Singer Paloma Faith has said she carried on working while she had a miscarriage on the set of TV series Pennyworth.
Speaking on the How To Fail podcast with Elizabeth Day, the 42-year-old London-born singer also revealed she had an ectopic pregnancy after her first round of In vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment.
The Brit Award winner, known for hits such as Only Love Can Hurt Like This and Changing, said she did not regret her decision to stay on the set of the drama which explores the origin of comic book character Alfred Pennyworth.
She said: “It started at work and it was a fight scene on Pennyworth, and I’d just thought to myself, it’s gone, so I might as well carry on with what I’m doing.
“I had to go to the toilet nine times and on film sets they escort you to the toilet because they don’t want to lose you and delay filming or whatever, so it’s quite embarrassing, and I was like ‘Oh sorry I ate something bad last night’.
“‘Cause I knew that if I told them I was miscarrying they’d send me home.
“I didn’t want to ’cause I just thought I’d be going home without work and without a viable pregnancy and I just thought I’m gonna stay and I just sort of stuffed loads of tissues in my underwear and I said I’d come on my period, could you send for something or whatever.
“And they did and I was like ‘It’s quite heavy’ and I just carried on filming and actually I don’t regret it.
“I think it’s kind of very indicative of who I am as a person and some people might find it disturbing or a bit weird or whatever but I just think that’s kind of the way I am, and I didn’t really cry about it and I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing.”
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Faith has two daughters, having welcomed her first child in December 2016 and her second in 2021 with her husband Leyman Lahcine, whom she has now split from.
On the podcast she spoke about her journey with IVF and said she had experienced an ectopic pregnancy after undergoing a first round of treatment.
“I then had an ectopic pregnancy with the first one and then my fertility starts going because I’ve had one tube damaged,” she said.
“Anyway, so the second time did work, so I was lucky because I actually had two viable pregnancies, even though one was ectopic.
“And then the birth was really difficult. It was like, actually unbearable.”
Ectopic pregnancies occur when a fertilised egg implants itself outside of the womb, usually in one of the fallopian tubes, according to the NHS website.
Faith has spoken previously about the difficulties she has faced giving birth and said she had premature rupture of membranes (Prom) six months into one of her pregnancies, which the NHS says is when your waters have broken pre-labour.
She said: “I was leaking, and they were like, ‘You’re gonna have to induce, we’re gonna have a premature baby’.
“And I just was really defiant that I didn’t want to do that and I basically had bed rest, and I was just drinking four litres of water a day, and I kept her in for a month just laying down to kind of replenish the loss waters and then eventually the birth itself went terribly wrong.”
When Faith announced her second pregnancy on Instagram in 2020, the singer said she had received six rounds of IVF treatment before her daughter was conceived.
Her life as a mother was explored in the 2021 one-hour film Paloma Faith – As I Am which followed the singer over a year of her life while she balanced writing a new album, launching an acting career and becoming a first time parent.
