'I needed to remember the moment': Chrissy Teigen explains decision to publish intimate photos after miscarriage

Chrissy Teigen, the model and wife of musician John Legend, has explained in a message to fans her decision to share intimate photos taken after suffering a miscarriage.

Teigen, 34, posted a black-and-white picture to her tens of millions of followers on social media of herself weeping in a hospital gown with her hands clasped in prayer, following the death of the couple's premature son, Jack, late last month.

Another showed her holding the baby as Legend kisses her shoulder.

“I had asked my mom and John to take pictures, no matter how uncomfortable it was. I explained to a very hesitant John that I needed them, and that I did NOT want to have to ever ask. That he just had to do it. He hated it. I could tell.” she wrote on the website Medium. 

“But I knew I needed to know of this moment forever. And I absolutely knew I needed to share this story,” she said.

Teigen, who has two children with Legend, was commended by many for sharing such an intimate moment of their life, while a smaller number of detractors said she should have kept it private.

“I cannot express how little I care that you hate the photos,” she said, addressing the reaction. “How little I care that it’s something you wouldn’t have done. I lived it, I chose to do it, and more than anything, these photos aren’t for anyone but the people who have lived this or are curious enough to wonder what something like this is like.”

The television personality, who has authored two cookbooks, described in greater detail the moment she was admitted to hospital.

“I would have an epidural and be induced to deliver our 20 week old, a boy that would have never survived in my belly," she wrote. "I was trying to get the little dude to 28 weeks, a “safer” zone for the fetus.”

She was then given the news by doctors that she had suffered from a partial placenta abruption.

Teigen said, however, that she had found some comfort in the memory of Jack: “People say an experience like this creates a hole in your heart," she wrote. "A hole was certainly made, but it was filled with the love of something I loved so much. It doesn’t feel empty, this space. It feels full.”