Former San Antonio TV reporter suffered miscarriage while covering story for CBS News

SAN ANTONIO (KTSA News) – A CBS News correspondent who used to work in San Antonio has revealed she suffered a miscarriage on the air. Mireya Villarreal wrote an essay published on the CBS News Website that she was 9 weeks pregnant when she was covering a wildfire near Yosemite National Park in California in 2017.

“I had trekked 45 minutes to the top of this hill, and was drenched in sweat, but determined not to give up,” the former News 4 San Antonio TV reporter said.

Villarreal, who was with an all-male crew, said she felt excruciating pain “like someone was taking a knife and stabbing my abdomen.” She said she was afraid she “would bleed through several layers of clothing and then everyone would see the pain I was going through on my bright yellow fire-retardant suit.”

It didn’t. Villarreal didn’t tell anyone around her and she completed her assignment.

“I arrived at CBS News in July 2015, and spent the first two years pushing myself to the limit just to get noticed. I constantly felt the need to prove myself as a journalist, as a female and as a Latina. I was an accomplished journalist when I got here and, yet, I felt small. I’d work weeks without a day off, fly from city to city without even thinking about my health.”

After the miscarriage, came the guilt trip.

“My ambition and selfishness led to this miscarriage. No doctor will ever convince me that’s not true. And that’s OK,” the 39-year-old  wrote.

Why is she talking about it now? Here’s what Villarreal said on CBS This Morning.

“I had wrestled with the fact of whether I wanted to share it or not because I do want people to understand that even going through a miscarriage can then lead to some of the mental health problems that people deal with,” said Villarreal.

She said she’s still working on forgiving herself.

“You feel lonely, you question yourself,” said Villarreal. “I was so angry for awhile and frustrated.”

Villarreal has a 3-year-old son, but she says she wants more children. She’s had two more miscarriages in the past year.

“I would go through a hundred more miscarriages if it meant having that joy…more of that in my life,” she told CBS This morning.