Singer John Legend delivered an emotional performance at the Billboard Music Awards on Wednesday dedicated to his wife, Chrissy Teigen, after the couple experienced pregnancy loss weeks prior.
Legend sang “Never Break” from his latest album in his first performance since Teigen announced the loss of their third child, Jack, at the beginning of the month. Teigen, who typically is active on Twitter and Instagram, has been silent on social media since the announcement.
“This is for Chrissy,” Legend said as he began his performance Wednesday night.
The song's lyrics describe a relationship that will “never break” and is built on a strong foundation to take on life’s challenges.
“I'm not worried about us, and I've never been,” Legend sang. “We know how the story ends.”
The couple have two children, daughter Luna and son Miles, together and were preparing to welcome a third. Teigen posted about her struggles with her latest pregnancy early on, describing an issue with a weak placenta and abnormal bleeding in social media updates while on bed rest.
She updated millions of followers on Instagram and Twitter on Oct. 1 with the news of their family's loss.
"We are shocked and in the kind of deep pain you only hear about, the kind of pain we’ve never felt before," Teigen wrote. "We were never able to stop the bleeding and give our baby the fluids he needed, despite bags and bags of blood transfusions. It just wasn’t enough."
The couple’s openness moved thousands across the internet, many of whom shared their personal stories about fertility and miscarriage.
“Thank you for sharing your pain,” one mother wrote. “I’ve had 3 miscarriages and 2 live births. It was the strength and compassion of women sharing their experiences with loss that guided me through some very dark times. I’m holding you and your family in my heart as you all move through this.”
The 34-year-old model has been open about her fertility struggles, explaining publicly that the couple used in vitro fertilization to conceive their two children. They revealed their third pregnancy in a music video for Legend’s song “Wild” in August.
Teigen had also shared that she was surprised by her third pregnancy because the baby was conceived without fertility treatments, something she previously did not know was possible. The model explained in a Twitter thread that she had a routine pregnancy test prior to surgery to remove her breast implants and it was negative.
But when she took an at-home test weeks later, she discovered she was in fact pregnant.
“A few weeks after surgery, I took a test,” Teigen wrote. “And for many years now, I've taken pregnancy tests almost every month, praying to see a positive one day. Just wishful thinking. I never had a positive before.”
