How Singing Helped Lea Michele Get Through Her Pregnancy Trauma: 'I Used It to Truly Heal and To Help Bring Me Strength'

In December 2019, Lea Michele found out she was expecting. She remembers having two days—"a very blissful 48 hours"—in which she and her husband Zandy Reich were able to revel in the news. "We were thinking, 'Oh, we'll tell my parents on Christmas that we're pregnant,' and I ended up starting to bleed terribly two days later," recalls the Glee star who had been diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) prior to her pregnancy. "And I bled through my entire first trimester. Sometimes so bad we would rush to the hospital and just assume that it was over."

Not only was she facing a challenging pregnancy, but by her second trimester, the pandemic had begun.

"We ended up going for our 20-week checkup, which if you don't know, the 20-week checkup is the big anatomy scan and you do the real full check of your baby," notes Lea Michele. "And we got some very complicated markers at that checkup, which required a extremely traumatizing amio, a fetal MRI, a fetal echo."

For two months, the actress was in limbo. "We were very fortunate to get positive results back, but it was only within weeks of my son being born," she recalls. "I did not exhale until they handed me my son in the hospital. Even then, I don't think it really hit me until we were in the car on the way home and the photos of me in the car on the way home literally I have like the smile from ear to ear, just so happy to finally have our son in my arms."

Michele recalls that in order to cope with the challenges of her pregnancy and feel connected to Ever, she would "whisper sing" to her son. "I did this throughout my whole pregnancy for whatever scenario was happening on the outside world that might have been stressful," she notes. "I would sing to him to always just let him know that everything was okay."

Following Ever's birth, Lea Michele found solace in enjoying music with him. "I just loved that little quiet time together where I would just like play music and sing right before bed," she notes. "And that's when I knew I needed to make a lullaby album, because singing for the first time in my life as a singer, I used it to truly heal and to help bring me strength in a way that I never had before."

The experience is what led the multi-hyphenate entertainer to record her Forever album, consisting of lullaby covers. She explains, "I wanted to make this record, and I wanted the songs to be all the songs that we sang and that we listened to as just such a positive reminder of the power of music and healing and the sense of calm that it brought me and hopefully the baby, as well."

Check out We Are Family Season 2, Episode 20 now for more with Lea Michele on new motherhood, her new music, and what she wants for her son's future.

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