Westmoreland County mom uses social media to share journey with pregnancy loss

JEANNETTE, Pa. — A Jeannette woman who welcomed her first child in June is using social media to spread awareness and support other women who have experienced pregnancy loss.

Emily Beerbroer, 30, is a former culinary instructor and current stay-at-home mom.

>>>Photographer highlights pregnancy loss and rainbow babies in special photo shoots

She married her husband, Dylan Beerbroer, five years ago. The plan was to start a family quickly.

“When I first met my husband, he said he wanted five, and I was like, ‘with who,’ because it’s not gonna be me,” she joked.

The couple was elated when Emily became pregnant in 2023, until an ultrasound changed everything.

“We went in super excited and just completely unaware of any of the issues that could arise,” she said. “I had, like, a gut feeling; I just felt like something was not -- just the whole interaction. I was like, something is not right.”

She was told to go home and expect a call from her doctor.

“I had checked my health app, and that’s how I found out,” Beerbroer said. “They weren’t able to find a heartbeat.”

She had lost the baby at eight weeks. That set off many months of what she described as “a different kind of grief.”

“Typically, you don’t have, like, a funeral,” she said. “I found it more difficult to not have that sense of community in the way that we’re used to after a loss.”

Six months later, she suffered what is known as a chemical pregnancy, a very early miscarriage. Chemical pregnancies are often detected by an at-home pregnancy test but not visible on an ultrasound.

“For a while, I felt like I was just a shell of a person, kind of going through the motions of everything but not really there,” Beerbroer explained.

She said it took over a year of grieving and eventually starting therapy before she began to fully process the losses. Then she started posting about her journey on social media.

“I’ve just started to talk about how much it deeply affected me,” she said.

Beerbroer has shared numerous videos on her TikTok page @missemilybeer, where she also posts about cooking and baking.

On Christmas Eve 2025, the Beerbroers announced they were expecting a baby due in June. Close family members had known much longer.

“We didn’t wait, you know, the like 12 weeks to tell people,” she said. “I thought no matter what we’re gonna have to -- we’re gonna need support from people either way.”

Months before her due date, she was selected to model for two photo shoots, celebrating moms and their rainbow babies, a term for a baby born after pregnancy or infant loss.

Channel 11 has been highlighting each woman’s story through our series “The Colors of Hope.”

PHOTOS: Colors of Hope In a series of stories titled “The Colors of Hope,” Channel 11 is telling the stories of a group of local women who have all experienced pregnancy loss and the hope their stories can offer others. (Amber Bowers of Shutterbean Photographs) (Amber Bowers of Shutterbean Photographs/Amber Bowers of Shutterbean Photographs)

“I cry every time I see a rainbow. It’s just such a lovely reminder,” she said. “Each of us has our own unique trauma and experience that we went through and that kind of, you know, brought all of us strangers, together.”

The group welcomed seven healthy babies.

Beerbroer’s son was born in mid-June. They named him Jack Robert after Dylan’s great-grandfather and Emily’s stepfather.

“The second that they put him on my chest, I just looked at my husband, and I was like, ‘this is why people do this,’” she said through tears. “Made it all worth it.”

She plans to share her story with Jack one day when he is old enough to understand.

“He’s going to grow up knowing that he could have had siblings,” she said. “They’re always going to be a part of our family and our journey and our lives.”

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