Evrod Cassimy Shares His Family’s Experiences with Miscarriage

Devastation. It’s the only word that even begins to touch the feeling of profound sadness that comes with the loss of a pregnancy — a feeling that Evrod Cassimy, the morning anchor at WDIV, knows all too well.

Cassimy, a father of two boys, Malakai (8) and Shae (3), just experienced the birth of his first daughter earlier this year, but the road to her conception wasn’t easy as he and his wife, Danielle, experienced three miscarriages along the way. 

A series of loss 

Danielle’s first pregnancy was a normal one. It came with the normal ups and downs of pregnancy, of course, but all-in-all there were no issues. But in 2014, about six months after Malakai was born, the couple got pregnant and experienced their first miscarriage.

“We got pregnant again (after Malakai) and I remember that we were on vacation in Colorado when she miscarried. It just was devastating,” Cassimy explains.

The couple got pregnant with their second son and once again everything was fine, but shortly after his birth, they got pregnant again and lost that baby in 2018.

The third miscarriage would come earlier in 2020, prior to the current pregnancy with the daughter that they’re currently expecting. With each one of these miscarriages, Cassimy felt an indescribable pain and feeling of loss that he says you really can’t understand unless your family has experienced miscarriages.

“Devastation isn’t descriptive enough of the pain that you feel,” he says. “Obviously, I’d heard (miscarriages) are common and I know that people have had them before, but I never understood the pain people feel from it until I’ve experienced it on my own.”

And with that profound pain also came the realization that all of the plans he and his wife had for those babies were gone.

“There’s this rush of things that happen in your mind (when you find out you’re pregnant) — how you’re going to tell your parents, your close friends and make it Facebook official. You think of different names and your housing situation — all those things go through your mind once you see that double line and the excitement grows as the baby grows,” he explains.

“To have that taken away from you is crushing because it’s a death. It’s a death of someone you didn’t know, but in your mind, you’ve already planned out the life experiences you’ll have with them.”

Cassimy also felt a sense of guilt as he and Danielle wondered if they could have prevented the losses in some way.

“You worry and wonder if it was something that you did. Could this have been somehow your fault in some way,” he adds.

Coping with the emotions

After the loss of three pregnancies, Cassimy says that he found his strength to work through his emotions through his song-making, producing a song called Mama, which is dedicated to his three lost babies and to moms everywhere (now available on streaming services).

But it wasn’t just his emotional well-being he had to support. His wife needed him more than ever.

“I remember not being able to stop crying for so long and I’m holding my wife because she’s more devastated,” he says. “As a husband, you’re trying to be supportive but you’ll never know how to be supportive and what do they need from you.”

While working through his own emotions, he found himself questioning his role in the miscarriage before settling on becoming an ear and a shoulder for Danielle to cry on. “I tried to do that as best I could and tend to her where she was in each moment,” Cassimy says. “(Men) will never understand what it’s like for a woman to go through a miscarriage, so you have to be able to communicate and ask (your partner) how they’re feeling and what they need from you.”

A happy ending

On March 8, 2021, International Women’s Day, Cassimy and his family welcomed their newest member, Chloe Marie. “It was surreal. It’s almost like a dream come true,” Cassimy says. “I remember, it was almost time and I was like are you serious, are you serious and there she was.” So far, he’s enjoying watching his sons become accustomed to having a little sister while he and his wife come to terms with the fact that they are now outnumbered by children. “I never really understood how challenging that could be,” he explains. “We have an 8-year-old and a 3-year-old who have different needs, and thankfully, with the time I’m taking off of work, I’ve been able to learn what they need in this stage of their life.”

As Danielle spends much of her time with the baby, Cassimy finds himself keeping his older kids entertained and happy, and learning his new role as a girl-dad. “I’m protective of all my kids, and I think any parent naturally is, but with a girl, it’s a more emotional,” he says.

He’s also written a new song about encouragement for others that went through a similar situation as he and his family, which dropped on April 16.

This post was originally published in October 2020 and is updated regularly.

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