Peta Murgatroyd Suffered A Miscarriage While Maks Chmerkovskiy Was In Ukraine

On Tuesday, Peta Murgatroyd revealed that she suffered a miscarriage while her husband Maks Chmerkovskiy was in Ukraine.

Peta broke the story to PEOPLE and described what it was like being loaded into an ambulance at her home in Malibu while her five-year-old son, Shai Aleksander Chmerkovskiy, looked on.

The 35-year-old dancer from New Zealand told the magazine that she called for paramedics after she found herself lying on her son’s bedroom floor. She said she was unable to move, although she thought it was from being diagnosed with COVID-19 a few days before.

“I had no strength. I couldn't open a dishwasher,” Peta recalled. “I couldn't open the fridge to feed Shai, to get him some toast. It got so bad that my breath was starting to be affected. It was really dramatic.”

While she was in the hospital, she called her husband Maksim, who was thousands of miles away in Ukraine. When the doctor came into the room, Peta recalled, “I thought he was going to reveal some really bad news. I was like, 'What's wrong?'” Peta said that the doctor’s face dropped and he asked her if she knew she was pregnant.

Maks was celebrating on the other end of the phone because all he heard was that she was pregnant. What he didn’t understand was that she had already lost the baby.

Peta told the publication that she “ultimately had no idea” that she was pregnant. She had started bleeding two days before being hospitalized, but she had attributed it to her period.

The two had been trying to grow their family for years. Pete said that she had even flown to Maks overseas in the hopes of trying to conceive. “I was like, 'Screw it. I'm going to fly to you in Ukraine. I'm ovulating soon. Let's make it happen,'” she said. At the time, Maks had been serving as a judge on the Ukraine version of “Dancing with the Stars.”

However, she appeared to have come down with COVID-19 during her trip. The doctors believe that her body wasn’t able to sustain the fetus and fight off the infection so early in the pregnancy. Peta said, “I felt like I was dying, but then I obviously knew what had happened. It was just all too much for my body and I couldn't do it. I couldn't believe that this was happening to me.”

Mars told PEOPLE that it “makes you feel helpless” not to be able to support his wife in person.

Unfortunately, Peta revealed that she had already suffered a miscarriage in 2020: in the bathroom stall of a Whole Foods supermarket. At the time, she had only been five weeks into her pregnancy.

“It was so shocking and so out of the blue. I had walked [into the store] and it just all started happening,” she recalled. “I was petrified. I was trying to tell myself, 'It's going to be okay.' Of course, deep down, I knew.”

She said that she just sat in the bathroom, sobbing. “I'm surprised nobody walked in because I was crying so heavily and wailing, one of those deep cries,” she recalled. “That was something that will probably live with me for the rest of my life, being on that toilet by myself, knowing what was happening and not being able to stop it.”

Mars and Peta had married three years earlier in 2017; however, he described her first miscarriage as the lowest point in their relationship. “I think the darkest part is when the person you are in love with calls you and she says that she had a miscarriage in the bathroom, that's as dark as it can get,” he said.

Peta said that she felt “completely embarrassed” and “ultimately ashamed” and didn’t know how to put what had just happened to her into words. “I'm somebody who prides herself on health and wellness. I exercise every single day,” she explained. “But as I came to realize, that doesn't really go hand-in-hand with the reproductive system.”

She said that the trauma “took a very long time to get over it” and revealed that she spent “months and months of crying most nights in bed by myself, crying in the shower.” She said there was “a lot of denial” and wondering what she had done wrong.

Nine months later, Peta had been making plans to meet up with her husband in New York and surprise him with the news that she was pregnant yet again. Only a few days before she was scheduled to fly out, she experienced another miscarriage.

Peta was emotional as she recalled the conversation, having to tell her husband that she miscarried again. “This was the first time that I heard him get really upset, which was hard to hear because I know how it affects him too,” she recalled.

Looking back, Mars told PEOPLE, “I never thought that two healthy, athletic people could be in a predicament like this. It's a lot to process.”

“I try to do my best in supporting Peta,” he added. “I'm a changed man because of this experience. I think that if you look around, you will find that most of your friends have had issues [trying to conceive]. I realized that this is more common and this is not being talked about.”

The couple is now working with fertility doctors and are starting in vitro fertilization to give Shai the sibling that he’s always wanted. Doctors currently believe that Pete has Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, which can cause problems with ovulation that can lead to infertility.

Peta said that she’s in a “much happier place” now that she has answers. “For the first time in nearly two years, I feel excited,” she said. “I don't have any other words but hope and positivity. I'm crossing my fingers that this is going to work.”

Many fans of the couple also have their fingers crossed that the couple will be able to welcome a new bundle of joy into their family soon.