In an effort to help others going through the same thing not feel so alone, Coronation Street actor Sam Aston and his wife Briony Gardner have spoken out about losing their unborn children to miscarriage.
Sam, a 30-year-old soap opera actor who has played Chesney Brown on the cobblestones for 20 years, wed teacher Briony in 2019. The couple has two children together.
Daughter Daisy was born in May of last year, and boy Sonny was born in 2020. The young couple adored their kids to the fullest.
Recently, however, Briony disclosed that the couple had experienced two pregnancy losses quickly, with Briony experiencing two miscarriages just four months apart.
Sam and Briony appeared on the Loose Women panel on Tuesday after sharing their heartbreaking losses on social media. Briony said she shared their tale to help others.
It “made it easier for me to grieve the process” when she initially lost her pregnancies, she said, because people who had also gone through the same thing shared their tales with her. If I hadn’t talked to other people earlier, I think going through that would have been lot tougher.
She remarked, “Knowing I wasn’t alone helped me tremendously.”
Sam noted that although “in a way, I can’t really understand, it’s not my body,” he was there to “empathise” with his wife as they both lamented the pregnancy as Briony was brought to tears while talking about the loss.
Regarding her decision to publicly disclose the losses, he expressed his pride that it ‘opened up a conversation.
He said that until Briony started receiving hundreds of messages, he “felt naive” and “didn’t even realise it was so common.”
When asked when they will welcome a new kid to join Sonny and Daisy, Briony responded that she also wanted to share the losses because “unless people know what you’ve been through, they might not know it’s a sensitive topic.”
Although neither pregnancy progressed above the 12-week point, Briony said, she still chose to notify friends and family about it because it “made it easier when telling people we lost it.”
The conversation quickly drifted to Coronation Street and whether their son remembers Sam on television as their oldest child, Sonny, approaches his third birthday later this month.
And Briony acknowledged that he does, albeit he becomes perplexed when he sees his father with his fictional family, including his wife Gemma and their quadruplets and his older son Joseph.
Sam began Coronation Street in 2003 when he was only 10 years old, and this year he will be celebrating 20 years on the show.
ITV broadcasts Loose Women weekdays at 12.30 p.m.
