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Former ESPN anchor shares heartbreaking story of having a miscarriage on air

Former "SportsCenter" anchor Sara Walsh is opening up about her struggle to become a mother, and why she kept her pregnancy so private.
/ Source: TODAY Contributor

A former ESPN anchor opened up about her painful path to motherhood in a searing post, including her story of suffering a miscarriage while hosting a live broadcast for "SportsCenter."

"I arrived in Tuscaloosa almost three months pregnant. I wouldn't return the same way," sports journalist Sara Walsh wrote in an Instagram post that has resonated with women everywhere struggling with infertility and miscarriages. "The juxtaposition of college kids going nuts behind our set, while I was losing a baby on it, was surreal. I was scared, nobody knew I was pregnant, so I did the show while having a miscarriage. On television. My husband had to watch this unfold from more than a thousand miles away, texting me hospital options during commercial breaks."

In the photo accompanying the post, Walsh sits with her now three-month-old twins, Hutton and Brees, who are dressed in matching "good egg" onesies.

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"Finding a good egg didn't come easy for me," Walsh shared. "And I suspect there are many people out there facing the same struggle."

Walsh suffered two additional miscarriages, and recalls having surgery one day and shooting her show the next, in order to keep her struggles private.

Walsh and her husband, professional baseball player Matt Buschmann, then turned to IVF, and learned that doctors were only able to salvage two eggs from her retrieval procedure.

"I refused to even use them for a long time, because I couldn't bear the idea of all hope being gone," said Walsh. "I blew off pregnancy tests, scared to know if it worked. It had. Times two. It was exciting news, but we knew better than to celebrate."

Walsh shares that she hid her pregnancy from fans with strategic camera angles and carefully chosen outfits, and refrained from announcing her pregnancy to friends or having a baby shower out of fear of losing her babies.

"For those that thought I was weirdly quiet about my pregnancy, now you know why," Walsh wrote.

Walsh announced on May 4 that she'd been laid off by ESPN during her maternity leave so would not be returning to work.

She shared that in the past, Mother's Day was a difficult day for her due to her losses, but wrote that this year, she was counting her blessings.

"For as long as I can remember I hosted SportsCenter on Mother's Day, and the last couple years doing that have been personally brutal. An hours-long reminder of everything that had gone wrong," Walsh wrote. "I wasn't on TV today, and I'm not sure when I will be again, but instead I got to hang with these two good eggs. My ONLY good eggs. And I know how lucky I really am."

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