losing

Little Mix’s Perrie Edwards has opened up about the trauma she felt after losing a baby at 24 weeks.

The singer spoke openly for the first time about the miscarriage during a recent appearance on Paul C Brunson’s podcast, We Need To Talk. In the interview, she revealed that she became pregnant just under a year after giving birth to her first child, Axel, in August 2021.

However, when she went for a scan at the five-month mark, she and her partner, former Liverpool footballer Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, discovered that the baby’s heart had stopped beating.

Describing it as the “worst day of my life”, she said: “I remember sobbing. I couldn’t see straight. I was just distraught. We basically lost the baby at, like, 24 weeks.”

She added that the scan felt like “an out of body experience”, and the doctor’s words only began to sink in when Oxlade-Chamberlain “put his hand on my leg and went, ‘Oh no’.”

Her son, Axel, turns four this week, and in the podcast appearance, Edwards also revealed that he was a “rainbow baby” – a term used to describe a child born to a mother who recently lost another child to stillbirth, neonatal death or miscarriage.

“I had a miscarriage very early on with my first ever pregnancy,” she told the host. “I remember finding out I was pregnant [but] I started bleeding not long after, and I went to hospital and I had the scan and they were like, ‘There’s no baby.’

“I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve made this up. Maybe I got a false positive or something.’”

She added that after feeling a sense of confusion around the situation, she booked an appointment with her gynaecologist, who informed her that it was indeed a miscarriage.

The news, she said, was still distressing, but to a lesser extent than the second miscarriage as it came early on during the pregnancy.

“I think because it was so early, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s sad.’ But I think when you’re fully carrying and you’re 24 weeks and you’ve planned out their room and all these things, it’s really hard,” she shared. “I’ve never spoken about it before because I ended up a wreck, and nobody knows other than immediate friends and family.”

Also in the interview, the singer revealed that she had found comfort from Myleene Klass, who was awarded an MBE for her long-running work to increase awareness about miscarriages.

She recalled hearing Klass once say that “the baby stays with” the mother after a miscarriage, and finding the statement “magical” and comforting. “I was like, ‘If I’m blessed enough to have another baby in the future, it makes me feel that they’re still a part of it in some way’.”

As highlighted by BBC, one in five pregnancies in the UK end in miscarriage, and there are approximately 2,000 terminations following a prenatal screening every year.

In 2024, the Department of Health and Social Care announced a series of new measures to provide more awareness, care and support for those who suffer the loss of an unborn child.

You can find more advice and support around miscarriage here.