The model and cookbook author Chrissy Teigen said late Wednesday that she and her husband, the musician John Legend, had lost their baby, a son, days after she posted on social media about suffering pregnancy complications.
“Driving home from the hospital with no baby,” Ms. Teigen wrote on Twitter. “How can this be real.”
Ms. Teigen also posted a black-and-white photograph to Twitter and Instagram that showed her sitting on a hospital bed with her hands clasped in a prayer-like position, seemingly in tears.
By sharing such a deeply personal tragedy on social media, Ms. Teigen joined a long list of celebrities who have broken a social taboo in recent years to speak out about pregnancy loss. Others include the singers Beyoncé and Celine Dion, the actresses Brooke Shields and Kirstie Alley and the former “Dawson’s Creek” star James Van Der Beek.
Ms. Teigen had been hospitalized a few days earlier, and posted about a “scramble to hear the heartbeat.” It was not clear how far along she was in the pregnancy, but last month, she accidentally let it slip that she was expecting a baby boy.
In an emotional post accompanying the picture, Ms. Teigen wrote that she and Mr. Legend had not decided on their other two children’s names until just before they left the hospital. The couple have one daughter, Luna, 4, and a son, Miles, 2.
“But we, for some reason, had started to call this little guy in my belly Jack,” she told her combined 44 million followers on the platforms. “So he will always be Jack to us.”
Ms. Teigen wrote in an Instagram post on Wednesday that despite many blood transfusions, her baby had not been able to get the fluids he needed.
“We are shocked and in the kind of deep pain you only hear about, the kind of pain we’ve never felt before,” she wrote.
“On this darkest of days, we will grieve, we will cry out eyes out,” she added. “But we will hug and love each other harder and get through it.”
Later on Wednesday, Mr. Legend wrote on Twitter, “We love you, Jack,” followed by five black hearts.