Photo Credit: Perrie Edwards/InstagramLittle Mix member Perrie Edwards just gave quite the revealing interview on a recent episode of the We Need to Talk podcast with Paul C. Brunson. She shared about the shame of breakup in the public eye, growing up a child with health problems that manifested into being an adult with leftover trauma afraid to leave the house, miscarriages and more.
Childbirth has been a challenge for her as she had a few miscarriages starting in 2022 when she slammed public speculation of celebrities being pregnant. “It’s a very vulnerable thing for women,” she said at the time. “It’s a very private thing for women. You don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors for women and pregnancy is scary. It’s worrying. There’s so many things that come with being pregnant and the stresses and the scans and the complications.” Think of the time Ellen Degeneres played a game trying to get Mariah Carey to drink champagne on national television to determine whether she was pregnant or not. She had a miscarriage shortly after the appearance. But it was the second miscarriage she had after the birth of her miracle baby, Axel Xander Oxlade-Chamberlain in 2021 when she had been pregnant for a whopping 24 weeks.
“Axel wasn’t even walking yet and we were pregnant,” Perrie reflected. “I found out when I was rehearsing for the Little Mix tour. I was at rehearsals and I thought, ‘Oh I don’t feel good.’ Every symptom under the sun so I was like, ‘I think I’m pregnant.’”
She says she felt something was wrong while rehearsing for the Little Mix tour and in April 2022 she realized her suspicions were true. “Every night before a show, I kept bleeding,” she recalled. “I remember sitting and thinking, ‘This is it, I’ve lost the baby.’” While her doctor visits revealed the baby was fine, it wasn’t until her scan after 20 weeks when she found out otherwise.
“That was just the worst day of my life, like horrendous,” she explained. “I just knew something was wrong in the scan.” Once it was confirmed the baby was lost, she said she wasn’t able to drive home because she cried so much. It’s quite normal for women to wait the first trimester to announce a pregnancy so to go beyond that and lose the child is both extraordinary and traumatizing.
At least this is something she experienced with her new man because if it was her ex Zayn Malik, this could have very well ended badly. She spoke about her relationship with him, who sh was with from 2011 to 2015 and called him both her “first love” and said he was very toxic being with.
The two were both at the start of their careers and experiencing similar amounts of breakout stardom which is something they both connected on. What ensued after is another story.
“Meeting someone at that time in your career, who’s kind of at the same point, is refreshing,” she said, “’cause it’s like, ‘Oh, you get it. We kind of get each other. We’ve got this like same kind of thing going on.’ And it kind of just worked and maybe we clicked from that. It was pretty easy at first.” But, as Perrie put it, “It got more difficult obviously as it went on.”
“At the time, I thought everything we experienced in our relationship was normal because it was my first relationship, first love,” she shared. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is how it’s supposed to feel. It’s supposed to feel a little bit toxic in some ways. This is probably normal, right?'” She said the heartbreak was so “grim” that she felt was was “done with men forever” which is a crazy thing to say in 2015 considering she’s only 32. But she met her now-fiancé Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain the following year and things have been a wrap since.
And in other news, she’s releasing a new single this Friday titled If He Wanted To He Would which is part of her upcoming debut solo album. She gave an interview to Rolling Stone speaking about it saying it’s about “not applauding your partner for doing the fucking bare minimum”. She said she did it because she felt if she made another heartbreak song her fans would go into a downward spiral, and said it was about someone else and not her. She’s 2 and a half years into working on this album, says she’s finally decided on the direction of her solo music that she wants to go and has overcome what she says is imposter syndrome. She previously thought that she would always be an artist that sings songs written by other people but is happy with this new song she’s written. So make sure you’re tuned in and ready for the single on Friday when it’s released.
