Tina Arena opens up about suffering three miscarriages following the birth of her son

IN a candid interview, Tina Arena has opened up about the moment she experienced a miscarriage in front of her then two-year-old son.

IN a candid interview, musical powerhouse Tina Arena has opened up about the moment she experienced a miscarriage in front of her then two-year-old son.

Appearing on Wednesday night’s episode of Anh’s Brush With Fame on ABC, the 49-year-old spoke about the three miscarriages she went through following the 1999 birth of her son, Gabriel, and how she didn’t deal with the grief until she went through menopause years later.

Asked if she wanted to have more children with her partner, French artist Vincent Mancini, Arena admitted they tried.

“I lost three after Gab. I miscarried a lot. Most women do — they miscarry. I miscarried three times after Gab,” she said. “I really wanted to add on to the family.”

Arena was living in London at the time and, when her first miscarriage happened, Mancini was away sailing around Sicily.

“I think the thing that was tough was that Gab was there and watching it happen,” she said. “And I didn’t know what was going on other than I went, ‘Something is not right. Something is definitely not right’.

“Gab was there watching me go through that pain. And (he) looked at me and was holding me going, ‘Mummy! Mummy!’.

“Sometimes you can still see that panic in his eyes if he doesn’t see me happy or something. I almost go back to that moment in time where I remember Gabriel at two years of age, who absolutely knew that something wasn’t right with his mum.”

The singer gave birth to son Gabriel in 2002.

Arena and her French artist partner Vincent Mancini.

Arena described the experience as “unbelievably painful” and recalled being “very stoic” — taking herself to hospital the following day.

“The next morning I took Gabriel to creche. I got on a bus and I took myself to a hospital,” she said. “(I) Went through the operation, got myself back on a bus, caught the bus home by myself and went and picked up my son from creche. Life’s glamorous, isn’t it?”

The singer said it was the first of three miscarriages she went through following the birth of Gabriel, now 12. And she said it wasn’t until she went through menopause at 46 that she dealt with the grief.

“It wasn’t until a couple of years after that it really hit me and I fell apart,” she said. “And I think it hit me when I turned 46 and I’d just finished Dancing With The Stars and I went into menopause. (My) Body just shut down, (my) body went, ‘That’s it’. That’s when I went, ‘I can never reproduce again. My body’s done, the machine’s broken down’. That was tough.”

The singer says she didn’t really deal with the grief until she went into menopause.

After spending two decades living between France and London, Arena now resides in her hometown of Melbourne with her family.

She told host Anh Do she’s in a “happy place”.

“It took being in a troubled place to get to a happy place because life is about pleasure and pain,” she said. “You cannot just have wonderful things happen. Because you don’t always learn from that.”

Anh’s Brush With Fame airs Wednesday nights at 8pm on ABC TV.