She tragically suffered a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy while she was married to Tom Cruise.
And Nicole Kidman has revealed that her grief feels just as raw two decades on, as she discussed the ‘huge, aching yearning’ she felt after the ordeal.
The acclaimed actress, 50, said the ‘enormous amount of pain’ she and Tom Cruise endured drove them to adopt their now-grown children Isabella and Connor.
‘There’s a huge, aching yearning’: Nicole Kidman, 50, has discussed the ‘massive grief’ of suffering a miscarriage while she was married to Tom Cruise (pictured together in 1992)
‘I know the yearning. That yearning. It’s a huge, aching yearning. And the loss! The loss of a miscarriage is not talked about enough,’ she told Tatler magazine.
‘That’s massive grief to certain women.’
Nicole was 23 when she lost her first child by Cruise shortly after their wedding in 1990 because of an ectopic pregnancy – a condition in which an embryo starts to develop in a fallopian tube instead of in the womb.
She finally managed to get pregnant again but suffered a miscarriage around the time Tom filed for divorce in 2001 after 11 years together.
Ordeal: ‘The loss of a miscarriage is not talked about enough,’ she told Tatler magazine. ‘That’s massive grief to certain women’
Devastating: Nicole was 23 when she lost her first child by Cruise shortly after their wedding in 1990 because of an ectopic pregnancy – a condition in which an embryo starts to develop in a fallopian tube instead of in the womb (seen in 1994)
After her first marriage the pair decided to adopt Isabella and Connor followed two years ago.
‘There’s an enormous amount of pain and an enormous amount of joy on the other side of it,’ Nicole said as she described the feeling of becoming a mother.
‘The flipside of going through so much yearning and pain to get there is the feeling of “Ahhhh!” when you have the child.’
Nicole previously revealed that she’d been keen to become a mother from the very start of her marriage to Tom.
Traumatic: She finally managed to get pregnant again but suffered a miscarriage around the time Tom filed for divorce in 2001 (pictured that year)
Proud parent: She and Tom adopted Isabella (L) soon after her ectopic pregnany and Connor (R) two years later
‘From the minute Tom and I were married, I wanted to have babies,’ she told Marie Claire magazine in 2007.
‘And we lost a baby early on, so that was really very traumatic. And that’s when it came that we would adopt Bella.’
She added: ‘My mother has an adopted sister, so it’s been part of our family and I knew it would probably play out somewhere in mine. I didn’t think it would happen so early but it did.’
Four years after her divorce from Tom, Nicole married country singer Keith Urban and the pair went on to have two daughters naturally – Sunday Rose, nine, and seven-year-old Faith.
Happy: Four years after her divorce from Tom, Nicole married country singer Keith Urban and the pair went on to have two daughters naturally – Sunday Rose, nine, and seven-year-old Faith