Louise Thompson has revealed she suffered a miscarriage in January last year.
The former Made In Chelsea star, 35, has been admirably open about her horrific health journey following the birth of her son Leo, who she welcomed with partner Ryan Libbey in 2021.
Louise almost died on two occasions during her traumatic labour, and the stress on her body led to a number of further horrific health issues.
Now, the reality TV star has opened up about another crushing experience that happened in January 2024, when she was four weeks pregnant and suffered a miscarriage.
‘This is not now, this was last January. The night before I got on a flight. As if things needed to get more complicated,’ she said alongside pictures of positive pregnancy tests and a screenshot of a due date calculator, which estimated September 10, 2024.
Louise said she only told a handful of people about her miscarriage at the time, but is now opening up about it in her new book, Lucky: Learning to Live Again, which was released on April 24.
‘The stick in this image is one of those things that I’ve buried,’ she wrote. ‘I haven’t allowed myself to give it a second thought.
‘In typical Louise fashion, one trauma has been quickly replaced by another swooping in to take my attention.
‘I haven’t even spoken to Ryan about it in much detail either really… but we’ve had our plates full.
She continued: ‘It’s crazy to think that Leo could have had a sibling born last September. I doubt that it was ever going to work. Probably a mere chemical pregnancy.
‘Whatever it was the change in hormones or blood flow to that area caused the most insane amount of bleeding from my bum in the weeks that followed and ended up having my stoma surgery as a result. So capiche.
‘That was the end of that dream. Was it a dream though? Not something that was planned, in fact a complete miracle given the circumstances and I’ll let you work that one out, although there are many circumstances that make this one very unusual, including the fact it’s practically a Mary and Joseph moment.
‘But I knew something was different to test because I felt a very unusual sense of tiredness that I only got when being pregnant last time and I felt very sick too. These are not symptoms I’ve experienced aside from my last pregnancy.
‘My fertility and our fertility journey is something I’m only just starting to wrap my head around 3 1/2 years after the birth of my beautiful son. There is a lot I haven’t come to terms with, and I haven’t wanted to until now
She added: ‘I actually remembered to mention it in a medical appointment last week and it kind of brought about this flood of emotions and it felt quite necessary and quite good. I need to get it out now.’
A timeline of Louise Thompson's health issues
- March, 2021 – Louise and Ryan suffer miscarriage
- November 2021 – Louise and Ryan welcome Leo. But Louise reveals she nearly died twice in labour, and ended up in ICU. She spent a month in hospital.
- Early January 2022 – Louise reveals she’s suffering with PTSD from childbirth and experiencing ‘depressive panic episodes’ which can last hours or days. ‘When I’m having one I can’t function, I can’t look after myself, let alone anyone else around me. I can’t even spell my name. I can’t see, I can’t hear, I can’t look anyone in the eye,’ she said. She added that her subconscious thinks she’s ‘dying all the time’. Alongside the mental health issues, Louise suffered with pain, dizziness, fainting, and temperatures. She also had ‘savage internal infections’ and ‘scary blood test results’.
- Mid January 2022 – Louise said she was ‘starting to make sense’ of her anxiety, but was crying 20 times a week. ‘60,000 thoughts passing through my head each day. If I can try and get 30,001 of them to be non anxious thoughts then I am sort of winning. Honestly I’ve never known anxiety like it. It feels inexplicable. But it’s not, and I’m starting to make sense of it,’ she said. Louise also revealed her scar was healed enough for her to attempt a bath, and her sickness had subsided.
- February 2022 – Louise said she’d come to terms with her life ‘never being the same again’ and that she’s ‘not even close to feeling like a normal person yet’.
- May 2022 – Louise was holidaying with her family in Mykonos she started bleeding from an existing medical condition she suffers from called ulcerative colitis (UC).
- June 2022 – ‘I’ve been on my new medication escitalopram for nearly 4 weeks and am still having some unpleasant side effects,’ Louise said, updating her fans. She also said she’s weaned herself off antipsychotics, and her thoughts were improving. Louise also opened up about suffering a ‘catastrophic breakdown’ as her PTSD hit again.
- July 2022 – After some ‘alarming blood test results’ Ryan revealed Louise was back in hospital. Louise herself opened up about having erased memories from her life because of the PTSD, with childhood memories coming back. She then took a social media break while back in hospital for mental health issues, later explaining that she endured an hour of ‘partial blindness’ during a panic attack. ‘I was not alive, I couldn’t have a normal thought. My brain basically shut down,’ she said.
- September 2022 – Louise opens up about her Asherman’s Syndrome diagnosis – a rare condition where scar tissue can build up inside your uterus. The main impacts, she said, were fertility problems and pain.
- October 2022 – Louise reveals she’s been diagnosed with drug-induced lupus – an autoimmune disease, meaning the body’s natural defence system (immune system) attacks healthy parts of the body. ‘It means that I’m really tired but also I’ve started to get really really intolerable joint pain, especially if I sit down for any amount of time if I cross my legs,’ she said.
- January 2023 – Louise said an ‘unexpected’ situation has put her back in hospital, which Ryan later revealed was her haemorrhaging. She later reflected: ‘I lost a lot of blood. I think around 3L which sounds like over half my body’s supply…although I have to bear in mind I’m also really small.’ She also recalled feeling all of her limbs ‘go cold’ as her blood was trying to protect her ‘vital organs’. She was in hospital for 17 days.
- February 2023: Louise is hospitalised again, Ryan announces.
- April 2023 – Louise unveils her stoma bag after a colonoscopy operation. Louise explained: ‘Isn’t it bizarre that this little grey pouch is the price I pay for good health! I say good riddance to that nasty menacing colon!’
- July 2023 – Ryan reveals Louise was on ‘suicide watch’ for for months of Leo’s life.
- November 2024 – Louise is admitted to hospital for almost two weeks after suffering from agonising pain. It turned out to be septic shock, and Louise had to undergo emergency surgery.
While Louise works with a life coach to keep her looking forward, she’s been looking back recently, which has upset her.
‘I haven’t worked with my psychotherapist for well over a year because I thought I was done with all of that. That means I haven’t been forced to look back,’ she said.
‘But then I had to have more surgery 6 months ago and actually over the last week being back in the hospital to discuss potential plans for future surgeries and stuff has brought everything rushing back.’
Louise has noticed herself slipping into some old behaviours of avoidance and has experienced some ‘bizarre memories’ crop up again.
‘I’ve cried a little bit most days which feels alien (even though I used to be called tears thompson) because I’ve been so happy,’ she said, explaining how her next step is to try Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EDMR) therapy – which uses eye movement and talking therapy to help people process past experiences.
On top of that, Louise said she is currently suffering through a bout of illness, which left her with the ‘worst migraine’ she’s ever had.
‘For whatever reason I’ve also now developed some sort of cold/virus/flu,’ she said. ‘Still not entirely sure how I can self diagnose which one it is but the raging fever and shivers are indicative of something.’
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