Aston Villa and England midfielder Missy Bo Kearns has spoken of her “different type of grief” after suffering a miscarriage last month, revealing that the club’s medical team likely saved her life when she developed sepsis.
The 25-year-old, who announced her pregnancy just over two weeks before losing the baby with partner Liam Walsh, told ITV News she thought she was experiencing pregnancy symptoms on 18 March when she began shaking and had a temperature of 42°C. Aston Villa team doctor Dr Jodie Blackadder-Weinstein urged her to call Walsh and go to hospital immediately.
“It was one of the biggest shocks of my life,” said Kearns, who discovered she had lost the baby and had sepsis. “I’d literally been doing pilates and gym an hour before, and my whole life just changed like that.” She described “four days of hell in hospital” and credited the Villa doctors: “They probably saved my life because I had sepsis, and while having that, I wasn’t even thinking about the sepsis, it was: ‘I’ve lost my child.’”
The psychological impact has been severe. “People might not realise how much of a toll it actually has on someone,” she said. “To then have that crash, and then suddenly you’re not pregnant … it’s a different type of grief.” Kearns hopes sharing her story will encourage others not to suffer in silence, pointing to charities such as Tommy’s.
Returning to training with Villa has brought the reality home. “When you realise the plans that you had coming up aren’t the same plans any more, this is when it starts to hit you,” she said. Despite the ordeal, Kearns remains focused on next year’s World Cup: “My plan while I was pregnant was to make the World Cup squad, and that’s not changed.”
