Shay Mitchell announces she's pregnant with topless photo shoot
‘When you're in the public eye there are some things you want to just keep a secret’
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Shay Mitchell has announced that she is pregnant with her first child.
She revealed the news with a topless Instagram post in which her stomach is fully visible, captioned: “Does this mean I’m allowed to drive in the car pool lane at all times now?”
The 32-year-old actor also uploaded a two-minute YouTube video entitled “Guess Who’s Preggers”.
In it she shared snippets of her experience thus far and teased the beginning of a new YouTube series called Almost Ready which will follow her and her boyfriend, TV host Matte Babel, during the pregnancy.
Mitchell also revealed in the video that she’s struggled keeping her pregnancy a secret.
"When you're in the public eye there are some things you want to just keep a secret until you feel ready," she says.
"This for me has been the hardest. This is going to be really fun and awesome when I'm not trying to hide it anymore – I can be pregnant; I can not suck my stomach in.”
The video showed her worrying about trying to disguise her bump, trying on an outfit and saying: “This doesn’t look pregnant, it looks like I f***ing let myself go for a long time.”
She also shared touching moments of her sharing her pregnancy with friends and family, with the video culminating in the photoshoot which led to the Instagram post, and Mitchell sharing her desire to feel confident while pregnant.
The actor did not reveal her due date, however fans are speculating she is around six months’ pregnant, given the video description says: “I've learned so much about myself and parenthood over the past six months, and feel like I haven't even scratched the surface.”
On New Year’s Eve 2018, Mitchell revealed on Instagram that she had suffered a miscarriage. In a compilation video looking back on the year, she included a photo of an ultrasound with a broken heart emoji, saying that she "lost the child of my hopes and dreams".
Mitchell is best known for her role as Emily Field on Pretty Little Liars from 2010 to 2017. More recently, she starred in the psychological thriller You.
Almost Ready will debut on Wednesday 17 July, with new episodes available every other week on Mitchell’s eponymous YouTube channel which has 3.7 million subscribers.
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