This article was originally published on PEOPLE
Babies make five — but it hasn’t always been so joyous.
Beyoncé announced on her Instagram Wednesday that she is expecting twins with husband Jay Z, 47, by telling fans they have been “blessed two times.” But the Lemonade singer has faced heartbreak on the road to motherhood before.
In her 2013 HBO documentary Life Is But a Dream, the Grammy winner revealed that she suffered a miscarriage before having daughter Blue Ivy, now 5. The singer spoke about learning she was pregnant and the pain that came when she learned she lost the baby.
“About two years ago, I was pregnant for the first time,” Beyoncé said. “And I heard the heartbeat, which was the most beautiful music I ever heard in my life.” After the happiness of hearing her baby’s heartbeat for the first time, the singer said she “envisioned what my child would look like” and was feeling “very maternal.”
Subscribe to our daily newsletter for the latest in hair, beauty, style and celebrity news.
“Being pregnant was very much like falling in love,” she said about her first pregnancy. “You are so open. You are so overjoyed. There’s no words that can express having a baby growing inside of you, so of course you want to scream it out and tell everyone.”
But before she could share the good news, the singer had complications in the early stages. “I flew back to New York to get my check up – and no heartbeat,” she said. “Literally the week before I went to the doctor, everything was fine, but there was no heartbeat.”
This led the singer to go into the studio and write “the saddest song I’ve ever written in my life.”
“And it was actually the first song I wrote for my album. And it was the best form of therapy for me, because it was the saddest thing I’ve ever been through,” she said.
The singer’s husband also mentioned the miscarriage in a song released two days after Blue’s birth titled “Glory.” In between lyrics that address the little girl and welcome her arrival, the rapper sings about how “last time the miscarriage was so tragic/We was afraid you disappeared but nah baby, you magic.”
Jay Z also addressed the pain the couple went through, rapping near the beginning of the tune: “False alarms and false starts/All made better by the sound of your heart/All the pain of the last time/I prayed so hard it was the last time.”
In the documentary, Beyoncé also shot down whispers that she used a gestational surrogate to have Blue, calling it a “stupid rumor, the most ridiculous rumor I’ve ever heard about me.”
“To think that I would be that vain,” the star said before adding that giving birth is “the most powerful thing you can ever do in your life.”
“[It was] the most beautiful experience of my life. It was amazing. I felt like God was giving me a chance to assist in a miracle. You’re playing a part in a much bigger show,” she added.