Missy Bo Kearns: Aston Villa and England midfielder discusses her miscarriage

Kearns said he was grateful to Dr Blackadder-Weinstein for encouraging him to go to hospital.

Sepsis, which can be life-threatening and difficult to detect, is an emergency response to infection in which the immune system overcompensates and damages tissues and organs.

“The two of us in Birmingham had to spend three or four days of hell in the hospital, and I don’t think we realized how much we’d been through until now,” Kearns said.

“I’m so grateful to the doctors at the Villa, because if I had been home that day and I probably would have called my mum and said, ‘Oh, I feel a bit like flu symptoms,’ everyone would just have said, ‘Go to sleep’ or something like that, but Jodie forced me to go to hospital.

“I didn’t want to go because there’s nothing worse than going to hospital, but they probably saved my life because I had sepsis and I wasn’t even thinking about sepsis when I did it. It was like: I lost my child and Liam was probably thinking the same thing.”

Kearns visited Villa’s training ground to see his team-mates and rebuild his fitness but said he was still dealing with mental trauma.

“I can’t say I’m fully coping,” Kearns said.

“There are days like today when I feel good, [Aston Villa] Girls and all, I built my bike, did my tests, I’m ready to hit the road again.

“But I was upset all day yesterday because I got some news about things we need to deal with, and they come and go in waves.”

Kearns acknowledged that everyone deals with grief differently, but emphasized the importance of “not suffering in silence.”

He highlighted Tommy’s, the UK’s largest pregnancy and infant loss charity, as an important resource to rely on.