The Facebook founder celebrated his good news – and his personal pain – in a powerful status update.
Mark Zuckerberg is many things. The creator of Facebook, a billionaire philanthropist, and now, he can add father-to-be to the list. Zuckerberg and his wife Dr Priscilla Chan, who have been married since 2012, are notoriously quiet about their private life, with Zuckerberg preferring to share more about his charity efforts on Facebook than holiday snaps.
But today he shared his big news with an acknowledgement of the pain that can come with a journey to parenthood.
Zuckerberg has written about the three miscarriages he and his wife Priscilla have privately suffered. He hopes that honestly speaking about the issue will help others who have experienced loss:
Priscilla and I have some exciting news: we’re expecting a baby girl!
This will be a new chapter in our lives. We’ve already been so fortunate for the opportunity to touch people’s lives around the world — Cilla as a doctor and educator, and me through this community and philanthropy. Now we’ll focus on making the world a better place for our child and the next generation.
We want to share one experience to start. We’ve been trying to have a child for a couple of years and have had three miscarriages along the way.
You feel so hopeful when you learn you’re going to have a child. You start imagining who they’ll become and dreaming of hopes for their future. You start making plans, and then they’re gone. It’s a lonely experience. Most people don’t discuss miscarriages because you worry your problems will distance you or reflect upon you — as if you’re defective or did something to cause this. So you struggle on your own.
In today’s open and connected world, discussing these issues doesn’t distance us; it brings us together. It creates understanding and tolerance, and it gives us hope.
When we started talking to our friends, we realized how frequently this happened — that many people we knew had similar issues and that nearly all had healthy children after all.
We hope that sharing our experience will give more people the same hope we felt and will help more people feel comfortable sharing their stories as well.
Our good news is that our pregnancy is now far enough along that the risk of loss is very low and we are very hopeful.
Cilla and our child are both healthy, I’m extremely excited to meet her and our dog Beast has no idea what’s coming. In our ultrasound, she even gave me a thumbs up “like” with her hand, so I’m already convinced she takes after me.
We’re looking forward to welcoming her into the world and sharing more soon when she’s ready to come out and meet everyone!
The pair (and their dog, Beast) are clearly thrilled. Just look at those smiles.
We couldn’t be happier for the couple.
Want to see more of the duo (and their pup)? Click through these pictures.
Want even more? Try:
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Top Comments
Congratulation's they seem like a lovely couple and I wish them all the best. Very sorry to hear that they've lost 3 babies, I've never experience that, I can't have kid's at all so I don't know their pain but I do know the pain of not being able to conceive and pray they have a happy and healthy baby girl and more babies together in the future.
Congratulations to them, and thank you for being so honest about what has happened along the way. It's a very difficult and private thing to share, so people don't talk about it. It wasn't until I had my first miscarriage that I discovered how many other women I knew had had one too.