Mika Brzezinski’s worst day

last updated 8 January 2015

Mika Brzezinski has paid a price for success, says Amanda Robb in More. Before landing a high-profile job as co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe alongside Joe Scarborough, Brzezinski had a roller-coaster TV career in which she made it big at 29, had two children, and worked herself into exhaustion. “I never slept,’’ she says. When her second daughter, Carlie, was about 14 weeks old, Brzezinski had the worst day of her life. She hurried home one afternoon to relieve her nanny. “I rushed upstairs and grabbed my baby. I was talking a hundred miles an hour, and I walked right off the top of the stairs. I fell down the complete flight.” Brzezinski landed on top of Carlie. She began repeating, “‘She’s got to be okay. She’s got to be okay,’ because I knew Carlie wasn’t okay. Her cry was all wrong.” At the hospital, doctors ran tests to see if Carlie’s back was broken. “I fell apart. I slid down the wall. My face was on the floor, and I wept.” It turned out that Carlie had suffered only a broken leg. Filled with guilt, Brzezinski vowed to quit and stay home, but found she couldn’t do it. Instead, she and her husband got more help at home. “I really love my job,” she says. “I’d rather spend one good hour with my kids a day than eight bad ones.”