Florence Welch has shared that the ‘life-saving emergency surgery’ she underwent in 2023 was due to an ectopic pregnancy while performing.
The acclaimed singer, 39, revealed the story of what happened while on stage in August 2023 in a new interview, saying that ‘the closest I came to making life was the closest I came to death’.
The Dance Fever hitmaker explained that she had been about to headline a festival in Cornwall when her miscarriage occurred early in her pregnancy.
She said: ‘I think, because it was my first time being pregnant, and it was my first miscarriage, I was like, “OK, I’ve heard this is part of it.” I spoke to my doctor, and they are not generally dangerous. Devastating, but not dangerous.’
After deciding to continue with her headline act at a festival in Cornwall, she had some ibuprofen and got on stage.
‘Emotionally, I was sad and scared, but I think, also, I was coping,’ she added to The Guardian, saying that after she started singing, ‘I was in the elements, in the wind and rain, and I just felt something working through me.’
What is an ectopic pregnancy?
The NHS website says:
An ectopic pregnancy is when a fertilised egg implants itself outside of the womb, usually in one of the fallopian tubes.
The fallopian tubes are the tubes connecting the ovaries to the womb. If an egg gets stuck in them, it won’t develop into a baby and your health may be at risk if the pregnancy continues.
Unfortunately, it’s not possible to save the pregnancy. It usually has to be removed using medicine or an operation.
She was encouraged to attend a scan on returning to London, which she was reluctant to do but eventually decided to go to, saying that her ‘doctor’s insistence that I come in saved my life.’
The doctor discovered she had a ‘coke can’s worth of blood in my abdomen’ which led to the emergency surgery and the removal of her fallopian tube.
Reflecting on her urge to run away and her ’embarrassment that she was causing a fuss’, she continued: ‘It was animal instinct. Like, “run”. But there was an [ultrasound wand] inside me and a woman I’d never met before, and I was like, “gotta go!”‘.
The singer – whose new album Everybody Scream is inspired by what she experienced during this period – had been set to perform at Zurich Open Air Festival and Rock en Seine.
However, she admitted: ‘If I’d got on that plane, I’d have come off on a stretcher. Or worse.’
She also recalled sounding like a ‘wounded animal or something’ on her return home from the hospital ‘and then that was that’, noting that she was back on stage ten days later.
Elsewhere in the interview, she shared that she had been trying for a baby with her boyfriend (an unknown British guitarist) and they had got pregnant first time.
She had joked: ‘It was my first experience of even trying to get pregnant, and I thought, “there’s no way, because I’m ancient,”‘. “
She called it a ‘big shock’ and ‘magical’.
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