The former host of The View, Debbie Matenopoulos, has opened up about her personal life and her experiences with nine miscarriages.
During a recent appearance of Allison Kugel’s podcast, Allison Interviews, Matenopoulos, 47, discussed how she struggled with her pregnancy while working on Home & Family, which occurred after she had her first child, Alexandra, who is now seven years old.
“I was fortunate enough to be able to have Alexandra,” she explained. “And I have not talked about this before. But after Alexandra I had such a hard time staying pregnant. I had nine miscarriages.”
She then detailed that when she was pregnant at the time, not many people in her life knew about it.
“I was pregnant for, like, five years straight and no one knew except my stylist that I was pregnant,” she said. “I would lose them, always.”
“The first three were really hard, and then after that it got to like, ‘Is this a joke?’” she added. “I just didn’t believe it, it didn’t matter. If I got pregnant, it doesn’t matter, it’s not going to hold.”
When Kugel asked if she was ever going to try and get pregnant again, Matenopoulos said that she’s still on the fence about it, as she was devastated after every miscarriage.
“My heart was broken so many times that I got to a point where I said, ‘Okay, this is what the universe and what God wants, and this is just how it is supposed to be.’ So I just stopped trying,” she said. “I stopped trying because I just felt so defeated.”
However, the talk show host still has a lot of love for babies, in general.
“When I look at little babies my ovaries hurt,” she added. “I love the smell of them, I love everything about them. And I mean, I’d love to be able to give her [Alexandra] a sister. Even adoption, that’s not out of the question either.”
Matenopoulos acknowledged that after going through this experience, she has a “pretty soft spot for anyone who has had a miscarriage.”
She also noted how her first three miscarriages were dilation and curettage (D&C), which removes tissue from inside the uterus and is performed to diagnose and treat the results of a miscarriage, per Mayo Clinic. After that, the other six just got “rid of themselves.” But, there was one miscarriage in that was the most difficult for her of them all.
“Probably the worst one for me was when I was about four months pregnant at that point, and I had to host the Golden Globes red carpet for The Insider,” she explained.”I had the D&C on Saturday and then I had to host the Golden Globes on Sunday.”
And despite these nine miscarriages, Matenopoulos still remains extremely grateful for the daughter she has now.
“I really have a lot of empathy for people who are trying to have children and can’t,” she said. “I thank my lucky stars everyday. And instead of turning into ‘why me?’ I say ‘thank you God, thank you universe for giving me Alexandra. The one healthy, beautiful child.”
