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Lily Allen · S5 E2
The Stillbirth
The tragedy she carried in silence for years
A hospital in London, late October 2010. Lily Allen, twenty-eight weeks pregnant, hears a midwife say five words that will follow her for the rest of her life: "There was a pulse. Now there isn't."
"Everybody Hurts" by R.E.M., official music video (1993). The video shows people stuck in traffic, each one carrying invisible grief behind a windshield. Allen carried the loss of her son George in near-total silence for three and a half years before speaking a single public word about it.
“I nearly died. But I was numb and I didn't care. I'd just lost my baby and that is a reflection of how numb I was.”
— Lily Allen, interview with The Sun on Sunday, May 2014
What Happened
In late October 2010, Allen contracted a viral infection that triggered premature labor at twenty-eight weeks. Doctors placed an emergency stitch in her cervix. It held for a week and a half before breaking. The umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck.
TAP TO REVEAL: What did Allen do when she finally broke her silence?
Three and a Half Years of Silence
Allen didn't speak publicly about losing George until May 2014. The media at the time had reported it simply as a "miscarriage." Six days after the stillbirth, she was hospitalized with septicemia, a potentially fatal blood infection. Her spokesperson asked the public and media to leave her and Sam Cooper alone while she recovered.
The Timeline
Everything to Feel Something -- Lily Allen
From No Shame (2018). The title says it all. After the stillbirth, Allen described a numbness so deep she didn't care that she herself was dying of septicemia. This track, written years later, captures the long process of trying to feel anything again after the worst thing that can happen to a person.
Everything to Feel Something -- Lily Allen (2018)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Allen wrote No Shame as the most honest record of her career, and this track sits at the emotional center of it.
How long did Lily Allen stay silent about the stillbirth before speaking publicly?
In the middle of the worst year of her life, one person stays. Next: Sam Cooper, the man who held everything together when everything fell apart.
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