Meghan McCain on the Trauma of Having a Miscarriage: 'One of the Darkest Times in My Life'

Meghan McCain is speaking out about one of the "darkest times" in her life.

On a new episode of PEOPLE's podcast Me Becoming Mom, the former View co-host, 37, opens up about the trauma of having a miscarriage, sharing that she was "overwhelmed" and "heartbroken" from the experience.

"I had blood work done at my doctor. And I actually found out the day after," she says of her miscarriage in 2019. "I had a disastrous appearance on Seth Meyers and I didn't understand it. I didn't even really understand what HCG levels are or were. And she told me that it should be doubling and it's not and they aren't as high as they need to be at this point in time and I just was so confused."

McCain, who now is mom to 15-month-old daughter Liberty Sage with husband Ben Domenech, says she initially thought of miscarriages as "bleeding profusely in the middle of a room or something" which was "very different" than her experience.

"And then having to go through a thing so publicly, there was a disaster in my career and then this disaster in my body. It was one of the darkest times in my life," she tells host Zoë Ruderman, Head of Digital at PEOPLE. "It's like every sense in my body was overwhelmed and then I was heartbroken."

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At the time, McCain recalls that her friends, as well as her hair and makeup person, were aware of her miscarriage.

"I went to the doctor and they were in my apartment and they had hid the baby books that I had bought," the Bad Republican author says. "They hid them out of the way 'cause they knew that I was having a miscarriage because I told them and it was just so sad."

McCain first publicly revealed in a New York Times op-ed in July 2019 that she had been pregnant with a daughter but subsequently suffered a miscarriage. She called the loss a "horrendous experience" at the time, adding that she "would not wish it upon anyone."

Meghan McCain/instagram

More than a year later, in September 2020, McCain and Domenech welcomed their first baby together.

The 12-episode weekly Me Becoming Mom podcast explores the various roads to motherhood through different interviews with both celebrity guests and experts in the field. Topics on the show include IVF, adoption, surrogacy, single parenthood, same-sex couples, home births, pregnancy loss, unexpected and surprising birth stories, among other subjects.

Guests on the show include Allyson Felix, Hoda Kotb, Jillian Michaels, Shawn Johnson East and more.