A Definitive Timeline of Kim Kardashian's Pregnancy Journey, In Her Own Words
Pregnancy - it's widely considered one of the most magical times in the life of any woman who chooses to become a mother. Pregnancy glow, sexy pregnancy hormones, and the general "OMG I'm growing a whole person inside me" vibes all contribute to this view of pregnancy as a beautiful thing.
And celebrity moms are often held up as this idealized version of pregnancy, especially as they try to maintain their #flawless, aspirational lives in the spotlight. But every so often, the darker truth about the often unglamorous aspects of pregnancy, childbirth, and post-baby body struggles comes out.
Kim Kardashian, a very public figure, hasn't been shy about detailing her traumatic pregnancy and fertility experiences. For the reality star, neither of her two pregnancies was a magical experience...though that hasn't stopped her from considering a third. Regardless of how you feel about the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star, there's no denying that her candor about the harsh reality of fertility and pregnancy is refreshing.
November 2011: After splitting from Kris Humphries after just 72 days of marriage, Kardashian worried about whether or not she'd ever have kids of her own. "I always wanted what Mom and Dad had. And at first I was like, I want 6 kids. Then I went down to 4, then I was down to 3…and now I'm like, maybe I won't have any. Maybe I'll just be a good aunt," she told Glamour. "At this moment in my life, I feel like maybe I'm not supposed to have kids and all that."
December 2012: Kardashian confirmed her first pregnancy (with then-boyfriend Kanye West) on New Year's Eve - and also said it wasn't a piece of cake. "I wouldn't say it's been easy," she said. "When people say that pregnancy is fun and they love it, I would have to disagree ... Even my sister has made it look easy, but it's not as easy as people think. I heard it's all worth it so I'm looking forward to that."
January 2013: Early pregnancy was morning sickness-free for Kardashian, according to what the star told People shortly after the news of her first pregnancy broke. "It's been so exciting. We're very, very happy," she said. "I've felt good. I've felt no morning sickness, but it isn't the easiest. People always say pregnancy is so easy and fun. It's definitely an adjustment. It's learning about your body, but I've felt really good."
March 2013: Kardashian got candid about initially struggling with the way her body changed while she was pregnant. "I'm not going to lie and be like, 'Oh, it's been amazing and I've adjusted great,'" she told Extra. "At the beginning, it was tough for me when your body changes so much … but once you kind of grasp that and embrace it, it's amazing."
The reality star also admitted that pregnancy had been tougher than she thought it would be - especially when compared with her mom's and sister Kourtney's experiences. "Being pregnant is not as easy as my sister [Kourtney] made it look or as my mom [Kris Jenner] has made it look," Kardashian said. "It's a little painful. I've gotten sick a couple times, and that puts you out." She also revealed that she'd been craving healthier food, like carrots and ranch dressing. At the time, she also "still want[ed] to be chic, wearing heels," according to an E! News interview.
On an episode of KUWTK that filmed in March and aired several months later, Kardashian was raced to the doctor after experiencing abdominal pains and vowed never to get pregnant again. "I can never do this again," she said through tears. "It hurts so badly."
April 2013: Stars - they're just like us! Especially in that they Google all of their strange pregnancy symptoms and freak themselves out thinking something's really wrong. "I was waiting for this amazing experience where I can just do whatever I want, eat whatever I want, feel great...and it hasn't been that way," Kardashian admitted to Ryan Seacrest. "I've had a lot of pain everywhere. I'm in pain, physically. I get really paranoid [and] I start Googling things. The things that come up are really scary. It just freaks me out all the time."
May 2013: Near the end of her first pregnancy, Kardashian was startled to glimpse her huge belly while modeling lingerie during an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians Season 8. She asked a question that a lot of heavily-pregnant women will find familiar: "How the fuck did I get like this?"
June 2013: North West was born on June 15.
