Michael Carrick: Between the Lines: My Autobiography

by Michael Carrick

‘You put me to sleep! All day long! No chance I’m staying awake.’ Hospitals and needles get to me. When Louise was born she was breech so we had to have a C-section. They started putting the iodine on Lisa and put the screen up so Lisa couldn’t see anything. I was sat on a stool really low with a screen so I could see what was going on. The next thing I know I’m on the floor. I’d fainted. I came round, lying on my back and just started laughing. The doctor was shaking my legs saying, ‘Are you all right?’ All the doctors and nurses were round me. Lisa was lying there, going, ‘Hello?!’ I can’t do anything about it. It’s weird. I’m not scared, something just goes, boom. Still now, sometimes I’ll get a blood test and I’ll be fine and other times I’ll say to them ‘I have to lie down’ because I go funny. I went to get a blood test once as a kid and they put a needle in my arm and couldn’t get the blood out. They moved the needle around that much the needle came out bent, no exaggeration. The players know about the fainting. Wayne Rooney brings it up all the time. He finds it funny. Any time we’re around the table and someone else has had a baby, Wazza says something to lead the conversation on to my fainting. He’s sitting there giggling, so then I’ve just got to say, ‘Yes, I fainted!’ I don’t mind! I can’t do anything about it. It’s weird.