Traumatic I can't give daughter a sibling: Rani Mukerji opens up on miscarriage

Actor opens up about the harrowing ordeal of trying for a second child with Bollywood mogul Aditya Chopra

Bollywood star Rani Mukerji laid bare in an interview the trauma she suffered after her devastating miscarriage five months into her pregnancy. The renowned star revealed that during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Mukerji was trying for a second child with husband and filmmaker Aditya Chopra, reported The Indian Express.

Mukerji and Chopra became parents for the first time in 2015 when Mukerji gave birth to their daughter Adira. The Bollywood star revealed that the couple had begun trying for their longed-for second child when Adira was a year old. Facing crushing disappointment year after year, Mukerji spoke of her sadness at feeling too old to have a second child, and the pain that engulfs her knowing that her daughter may never have a sibling.

“It’s difficult,” admitted the Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway star. “I tried for a second baby for almost seven years. My daughter is eight years old now, and when she was one or one-and-a-half, I tried for my second, and I kept trying, and I finally got pregnant, and then I lost the baby. Obviously, it was a very, very testing time for me. And also, I’m not very young, though I look young. I’m going to turn 46. It’s not an age where I can have a baby.”

However, Mukerji added that though her ordeal may be acute, her experiences have led her to value her daughter more than ever, whom she lovingly referred to as her “miracle child”. “It is traumatic for me that I can’t give a sibling to my daughter, and it really pains me,” she maintained. “But we have to always be grateful for what we have. For me, Adira is my miracle child, and I’m really happy I have her. I’m working on that, and I’m telling myself that yes, Adira is enough.”

Mukerji first spoke publicly about her miscarriage at the Indian Film Festival in Melbourne last year, and had previously refrained from discussing it in public during promotions of her latest film out of fear that it would undercut what the movie was trying to achieve. “I didn’t want it to come across as me trying to speak about a personal experience that would propel the film,” she explained.

Once reigning Indian cinema as one of the highest paid actors of Bollywood in the 2000s, Mukerji tied the knot with Chopra in a private ceremony in 2014, a year before becoming a mother to Adira. She has previously gone on record to note that “the time spent being a mother is the happiest period of my life.”

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