Ashley Graham says she nearly died while giving birth to her twins and someone had to smack her cheek to keep her awake
- Ashley Graham opened up about giving birth to her twins in an op-ed for Glamour.
- Graham, 34, said she blacked out and "remembered seeing darkness."
Ashley Graham almost died while giving birth to her four-month-old twin boys, saying she "blacked out" and "lost liters of blood."
The mother-of-three shared the candid details in an op-ed with Glamour published Friday. Graham, 34, and Justin Ervin, 36, welcomed their first child, Isaac, in February 2020. She gave birth to their twins, Malachi and Roman, in January 2022.
Graham wrote that she hemorrhaged the night she gave birth to Malachi and Roman in a home birthing tub in her apartment. Graham said the mood was celebratory after the birth, but things quickly shifted.
"The next thing you know, I looked at my midwife and I said, "I don't feel good. I think I need to lay down," and I blacked out," Graham wrote. "All I can remember is feeling a light touch on my cheek, which I found out later was actually somebody smacking the crap out of my cheek, someone holding my hand, my husband Justin in my ear, praying, and someone jabbing me with a needle in my arm. And I remember seeing darkness and what seemed like stars."
Graham continued that she woke up later and "saw blood literally everywhere" while people trying to reassure her that she was OK.
"They didn't want to tell me, right then, that I'd lost liters of blood. They didn't want to tell me that one of the midwives had to flip me over, press her finger down right above my vagina bone to try and stop the bleeding," Graham wrote. "And they didn't want to tell me that the vein in my arm kept collapsing and they couldn't get the needle in for the Pitocin, so they'd had to put it in my hand."
Graham laid in bed for four days, couldn't walk for a week, and didn't leave her home for almost two months.
In the same op-ed, Graham revealed that she had a miscarriage at the end of February 2021, calling it "devastating."
Representatives for Graham did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
In February 2020, she posted an Instagram picture of her breastfeeding Isaac in a café. She later celebrated her stretch marks in a September 2020 Instagram video after giving birth to Isaac.