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Recently, Mark Zuckerberg announced his wife's pregnancy on Facebook. With the news, he shared that the pregnancy hadn't come easily — the couple experienced three miscarriages in the past two years. 

Mark's message drew lots of attention because duh, it's Mark Zuckerberg, but also because you don't often hear frank talk from guys about what it's like to deal with a miscarriage. Oftentimes, it's considered the woman's loss and a guy's job to provide support. 

So Cosmopolitan.com reached out to three men from across the country who've lost unborn children to share their stories.

Michael Barber: "I didn't share the news with anyone."

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Michael, 34, and his wife Melissa, 27, with their son Moses, 9 months.

We'd just gotten engaged when my wife Melissa, who was 23 at the time, got pregnant. We had no idea until she started heavily bleeding at work, and her doctor said she was having a miscarriage. Because I didn't even know about the baby, it wasn't that traumatic for me; Melissa had a tougher time with it. Personally, I wasn't particularly depressed or relieved or worried we wouldn't be able to have kids. I just accepted that it was nature telling us the egg wasn't sitting right. I didn't share the news with anyone because I'm generally not the kind of person who likes to talk about personal things. 

Shortly after the first miscarriage while we were still planning our wedding, Melissa got pregnant again. This time it was totally different: We told both of our families about the baby and started getting our home kid-ready. 

But four months into her pregnancy, Melissa started spotting at work. At the hospital, the doctors delivered the bad news: She was going to have a miscarriage. We could barely process the information before they sent us home. 

Melissa was devastated and blamed herself, so I tried to hide how much it was hurting to me to show her that things were going to be OK.

Losing that second baby hurt me just as much as it hurt her — it was both of our losses. I didn't know whether we'd be able to get pregnant again, and I was very upset. I wondered why it was happening to us, but the doctors just said it sometimes happens when the baby isn't healthy.

I didn't talk to anyone besides Melissa about it because I'm the kind of person who holds stuff in. I didn't think anyone would want to hear a guy complain about something like this, but I'd say I was mildly depressed. 

For two days after we got home from the hospital, Melissa and I stayed up talking without watching TV, going on the Internet, or using the phone. We talked about our lives together, the future, our childhoods, and how we wanted to raise our kids. It was a pivotal point in our relationship and a time I'll always remember. It was like a good thing — strengthening our bond — came out of this terrible thing. 

We decided to take the second miscarriage as a sign that we should wait to get pregnant until after our wedding. We didn't really start trying again until almost a year later, not because we were scared we'd have another miscarriage, but because we were preoccupied with wedding planning and wanted to do things the "right" way. Now that we have our son Moses, we feel like God waited to give us a perfect baby at the perfect time. 

Hermes Hernandez: "I'm trying to be strong."

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Hermes Hernandez, 29, and his wife Lauren, 28, live in Winston Salem, North Carolina.

I was diagnosed with stage 3 Hodgkins lymphoma three weeks before my wedding. Having been exposed to the disease while doing my medical residency, I knew that the cancer itself wouldn't impact my ability to have children, but that chemotherapy can cause temporary infertility for up to two years, or permanent infertility, in some cases. To hedge our bets on having a family, I'd banked some sperm before the treatments began, and was planning to do in vitro fertilization with my wife Lauren this month. But last month, we magically got pregnant. We felt awesome about the pregnancy and were so excited when it happened naturally that we spread the news to close family and a few friends. 

Everything was going well up until the seven-week mark when the baby seemed a little small for its age. Around week 10, we went in for an ultrasound. We knew the drill — to look for a flicker of a heartbeat. This time, though, neither of us saw it. 

The only way to describe how I felt in that moment is to say that it was absolutely soul-crushing.

For me, it was terrible, like a punch in the stomach. Lauren started crying immediately, even before the technician could explain that we'd had a miscarriage. She wanted to see the baby one more time to say good-bye. 

