Samia Longchambon has opened up about her secret miscarriage for the first time.
The Coronation Street actress was nine weeks into her pregnancy when she went for an early scan and doctors couldn’t detect a heartbeat.
The 37-year-old is only revealing her own ordeal after her character Maria Connor suffered the same devastation, in scenes that aired in January.
‘I unfortunately went through it myself and miscarried,’ Samia said. ‘It was about five and a half years ago, before I got pregnant with Yves. I’ve never spoken about it before.’
After her trip to hospital, Samia was told by doctors to ‘give it a week to see if something changed’. Sadly, nothing did.
She added, ‘I have health anxiety, so I’ve always liked to have early scans in my pregnancies. I hadn’t experienced any bleeding or anything. It was called a missed miscarriage, which is when your body thinks you’re still pregnant. I had to have a procedure.’
Samia kept her miscarriage a secret from her bosses at Corrie, and only revealed the truth after her recent storyline – which she says is what helped her come to terms with her own loss.
‘Corrie didn’t know because I’d not told anyone at work about my miscarriage. They were quite shocked because I still went to work afterwards. In a way, [filming] was actually quite cathartic, because I don’t think I fully ever got to grips with what happened.’
The actress hopes that by sharing her experience, other women who have experienced the same agonising loss may find some hope - pointing out that she fell pregnant with her son Yves just three months after her own terrible loss.
‘That’s why, with this story line, I really wanted to get it right – for me and my own personal story, and also for all women that have been through it, watching it with their families,’ she told Fabulous magazine.
‘I got so many messages from other women, which makes it all worthwhile. A lot of women were saying: “Thank you”. I didn’t want to upset people, because I know how I’d feel watching it.
‘As horrible as they are to go through, and they really are, I got pregnant three months later and had a really good pregnancy.’ Samia has daughter Freya, 10, from her previous marriage to property developer Matt Smith, and Yves, five, her son with husband Sylvain Longchambon.
