‘It was not rational at all’

Welcome to So Mini Ways, Yahoo Life’s parenting series on the joys and challenges of child-rearing. Read past interviews with celebrity parents here.

Though her two daughters, Liberty, 3, and Clover, almost 1, are her whole world these days, Meghan McCain remembers a time when she didn’t want kids. “It’s so funny because I said it on TV quite a few times, and people sometimes will tweet it at me,” the former View panelist tells Yahoo Life.

Two key moments — suffering a pregnancy loss, and the death of her father, Sen. John McCain, in 2018 — shifted her perspective. “I got pregnant by surprise, and I had a miscarriage, and I was so sad about it,” remembers McCain. “So I was like, ‘Oh my God, that would have been amazing.’ Then, right before my dad died, he told me to have kids, and I was like, ‘I don’t know.’ But it was something about him saying [that] and then being a caregiver for someone who’s in the process of transitioning over to dying [that] changed my perspective on what family means.”

Still, the path to motherhood was anything but easy or quick for McCain. After having her first miscarriage, the media personality remembers feeling like “such a failure.” She explains, “At the time, I was working in a lot of spaces where a lot of women were getting pregnant and having not just one baby but a lot of babies. And I was like, ‘I am never going to be able to do this. I’m too stressed out. I’m too tough. Hard women like me don’t get to be mothers.’ I was beating the s*** out of myself. And I had a really hard time. I was really depressed.”

That’s when McCain’s friend Janice Dean, Fox co-host and weather anchor, called and shared that she had also suffered several miscarriages. “Her sharing her story helped me and made me feel less alone,” McCain says. “And I was like, ‘If I can talk about this with other people and with the world, maybe someone will hear it and feel less alone.’ I love destigmatizing things, and I love grabbing third rails, and that’s why I talked about it.” McCain ultimately penned an essay about her experience in the New York Times.

Similarly, the Bad Republican author was empowered to share how she dealt with postpartum anxiety after Liberty was born. “Part of it was that I had a baby in COVID,” she remembers. “But I literally was having nightmares that ninjas were gonna break in my house and kidnap my child. It was not rational at all. I ended up going to my daughter’s pediatrician, and she gave me a postpartum test to fill out about how I was doing, and I failed the test. She pulled me aside and was like, ‘You need to talk to your doctor.’ And I remember crying and being so embarrassed, and then talking to my husband, and he was like, ‘Yes, you’re definitely not doing OK.’ I ended up going on medication and getting a wonderful therapist. And I felt much better within six months. Therapy and medication are really incredible.”

McCain didn’t experience postpartum anxiety when she and husband Ben Domenech welcomed second daughter Clover. “I knew the signals, and I also knew if it was going to start happening, to get help immediately,” she says.

By speaking out about her pregnancy losses (she suffered a second before giving birth to Clover) and postpartum anxiety, McCain has connected with “so many women” who’ve reached out to her about both subjects — on social media as well as in person. “It feels wonderful,” she shares. “Choosing to not have kids is stigmatized, having kids is stigmatized. Getting pregnant immediately is stigmatized, having miscarriages is stigmatized. There’s no way for any woman to win, period. And I think that there’s a special bond and sisterhood [that forms from] women seeing each other and hearing each other.”

That’s just one of the reasons McCain was inspired to launch her podcast, Meghan McCain Has Entered the Chat, this past October. “I felt like I was texting all my friends commentary on everything going on, and I thought it would be good to do a podcast based on just the things me and my friends are talking about,” she says. “Sometimes, it’s the Real Housewives, and sometimes it’s very serious, like what’s happening in Israel.”

Reimagining her professional life — for instance, stepping away from The View and working on the podcast — has also created space for the proud mom to be more present with her daughters. “I don’t work in the way that I used to, and part of it is just by choice, because I really enjoy being a mother in a way that I never expected,” says McCain. “I never thought I would love it as much. I thought it would be a pain in the ass. But the truth is, even when I’m out or traveling, I just miss them, and I want to come home, and I want to make sure they’re OK. The girls are so silly, and they’re always laughing and playing, and it’s such a pleasure.”

Being mindful of the joys of family life is a lesson McCain attributes to her late father. “My dad really lived in the moment, and he really enjoyed laughing and being together as a family,” she says. “When he was very sick at almost 80, he was like, ‘I want 80 more years.’ For me, between him dying and COVID and the world seeming to come off its axis, I really try to be really as present as possible.”

Thinking back on her journey to becoming a parent, McCain feels it’s important to talk about both the positive parts and the challenging parts — and everything in between. As “beautiful and incredible” as it can be, she admits parenting is also “rip-your-guts-out hard.” “Sometimes I’m so exhausted and eating an old quesadilla and look like crap,” she shares. “It’s not all perfect all the time.”

The experience has also enhanced her perspective on other aspects of life. “Motherhood is my entire world, but I’m also wildly interested in the Iowa caucus — I’m still really interested in other things in the world,” she notes. “I wish people would talk about how you can have so many interests. Being a mother doesn’t take that away. It just enhances it. It’s like a tint on a painting — it makes it brighter and more illuminating. That’s what having kids has been like for me. I understand things differently. And I feel things differently. I am grateful every day, and I literally thank God every night that I was able to have kids and be a mom.”