“Boy Meets World” alum Trina McGee says her recent pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.
The actress revealed over the summer that she was expecting her fourth child at “the tender age of 54.” But when she appeared on “The Tamron Hall Show” on Monday to discuss geriatric pregnancy (what health professionals refer to as pregnancy starting at age 34), she was no longer pregnant.
“I lost the baby,” the tearful actor said on the daytime talk show. “We weren’t expecting it. It was towards the end of the first trimester. We don’t really have any concrete reason for it.”
The “Friday After Next” star said she was still grateful to have “the experience of being able to conceive at this age and at this time.” Unfortunately, the pregnancy loss caused her “a lot of depression afterward,” which made it difficult for her to get out of bed, she said.
“There’s so much that goes into when you really want a family and you want your family to be complete and you have so many dreams,” McGee said. “And it’s really hard to face the fact that that’s not going to happen at this crossroads point.”
She also said she's not sure she wants to try to conceive again.
“A part of me doesn’t want to go through this ever again,” she said. “The conclusion I came to is that we will still love each other, if something happens that way, fine, but I don’t want to create another anxiety for myself. Sometimes it’s really better to let go and let God work.”
McGee told Hall — who billed the interview as McGee’s “first open public conversation since that June headline” about the pregnancy — that many women had reached out to her to talk about their pregnancy later in life. And Hall, who wanted to talk about it on her show, was shocked to learn in her pre-interview conversations with McGee that the pregnancy had ended.
McGee rose to fame playing the witty, poetic Angela Moore on ABC’s “Boy Meets World” and its Disney Channel spin-off, “Girl Meets World.” She has been married to Marcello Thedford for 16 years and has three adult children from previous relationships. She said she and Thedford had been trying to conceive but “not in a very aggressive way,” and that she had tried “natural remedies,” wanted to “see what happened” and “have fun trying.”
Hall noted that by the time women reach age 54, most of them are in perimenopause or menopause, when their reproductive years are ending. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says the average age women go through menopause is 51. For black women, it's earlier, according to some studies..
McGee, now 55, said her period had recently decreased, leading her to believe she was in perimenopause when she became pregnant. But that didn't stop her from wanting to expand her family.
“I’m a very athletic person. I feel very young. I feel like I can bend over and pick up a child. And I wanted to have that experience with my now-husband,” McGee said. “Also, just knowing a lot more at this age. When you raise your kids young, you miss out on some things. And that’s OK. But I wanted to have that opportunity to really pass on to a child all the knowledge that I have and get the results of this amazing human being that I have in my mind, given what my husband and I have to offer.”
She and her husband moved to Belize, where they have family, and she went to a holistic healer. She “de-stressed” and got in touch with her “feminine energy,” changed her diet, ate much healthier, and changed her mindset during that time.
“To be honest, maybe I was a little immature. [about the pregnancy] That's what I was doing so “I was very excited and surprised,” she said. “And I realized that this is not a bad thing. Along with the criticism, I realized that there are many women, even 55 and older, who still want to get pregnant and don’t want to be pigeonholed into this geriatric pregnancy thing.”
But, she clarified, “every person’s body is different and you really need to listen to your doctors and what they tell you about your situation.”
