New Zealand actress Kimberley Crossman, who suffered a miscarriage in 2023, shared that she lost her baby at 12 weeks after her first scan back home. She has since had a small blueberry tattoo on her hip in commemoration. Photo / @kimcrossman
New Zealand actress Kimberley Crossman, who suffered a miscarriage in 2023, shared that she lost her baby at 12 weeks after her first scan back home. She has since had a small blueberry tattoo on her hip in commemoration. Photo / @kimcrossman
Warning: This article discusses miscarriage, stillbirth and depression.
Kimberley Crossman has opened up about suffering a miscarriage in her first pregnancy, saying the feeling “was unlike anything I had experienced” and explaining how it took “a long time to find and source the help” she needed to heal.
In talking in detail about her experience, Crossman hoped she could provide comfort and help to others who have faced similar loss in their lives.
Crossman - then living in Los Angeles - learned she was pregnant with her then-fiancé and now husband, cameraman Tom Walsh, shortly after their engagement.
The pregnancy, while a surprise, was a delight for the 35-year-old and her partner.
Kimberley Crossman with her husband Tom Walsh in 2024. Photo / @kimcrossman
“I felt a sense of peace, an instant connection to the baby, which was only the size of a blueberry at this point, and the opening of my heart in a way I hadn’t experienced,” she wrote.
Crossman bought a baby journal for “Blueberry” and began writing her thoughts and hopes through the journey to share with her partner and family.
But “things started to change” when she went in around the eight-week mark for a scan.
The baby was growing and their heart was beating, but neither were aligned with what is considered a healthy pregnancy.
Crossman underwent tests and scans over the following weeks, yet the trends were the same. Eventually, she flew home to New Zealand with her mother around the 12-week mark.
Kim Crossman, speaking on her miscarriage, said she felt an emptiness “unlike anything I had experienced”. Photo / @kimcrossman
“When mum and I landed, we drove straight to a scan and I will never forget the moment when the radiologist went looking for a heartbeat that she was unable to find,” Crossman wrote.
“The heartbeat I had been clinging to with such hope for what felt like an eternity.
“The finality of this feeling and the feeling of not having Blueberry anymore after a DNC [dilation and curettage procedure], I would consider two of the loneliest and saddest moments of my life.”
Crossman said she felt an emptiness “unlike anything I had experienced”, mourning not only her baby but the dreams and future she’d hoped and imagined they would have.
Furthermore, she carried a feeling of blame for the loss.
“I was upset at how upset I was, how I couldn’t ‘logic’ my way through the feelings,” she wrote.
“How I felt like this was it – that was my baby and I didn’t want another one. I wanted that one, the one I had connected with, the one that felt so perfect and so aligned and so resilient."
Crossman said she tried to move on while the world around her seemed to do so, but “I was not okay”.
The former Shortland Street star tried varying methods of therapy - including Neuro Emotional Technique (NET) therapy, hypnotherapy and speaking to a medium - to reconcile her grief.
She also got a small blueberry tattoo on her hip, which was “a way for me to reframe that she’s my little partner in crime; I am stronger with her and because of her”.
At the time, she wrote it felt important to share because of the support she’d received online “through our marriage, our love story, our miscarriage, and our fertility journey so far”.
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