Perrie Edwards is opening up about a difficult topic.
The Little Mix singer, 32, appeared on a Tuesday, Aug. 19 episode of the We Need to Talk podcast and revealed that she’d experienced multiple miscarriages both before and after welcoming her 3-year-old son Axel.
“I haven’t necessarily not shared it with people because I’m ashamed of it or anything,” Edwards began. “It’s just that it’s such a personal thing to go through, and it’s really hard.”
The singer said it’s been a “tricky situation” and that she and her fiancé, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, have been through a lot when it comes to pregnancies. She went on to say her son Axel was a rainbow baby and that she had a miscarriage “very early on with my first ever pregnancy.”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
When Edwards found out she was pregnant, it was very early in her pregnancy. She started bleeding and went to the hospital, where they told her there was no baby. But Edwards misinterpreted that as she wasn’t ever pregnant, when the doctors meant she’d had a miscarriage.
“And I remember going in to see my gynecologist after with the reports, and I was like, ‘Can you just explain to me? So there was no baby?’ He was like, ‘No no no, my darling, you’ve had a miscarriage.’ And I was like, ‘Oh. Okay.'”
Edwards explained that she didn’t feel too traumatized in the moment, since the pregnancy was so early. She later went on to get pregnant and had her son Axel, but was still a little “on edge” before the 12-week mark.
After she welcomed Axel, Edwards got pregnant again almost a year after giving birth. She found out while she was on tour with Little Mix.
“I found out when I was rehearsing for the last Little Mix tour,” she said. “I was at rehearsals and I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t feel good.’ Every symptom under the sun. I was like, ‘I think I’m pregnant.'”
She told her fiancé but wanted to keep the news private from others since she still wanted to be cautious after experiencing her first miscarriage.
“So with this pregnancy, I remember being on tour and every night before a show, I kept bleeding,” Edwards explained. “I was like heavy bleeding. I remember sitting thinking, ‘This is it. I’ve lost the baby. It’s happening.”
When she went in to the doctor’s to get checked out, Edwards was surprised to learn that her baby was still alive, but there was a “blood clot around the sac.”
“Then again, it kept happening every night on tour, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t cancel the show. I have to go out. I have to put a brave face on,” she remembered. “I have to keep my s— together.”
Despite the bleeding and the blood clot, things seemed fine at her 12-week scan. She went on vacation to Portugal with her fiancé and started to show. The day she went for her 20-week scan, which ended up really being a 22-week scan, Edwards said was the “worst day of my life. Like horrendous.”
She said she knew something was wrong when her doctor went over her scan since he kept going over the same part of her belly. “He was like on a mission,” Edwards said. “And I just looked at Alex and I thought, ‘Something’s not right.’ And then I remember sitting down, and I remember [the doctor] just saying these things. But I don’t remember what he said.”
Edwards explained that she had an out-of-body experience as the doctor told her she had had a miscarriage. “I remember sobbing. [Alex] was injured at the time and couldn’t really drive. He was struggling to drive but I couldn’t see straight. I was just distraught.”
“And yeah, we basically lost the baby at 24 weeks,” Edwards said. “So I think I was just traumatized. It’s weird because the first time it happened, I think because it’s 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 like their room and all these things, it’s really hard.”
The singer went on to say that she’s never spoken about the topic before because she ends up crying, and said that nobody knows but her immediate friends and family.
“I remember shortly after, friends would message and be like, ‘How’s bump?’ And I’d be like, ‘There isn’t one.’ It was just a lot.”
Read the full article here