Florence + the Machine’s Florence Welch recently got candid about a scary medical issue that happened to her couple of years ago.
She had an ectopic pregnancy
The musician revealed in an interview with The Guardian, published on Saturday, September 27, her experience with an ectopic pregnancy that almost took her life in 2023.
What’s an ectopic pregnancy?
According to Cleveland Clinic, ectopic pregnancy is ‘when a fertilized egg implants outside of your uterus, most commonly in your fallopian tube.’
“The fallopian tube isn’t made to hold a growing embryo. This condition can lead to bleeding in the birth mother. An ectopic pregnancy is a life-threatening condition that requires emergency treatment.”
She recalled the type of pain it put her in
Recalling the situation, Florence said, “I had a Coke can’s worth of blood in my abdomen,” adding, “The closest I came to making life was the closest I came to death.”
The singer first became pregnant quickly after she and her partner were trying to conceive.
It was her first time getting pregnant
“It was my first experience of even trying to get pregnant, and I thought, ‘There’s no way, because I’m ancient,’” Florence said.
“It was a big shock. But it felt magical as well. I felt I had followed a bodily instinct, in that animal sense, and it had happened.”
She had a miscarriage
The artist ended up having a miscarriage early into the pregnancy. She said, “I think because it was my first time being pregnant, and it was my first miscarriage, I was like, ‘Okay, I’ve heard this is part of it.’”
“I spoke to my doctor, and they are not generally dangerous. Devastating, but not dangerous.”
A moment when she felt things get worse
Florence added that she first felt something was seriously wrong during a moment when she experienced pain and bleeding before performing at Boardmasters Festival in Cornwall in 2023.
She took pain medication and performed
“I took some ibuprofen and stepped out on stage,” Florence said.
“I was in the elements, in the wind and rain, and I just felt something working through me. I felt this thing take over, the thing that’s always there, the safe space of performance.”
She initially wasn’t going to get it checked out
The singer explained that because she was able to perform, she initially ‘didn’t want to’ go for a scan and get the issue checked out.
She recalled, “I thought, ‘I’ve done this show, I’m fine, I can cope’. But my doctor’s insistence that I come in saved my life.”
RELATED STORIES
The experience left her distressed
Explaining how she feels now after surviving the experience, Florence, who ended up canceling tour dates in recovery, said, “I feel slightly more obsessive and fragile and wounded than I did before.”
“But it has given me a sense of toughness in my work…working again helped me. It was like little lanterns in a fog. I could just pick my way through.”