By that point, the baby was too large to pass naturally, so Lauren had to have her cervix dilated and had the baby removed the next day. It was a pretty terrible experience with lots of cramping and bleeding. We're still waiting for test results to explain whether it was a spontaneous miscarriage, or whether my chemo or genetics played a role. 

I think it's always harder for the woman to go through because being pregnant automatically makes a woman feel like a mom, while people say that men don't feel like dads until they actually hold the baby. 

I'm grieving too — I have been tearing up here and there — but I'm trying to be strong and put my feelings on the backburner to be there for my wife. 

Lauren thought sharing our story on Facebook would help her cope. (She had a friend who'd blogged about her miscarriages.) Even though we'd only told family and a few friends about the pregnancy, I was OK with telling people about Lauren's miscarriage — and as it happened, we received so many calls, texts, comments, likes, and so much support. Friends sent dinner and flowers, but most importantly many came forward to share similar stories about their own miscarriages. We started to realize how common they are: I'm a doctor, and I had no idea that something like 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage. 

I don't know why there's this stigma around miscarrying. Like fertility, no one really talks about it. Maybe people think it means something is wrong with them or that these problems make them seem weaker. But the truth is it's not abnormal, and sharing your story can make you feel really loved and supported.

Sex isn't even crossing our minds now because Lauren is still in a lot of pain. But after she heals and we get the tests back, we're definitely going to try for another baby. The fact that we got pregnant naturally makes us hopeful we can do it again. The miscarriage reminds us of the strength of our relationship and that we support each other through everything. 

Derek Vasconi:  "I was so focused on being there for my wife that I never really dealt with it myself."

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Derek Vasconi, 37, with his 1-year-old daughter Miyuki and wife Hiroko, 37.

When I married my wife, Hiroko, three months after we met, we wanted to have kids right away. When she got pregnant, we told our immediate families. Hiroko, who doesn't work, threw herself into planning for the baby. 

Hiroko was two months pregnant when I got a call at work from my mom: She told me she was at the hospital with Hiroko, who'd developed cramps that progressed to lots of bleeding. By that point, they knew something was very wrong — and the doctors confirmed Hiroko had miscarried. They prescribed her bed rest, but really didn't need to: She was so devastated by the miscarriage that she barely got out of bed for days. Hiroko thought the miscarriage was her fault because she was 35 at the time. She thought we'd missed our one shot at having kids, and that I wouldn't want to try to have a child again. Of course I was disappointed and bummed, but I had to be the support system because my wife was 10 times worse. I was so focused on being there for my wife that I never really dealt with it myself. 

Men don't allow themselves to feel things, but I can tell you that dealing with a miscarriage can be as rough on the man as it is for the woman.

Even though I never got to experience the child's love and they never got to experience mine, when you lose someone you love and care about — whether they are alive or inside the stomach — you feel it forever. 

It felt therapeutic to write, so I began working on a novel (Kai, due out in January) about a Japanese woman who has a miscarriage. The coincidence was no small accident.

To this day, about 80 or 90 percent of our friends don't even know about the miscarriage — it's not a thing you bring up casually. It was so hard and difficult at the time that we wanted to keep it more between us. 

It took a while for us to have sex again because Hiroko was healing but also because we were scared — scared of another miscarriage or that the first one was a sign that we aren't supposed to be parents. We didn't want to be disappointed again. 

Eventually, we moved forward by trying to have fun again and just enjoy being a married couple. About a year after the miscarriage, Hiroko got pregnant again. This time, we barely told anybody until nine months in. It was easy to keep it a secret because our friends are spread out all over the world, and Hiroko is super small, so it was hard for people to tell that she was pregnant. 

Now we have a beautiful 1-year-old daughter. But I know I'll never forget that first child. It's part of who I am.

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Elizabeth Narins
Senior fitness and health editor

Elizabeth Narins is a Brooklyn, NY-based writer and a former senior editor at Cosmopolitan.com, where she wrote about fitness, health, and more. Follow her at @ejnarins.