When Beck shared the story of her pregnancy loss, she didn't expect a thousand women to respond.

Beck Zemek became a breakout star of the 2021 season of Married at First Sight.

Paired with Jake Edwards and engaging in a war of words with Bryce Ruthven, she quickly won over viewers. Four years on, Beck is a mother to a daughter, Immy, who she welcomed with her fiancé Ben Michell in May 2022.

Back in November, Zemek announced that she and Ben were expecting their second baby. However, last month, she shared the devastating news with her followers that, during her second trimester, she had suffered a silent miscarriage and lost the baby. They named her Ivy.

In an exclusive chat with Mamamia, Beck opened up on what she had gone through.

"This was our second child, already having a successful pregnancy with Immy. I have PCOS, so we always had in the back of our minds that we might need to go down a fertility route," she shared.

Beck put in the research to try to increase her chance of naturally conceiving, and the couple were thrilled when she fell pregnant after a few months.

"When we found out, we're like, great! This is fantastic. You felt like the reward had paid off all those small little things that you've been doing."

During her first trimester, Beck didn't notice any differences between her first and second pregnancies, with both leaving her extremely sick, vomiting and bedridden at times.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by B E C K Z E M E K (@beckzemek)

"Everything that I expected to be happening was happening. I went for my 6-week scan, and that's when they first detected a heartbeat, so that's the first thing to tick off the list," she said.

"We were just in absolute high hopes. I'd already picked out a name. I did the test to find out the gender. Everything was going so smoothly."

The couple decided to announce the exciting news of their upcoming arrival to friends and family at their engagement party. A week later, Beck attended her 13-week scan appointment alone.

"My partner said, 'Do you want me to come to the appointment?' I was like, 'No, you don't have to… it's just a checkup… don't even worry about it' kind of thing," she recalled.

"It was just a general checkup appointment. That's how confident I was that there was just nothing wrong. I was just like, 'I'll see you in 20 minutes when I get home.'"

Beck was lying on the bed during her appointment when the nurse suddenly froze.

"She kind of just stopped, and that's when I knew she was looking for the heartbeat. She did it a few times. I felt like I had an out-of-body experience where I was just floating there, just waiting for something to be said, but nothing was being said," she said.

"I didn't even know what to say myself. I don't want to hear the news, so I don't want to say anything. It was just silence. She said, 'I'll be back, I just have to double-check with the doctor. I just can't seem to get a heartbeat right now, but we can just do an internal scan and we'll figure it out.'"

Watch Liz Ellis and Debra Lawrence share their miscarriage experiences. Post continues after video.

After the internal scan, the devastating news she had suspected was confirmed.

"She did the internal scan. Absolutely nothing. I'm just staring at a screen with what I thought would be my future child. I'm looking at her, I can't put it together right now," she said.

After being told by the nurse that she had a miscarriage, Beck said she was surprised by what followed. She said "the worst part" was how she felt she had to hide herself, with a nurse telling Beck "there's a back door that you can leave through."

"I was just like, and that's it. Now what? I don't even know 'now what'. I didn't even ask. I just went out this back door and then I felt this shame come over me. Oh my God, I can't be seen. I was in tears by this stage, and I just sat in the car and cried and cried and cried."

It wasn't until Beck's partner got home that she told him of the news of the miscarriage, which he didn't believe at first. "He was like, 'Are you sure?' and he kept saying, 'Go back, go back, go back.' I was like, no, that's not how these things work. This is what's happened."

Once home, Beck had to research what the next steps were before booking in to see her doctor straight away.

"It was really hard to comprehend. You don't have questions at first because you're trying to absorb what's going on. But then you have a million questions," she reflected.

"I needed this nightmare to be over. It was literally two days later, I was in hospital having my D&C [surgery], which was only 10 days from me announcing the news at my engagement party."

It was a pain unlike anything Beck had experienced. "Even with my doctor, [she told him] 'I just want to be put to sleep and pretend this never happened.' That's literally what I said to him."

It's been especially difficult as Beck and her partner have processed the grief differently.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by B E C K Z E M E K (@beckzemek)

"It's been really hard because I feel I was really connected with the baby, whereas he obviously didn't get to experience those amazing 13 weeks with her the same way I did," she said.

"You can just see his brain's trying to accept what's happened, but he just doesn't really know how to express how he's feeling or talk to me about how we're feeling."

Beck decided to post the news so she wouldn't have to tell everyone in her life. She told her and Ben's parents and five friends, but said she felt mentally drained from telling people. "Telling my friends individually was so painful," she recalled.

"I didn't want to explain to them why I couldn't tell them. I needed to rip a band-aid off. I needed to do that because I needed reality to sink in for me as well. I hadn't really been saying it out loud."

"I'm seeing people that are acquaintances or know of me, literally coming up to me and saying, 'Oh, congratulations.' I wasn't even in a position to let them know that I'd lost a child because I didn't want to have to explain it."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by B E C K Z E M E K (@beckzemek)

What Beck never expected was the 'overwhelming' messages of support she received in response.

"I started getting this amazing response that I didn't expect. I stayed up all that night reading all these messages," she said.

" I would say easily 1000 messages. I sat there and I read every single one. I didn't get back to everyone, but I tried to."

Many women simply wanted to share their own experiences with pregnancy loss.

"For some of the women I've been speaking to, I was the first person they told they had a miscarriage. They've been holding on to that, what they've called a 'burden', which breaks my heart, because here I was thinking, I'm so alone in this," she said.

"It was women literally saying 'I know that feeling, there is a light at the end of the tunnel', and their stories were so specific: these women didn't forget anything about the day they found out, the day they lost them."

The messages gave Beck some comfort in knowing that her grief of losing her child was understood by others. "I couldn't stop reading these messages. I felt so warm, knowing that these women didn't choose to let go of that moment, and they remember it and they want to cherish it," she said.

"A heartbeat is a heartbeat: she was still alive, even though she wasn't meant for this world. What these messages meant to me was that I wasn't alone."

Ultimately, Beck has taken away from this experience that she believes that the subject of pregnancy loss should be less stigmatised, as more awareness is needed for an experience that affects over 110,000 Australian women per year.

"Even in school, they talk to you about birth and how to give birth. I remember having to watch a birth video on how to give birth. But no one ever actually talked about the other side of what happens," she said.

"How is it that this is happening to so many women, but I'm only finding out what a silent miscarriage means the day I'm having one? I had never heard the terminology silent miscarriage in my life. I've seen it in the movies, you wake up, you're in a pool of blood, you rush to the hospital. You lose your child. That was the only thing I thought a miscarriage literally was."

She hopes that by removing some of the taboo, the shame around being transparent about pregnancy loss can be shed.

"It's just insane how common it is, yet we've had this shadow cast upon us that we've done something wrong if we're not able to produce a child," she shared.

"Putting my story out is about more than just me. This is something that so many people go through. Even though I had a miscarriage, I was grateful to even be able to conceive because I have so many friends at the moment going through infertility as well. Again, that's not talked about enough."

If you or anyone you know would like to speak with an expert, please contact the SANDS Australia 24-Hour Support Line (1300 072 637). Feature image: Instagram/@beckzemek.