Vogue Australia: Erica Packer shares secret pain of losing son to miscarriage

Erica Packer has revealed for the first time she lost a son to miscarriage just weeks before her separation from Aussie billionaire James. Eight years later, she shares her heartbreak.

It’s the family heartbreak Erica Packer has kept private for almost eight years — she and ex-husband James lost a baby boy in the weeks prior to their shock separation.

Erica miscarried a much-wanted second son in August 2013 at the same time she was dealing with the grief of the breakdown of her high-profile marriage.

Speaking exclusively with Vogue magazine editor-in-chief Edwina McCann for a special Mother’s Day edition, Erica said she wanted to share her story in the hope of helping other women who had been through a miscarriage.

After giving birth to the tiny premature baby, her fourth child, Erica named him Laramie — meaning ‘tears of love’.

Laramie Packer would have been a sibling to casino magnate Packer’s three surviving heirs — Indigo, 12, Jackson, 11, and Emmanuelle, 8 — the products of a six-year marriage to Erica, his second wife.

Erica Packer and her three children on the cover of Vogue Australia’s May issue. Picture: Williams + Hirakawa for Vogue Australia

Erica’s revelation sheds new light on her divorce and subsequent relocation to Los Angeles, where she and her three children have been recovering after catching COVID-19 around Thanksgiving.

“I lost our son halfway through a pregnancy,” Erica said, confirming the miscarriage occurred in August 2013.

“After I gave birth I travelled with him up to Gunnedah. I put him in my mum’s grave — at her feet.

“That was probably the saddest moment of my life but I like to think of him with her now.”

A month earlier, while pregnant with Laramie, Erica and her children posed for Vogue Australia, the fashion bible edited by her friend Ms McCann.

The former model was photographed wearing a sheer purple Christian Dior gown, an image that would grace the cover of the November 2013 issue of the magazine under the headline, “Erica Packer: Motherhood and moving on”.

Ms McCann reveals she was unaware her friend was pregnant in July 2013 when she agreed to be photographed that month in Paris with her children.

Erica Packer with children Indigo, Jackson and Emmanuelle. Picture: Williams + Hirakawa for Vogue Australia’s Mother’s Day edition, available from Monday, May 3

She said it is a “testament to her extraordinary resilience” that Erica, 43, dealt privately with the miscarriage, along with the deaths of both her mother and father and collapse of her marriage within a four-year window.

“Until now I can count on one hand the people who know the story I told you today,” Erica said in her interview with McCann.

“And it feels good to let it free. Going through the labour and giving birth to Laramie at the toughest moment of my life, it was so hard.

“And because I wanted to bury him with my mum, I had to take him home from the hospital. I travelled with him to Gunnedah the next day. I had a lovely ceremony for him with my immediate family there.”

Erica’s mother, Sheelah, died in 2011 from breast cancer.

November marks the 10-year anniversary of Sheelah’s death, a milestone that has partly prompted Erica to open up about Laramie.

Erica Packer has shared details of a miscarriage in 2013. Picture: Williams + Hirakawa for Vogue Australia

Another motivating factor is that Erica wants Australian women to support one another.

“Pain can be a shared experience and not something to be suffered in silence. What I went through is not uncommon but not often talked about. I had a friend who went through a similar experience and it was really nice to be able to help them through it, to have empathy and understanding,” she said.

“After the loss of a mother, baby and father (Michael Baxter died in 2015), and then moving to America alone to start a new life, and (my sister) Jo got breast cancer when Mum was dying — not much fazes me these days. Well actually, that’s not true, COVID did, but now we are full of antibodies.”

Youngest daughter Emmanuelle was the first to contract the virus, Erica confirmed. Next came Indigo, then Jackson and finally their mother. For three weeks Erica and her brood holed up at their Malibu farm while battling high fevers, headaches, fatigue and breathing complications. It felt, said Erica, as though a gorilla was sitting on her chest. “One day, Emmanuelle cried all day and there was nothing I could do. Then the power was cut off because of high winds and the threat of fires,” she said.

While her own mother will be sadly missed on Mother’s Day, she is grateful for her mother-in-law Ros Packer who, Erica said, routinely FaceTimes her grandchildren in LA.

“The kids absolutely adore her and love when she comes to stay with us. Ros is a beautiful presence in my life, and the kids’ lives.”

* Vogue Australia’s May 2021 issue is on sale from Monday, May 3. To read more, go to vogue.com.au