On the season 4 premiere of "Teen Mom 2," Leah Messer told fans that she'd suffered a miscarriage. Now, eight years later, she's coming clean and admitting that she actually had an abortion.
The reveal comes in the reality TV star's new memoir, "Hope, Grace, & Faith."
In experts obtained by People magazine, Leah writes, "We had already finished filming for that season so I thought at least I wouldn't have to film about it, but when I called the producers that night to tell them I had lost the baby, they said they were sending a film crew out to my house to film the miscarriage for the show."
She continued, "When they showed up the next morning I was still cramping and bleeding heavily. I had barely processed what had happened, and I was genuinely heartbroken because I had convinced myself I had given up the only boy I would ever have. I hated myself for the lie, but I was in so deep there was no turning back."
"I can look back now without regret, but for the longest time, I wasn't okay with the choice I had made. It felt so dark because it was hidden. I wasn't able to talk publicly or privately about it because I let the people who were closest to me at the time convince me that it was something I needed to hide," she wrote. "It wasn't until I was finally able to bring myself to tell [then-fiancé Jeremy Calvert] what had really happened that I started to realize that as long as I was living with the lie it would keep eating away at me. I carried the pain and the guilt around with me for years, until I finally got to the point where I could hold myself accountable for my choices without punishing myself for them."
The mother of three — twins Aliannah and Aleeah, 10, and Adalynn, 7 — spoke with People about the book and her decision to hide the truth, which many in her inner circle encouraged her to do.
"I truly, wholeheartedly felt like I convinced myself that that's really what was happening," she says about claiming to have a miscarriage.
"Looking back now, I just wish I would have owned it. I wish I would've owned what was going on," she told the mag. "[I wish I hadn't been] fearful of what everyone was going to say … but I'm not going to dwell on the decision I made at that time. I'm going to rise above the decision I made and learn from that experience."