“I had no strength,” Peta recalls in an interview with People.com about the day it happened. “I couldn’t open a dishwasher. I couldn’t open the fridge. It got so bad that my breath was starting to be affected. It was really dramatic.” She soon found herself on the floor of her 5-year-old son’s room, unable to move. She had recently traveled overseas to Ukraine to visit Maks, who was in his home country serving as a judge on their version of Dancing with the Stars. She was aware she had contracted COVID on that trip, and chalked her condition up to exhaustion. But when she was taken away by the ambulance, much more truth came to light. Peta had flown internationally in the efforts of conceiving a child. “I was like, ‘Screw it. I’m going to fly to you in Ukraine. I’m ovulating soon. Let’s make it happen,’” she recalls. The family had been trying to grow for some time after son, Shai, came into the world in 2017. But tragically, Peta had a miscarriage in a Whole Foods bathroom stall in the fall of 2020, only five weeks into her pregnancy. It happened again nine months later, and she went as far as to plan a trip to New York to surprise Max with the news, only to find out she miscarried again mere days before leaving. And once again, history has a habit of repeating itself. Peta recalls putting Maks on speakerphone as the doctor visited her in the hospital following her collapse. His face dropped when he entered, asking if she knew she was pregnant. Maks celebrated ecstatically on the other line, thrilled they would finally be having another child. But sadly the full message got lost in translation. Peta was pregnant, but had already lost the baby. “I felt like I was dying, but then I obviously knew what had happened,” she says. “It was just all too much for my body and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t believe that this was happening to me.” Maks has tried his best to be emotionally and physically supportive of his wife through so much misfortune, saying he has become a “changed man” because of the process. And for Peta, it’s obviously a series of unfortunate events that have rocked her to her core. “When? Why me? Why can’t I have another child when it was so easy in the past?” she says. “All of these questions just really bothered me and that’s what brought me to finally see a specialist.” The couple is currently working with a team of doctors who initially diagnosed Peta with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, a hormonal imbalance that can cause ovulation issues, leading to infertility. Peta is starting the process of in vitro fertilization in the hopes of finally adding to their family without issue. “For the first time in nearly two years, I feel excited,” she says. “I’m in a much happier place. I got answers. I don’t have any other words but hope and positivity. I’m crossing my fingers that this is going to work.” Next, What is PCOS? We Break Down All the Myths Around Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
