motherhood.

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Laura had a difficult choice to make about her second pregnancy.

“I’m very candid in this book, very vulnerable,” Laura Prepon said of her guide to motherhood, You & I As Mothers. “I’m a private person so this is the first time I’ve been this open. But I feel in order to have a real conversation about motherhood, you need to share truths and talk about what’s really going on.”

Laura and her husband Ben Foster had their first child, Ella, in 2017. A year later, the actor was pregnant again and the couple was very excited to grow their family. However, Laura had a feeling about the pregnancy and decided to hold off telling friends and family about it until she received a sonogram.

At 16-weeks pregnant she got horrible news from her ob-gyn.

At 16 weeks, Laura got that sonogram and along with it some terrible news. Laura knew something was wrong the instant she looked at the screen. The tech called for an ob-gyn to take a look and the doctor advised that her baby could have a condition called cystic hygroma. Cystic hygroma is the development of an abnormal lymphatic vascular system during embryonic growth.

Laura was scheduled for an echocardiogram that confirmed the doctor’s suspicion, “Our neonatal specialist told us the brain was not growing and the bones were not growing,” Laura explained. “We were told the pregnancy would not go to full term and that my body was at risk carrying any longer.”

She turned to her husband for strength and decided to feel her emotions instead of masking them.

“Ben held me as I cried,” she said. “We had to terminate the pregnancy.”

Laura and Ben were heartbroken. That devastation was made worse by persistent self-loathing that Laura writes about in her book. Negative feelings had caused her to develop an eating disorder when she was 15 and persisted well into her 20s. Bulimia had been a way for Laura to mask her feelings.

“To get to the second trimester and then be told this awful news, I felt like a failure,” she said. “I felt like my body had failed and failed having another baby. The whole cycle of what’s wrong with my body came back.”

She initially blamed herself for the complications but transformed the negative feelings.

“I was scared that somehow the abuse I put my body through could have been part of the reason things went wrong,” she says. “Doctors confirmed it wasn’t but in those moments it’s easy to punish yourself.”

Fortunately, she did not let her grief and feelings of guilt consume her. She turned to her husband for support and strength.

By sharing her story with others, she could help them and heal herself.

“He was so supportive,” she said. “It got to the point where I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get pregnant again because the healing process took so long.  But my husband knew we would be able to have a healthy sibling for Ella.”

After sharing her story of loss with a close friend, Laura realized that she needed to tell her story. “I began hearing of others who had gone through something similar and I realized I was not alone.”

Laura got pregnant again in 2019 and she was fearful at first.

Laura got pregnant again last year and the excitement she felt for the possibility of another child quickly turned to fear. “I couldn’t fathom going through it again,” says explained.  “When the news began to sink in, we realized we’re going to go on this journey again and bring our daughter a sibling.”

“I was also ecstatic,” she said. “I mean, it’s magical.”

She’s now a proud mother of two and cherishes every blessing.

Laura gave birth to a baby boy in February and described her elation, saying “It made me so thankful for the blessing we have now. It put into perspective what a blessing it is to have a healthy child.”

There are many ups and downs in parenting. We’re excited to hear more from Laura and read the insights from her motherhood guide.