'I had 12 miscarriages, it was shocking' – Former RTE presenter Geri Maye
Former RTE presenter Geri Maye has opened up about the devastating impact having 12 miscarriages had on her.
The presenter said two of the miscarriages occurred while she was presenting live on air while working in RTE.
Geri, who presented Winning Streak alongside Marty Whelan for several years, found the tragedies extremely isolating.
“I’ve had 12… it was shocking and I’ll never forget the first time, saying to my husband I can never go through this again.
“If someone gave me a crystal ball and told me there was eleven more to go, I think I would have crawled back into bed and never gotten out again,” she told Ruth Scott on Virgin Media chat show Elaine.
But I didn’t know where to turn.. and I think that was the big thing at that stage, where do you turn.
“And I found as well, you talk about support networks, you can lose friends in all of this as well, they don’t know what to say to you, they don’t understand if they haven’t been through it.”
The Limerick presenter said she miscarried twice while on air.
“I was live on air doing a show with RTE, and I had miscarried twice live on air because it was the decision to go to Holles Street or do the programme, and the programme won out.
“I started to become a different person because now I went, ‘I have to get on with this’.
“I had to just do this, and all I had to say to my co-presenter was ‘you need to keep an eye on me today’.
“I remember going for a scan and the baby was passing away and I just said to the doctor, ‘look I’ve to be on a plane, I’ve to do a interview with some celebrity in London at 6am.
“Am I going to miscarry in the middle of it’.
“And I actually stopped and went, ‘what am I turning into?'”
Geri, who is now married to businessman Peter Collins, said her husband helped her through the heartbreak.
“It was down to myself and my husband. It was the two of us against the rest of the world,” she said.
“It’s funny, a friend of mine split up from her husband and I was really surprised and I said ‘what was the trigger’ and she said ‘oh we had a miscarriage a couple of years ago and that was the start of the end’.
“And I realised how strong we were actually. It managed to make us more cohesive in so many ways because now this was us.”
Roughly 14,000 women have miscarriages every year in Ireland.
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