“Boy Meets World” alum Trina McGee says that her recent pregnancy has ended in a miscarriage.
The actor revealed over the summer that she was expecting her fourth child at “the tender age of 54.” But by the time she appeared on “The Tamron Hall Show” on Monday to discuss the geriatric pregnancy — what health professionals label a pregnancy over the age of 34 — she was no longer pregnant.
“I did lose the baby,” the actor said through tears on the daytime talk show. “It wasn’t expected. It was closer to the end of the first trimester. We really don’t have any real reasons why.”
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 led her “a lot of depression after,” making it hard to get out of bed, she said.
“There are so many things that come when you really want a family and you want your family to be complete and there’s so many dreams that you have,” McGee said. “And it’s really hard to face the fact that that’s not going to happen at this point in the junction.”
She also said that she isn’t sure if she wants to try to conceive again.
“Part of me doesn’t ever want to go through this again,” she said. “The conclusion I came to is, we’ll just keep loving each other, if something happens that way, fine, but I don’t want to put another anxiety on myself. Sometimes it really is better to let go and let God.”
McGee told Hall — who touted the interview as McGee’s “first open public conversation since that June headline” about the pregnancy — that so many women had reached out to her about her later-in-life pregnancy. And Hall, who wanted to discuss it on her show, was surprised to learn in her preinterview conversations with McGee that the pregnancy was over.
McGee rose to fame playing the witty and poetic Angela Moore on ABC’s “Boy Meets World” and its Disney Channel spinoff “Girl Meets World.” She has been married to Marcello Thedford for 16 years and has three adult children from previous relationships. She said that she and Thedford had been trying to conceive, but “not in a majorly aggressively way,” and that she tried “natural remedies,” wanted to “see what happened” and “have fun trying.”
Hall noted that by the time women hit 54, most women are in perimenopause or menopause, when their reproductive years come to an end. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that the average age that women go through menopause is 51. For Black women, it’s earlier, according to some studies.
McGee, now 55, said that her period had slowed down recently, leading her to believe she was in perimenopause when she got pregnant. But that didn’t stop her from wanting to expand her family.
“I’m a very athletic-type person. I feel very young. I feel like I can bend over and pick up a child. And I wanted that experience with my current husband,” McGee said. “Also, just knowing so much more at this age. When you raise kids young, you miss some things. And that’s OK. But I wanted that chance to really pour into a child all of the knowledge that I have and get the results of this amazing human being that I have in my mind, given what me and my husband have to offer.”
She and her husband moved to Belize, where they have family, and she saw a holistic healer. She got “rid of the stress” and got in touch with her “feminine energy,” altered her diet, ate a lot healthier and changed her mindset during that time.
“To be honest I might’ve been a little immature [about the pregnancy] in that I was so excited. And so shocked,” she said. “And I did realize that this isn’t a bad thing. Along with the criticism, I realized there are so many women — even at 55 and older — who still want to get pregnant who don’t want to be boxed into this geriatric pregnancy thing.”
But, she clarified, “everybody’s body is different and you really should listen to your doctors and what they’re telling you about where you’re at.”
