Philadelphia-based attorney Zakiya Barnett was at a friend's apartment in New York City when she felt that all too familiar cramping.
"I started spotting and was like, 'Oh man, this is going to happen,'" she recalled. Just days earlier at her 10-week appointment, her doctor had informed her that this, her second pregnancy, was also likely to end in a miscarriage. "They heard and saw the heartbeat, but it was weak," she explained. "The doctor told me, 'We hear a heartbeat today, but next week when you come in, we probably won't.' I came to terms with it."
So "at two, three in the morning," she detailed to Sheinelle Jones in the journalist's Dec. 19 MSNBC documentary Stories We Tell: The Fertility Secret. she crept to the bathroom and allowed nature to take its course. "I had a miscarriage," she shared, "and went to one of my best friend's baby showers that same day."
The statement left Jones floored—and not just at Barnett's unfathomable strength. "She's one of my best friends," the Today co-host marveled to E! News. "I had no idea."
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