Model and cookbook author Chrissy Teigen said late Wednesday that she and her husband, singer John Legend, had lost their third child, a son, days after she posted on social media about suffering pregnancy complications.

“Driving home from the hospital with no baby,” Teigen wrote on Twitter. “How can this be real.”

Teigen also posted a black-and-white photograph on Twitter and Instagram that showed her sitting on a hospital bed with her hands clasped in a prayerlike position, seemingly in tears. Another Instagram photo shows her holding her baby as Legend kisses her shoulder.

Teigen, 34, joined a long list of celebrities who have broken a social taboo in recent years to speak out about pregnancy loss. Others include former first lady Michelle Obama; singers Beyoncé and Celine Dion; and actors Brooke Shields, Kirstie Alley, Hugh Jackman and James Van Der Beek.

Such disclosures have resonated with women across the United States, where pregnancy discrimination is widespread, organizations that provide family-planning or abortion services are often targeted by conservative officials, and miscarriages are still largely spoken of in hushed tones.

“What nobody tells you is that miscarriage happens all the time, to more women than you’d ever guess, given the relative silence around it,” Obama wrote in “Becoming,” her 2018 memoir. “I learned this only after I mentioned that I’d miscarried to a couple of friends, who responded by heaping me with love and support and also their own miscarriage stories.”

It was not clear how far along Teigen had been in her pregnancy. Last month, she let it slip that she was expecting a baby boy.

This week, she said on Instagram that she was hospitalized Sunday because of excessive bleeding from her placenta. She also posted a picture of a blood transfusion pamphlet.

In an emotional post, Teigen wrote Wednesday that she and Legend, 41, 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.”

In many ways, Teigen and Legend, who live in Los Angeles and own property in New York City, are the quintessential American celebrity power couple for the social media age. She began carving out a public profile a decade ago, notably as a swimsuit model for Sports Illustrated. Her profile grew beyond the fashion world, and she used her love of cooking to publish cookbooks.

Teigen amassed millions of followers who praised her candid statements on the platform, her irreverent sense of humor and her willingness not to back down from a fight.

Last year, Teigen and Legend publicly sparred with President Donald Trump, who called her “filthy mouthed” in a Twitter post. Teigen fired back with expletives — including one that Trump famously used in a recording that surfaced shortly before the 2016 presidential election — and the spat went viral.

She has also used social media to advocate for progressive causes.

In 2015, for example, she spoke out in support of protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, and led a celebrity-driven campaign for reproductive rights after fatal shootings at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.

She has also been the target of vitriol on the platform, and as reaction poured in after the couple’s loss, with many people, like comedian Sarah Silverman, expressing sympathy, a hashtag “Oh Chrissy” was co-opted by Teigen’s critics.

Two weeks ago, Teigen wrote that she had been placed on bed rest because of pregnancy complications. “On punishment for saying the first two pregnancies were easy peasy,” she joked. Last week, she posted a photo of herself working from bed.

During the early stages of her ordeal, she posted extensively about everything from baking to politics, including Trump’s decision to nominate Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court.

Teigen appeared to be in good spirits in the hospital. In one video, she joked with her husband, who had apparently thought that her hospital room came with a minibar. Another video showed him making a sandwich.

But Tuesday, Teigen wrote on Twitter that she had just experienced a “really scary morning.”

“Huge clot, almost save-worthy,” she wrote. “The scramble to hear the heartbeat seemed like hours. I never thought I’d relief sigh so much in my liiiiife.”

Then Teigen wrote 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 our eyes out,” she added. “But we will hug and love each other harder and get through it.”

Later Wednesday, Legend wrote on Twitter, “We love you, Jack,” followed by five black hearts.

© 2020 The New York Times Company