Meet North West. #WatchKris pic.twitter.com/QTNJ90baZ6
- Kris Jenner Show (@KrisJennerShow) August 23, 2013
January 2014: The reality star spoke about her first pregnancy woes during an appearance on The Ellen Show: "The pregnancy, I wouldn't really wish that upon anyone. Anyone... It's all worth it in the end, so I would definitely suffer through that, but pregnancy was not a good experience for me. At all. My labour was easy, but just the whole pregnancy was so... I had a few medical issues, so it was really tough, and I gained a lot of weight. It was really hard mentally on me."
September 2014: By later that year, Kardashian was already thinking about giving North a sibling, telling Ellen DeGeneres that she wanted between two and 4 kids total. "I'll go for two - but then again, I have so many siblings and I love it. They're my best friends. I would want that for my kids. So I'm going to do two and see how it is," she said. "[Pregnancy] was not a beautiful thing with me. People are lying to you [when they say you get a pregnancy glow]. Kourtney looks so beautiful pregnant. She has the best pregnancy style. I couldn't figure it out and I'm just dreading when I have to figure it out again." Despite the challenges, she said that having North was "worth it."
December 2014: Kardashian spoke in retrospect about her significant pregnancy weight gain, joking that she blamed God for it. "I'd think God was doing this for a reason. He was saying: 'Kim, you think you're so hot, but look what I can do to you,'" she told Elle UK. "My body just went crazy. After 5 months, I swore I'd never get pregnant again. I got so huge and it felt like someone had taken over my body."
April 2015: On an episode of KUWTK, Kardashian addressed the irony of trying hard to conceive a second child after such a rough first pregnancy. "I complain so much about how I hated being pregnant, and I never thought I would be begging to be pregnant," she said. "Trying for baby number two is just not fun like baby number one. I'm like, 'I'm ovulating in 5 minutes! Get over here!'"
In an appearance on the TODAY show, Kardashian also revealed that doctors had suggested she consider using a surrogate for her second pregnancy. "They have recommended to me to get a surrogate, and I would like to hold out a little bit longer, and still try," she said. "I still have hope, so I'm just going to keep on trying. Never say never. I mean, we haven't talked about adopting..."
June 2015: Shortly after confirming her second pregnancy, the mom was candid about her fertility struggles while trying for baby number two and why she opted to document that journey on KUWTK. "I didn't know that I was going to be so open with [my fertility challenges]," she told Glamour. "But meeting people at my fertility doctor's office who are going through the same things I'm going through, I thought, why not share my story?"
Kardashian continued: "It's been really emotional. One doctor told me I would need my uterus removed after I had another baby - I could only have one more. One was like, 'You should get a surrogate.' The other one was like, 'Oh, no, you'll be fine.' Then I called my doctor, and he's like, 'You know what? I believe - we'll get through it.' The waiting and waiting has been a roller coaster."
August 2015: Kardashian opened up to C Magazine about the complications during her first pregnancy complications that impacted her ability to have baby number two. "It was over a year of trying, and I had so many complications. I had this condition called placenta accreta [where the placenta attaches itself too deeply into the wall of the uterus]," she said. "There were a couple of little operations to fix all that, so that created a little hole in my uterus, which I think made it really tough to get pregnant again. It was a long road. I would go to the doctor in Beverly Hills every day at 5 in the morning to get tested to see if I was ovulating. I was trying everything: I did acupuncture and got a nutritionist to eat healthier, thinking that was an issue."
She also opened up to the magazine about being body-shamed while pregnant (something which led her to post that infamous naked pregnancy selfie to "prove" that she was really pregnant): "Everyone would say, 'She can't stop eating.' I delivered at 180, and they were like, 'She's 210 pounds. She's getting dumped because she's too fat' and all these ridiculous stories. It really took a toll after the fact, when I was losing weight. I gained 50 pounds, and it's tough to get it off. I was dedicated, but also, it changed the way I viewed wanting my picture taken. Before I was always smiling, and so into being out and about. After I had the baby, I was like, these are the same people that made fun of me, and posted the stories that were so awful, calling me fat for something I couldn't control. I don't want to smile for them. I don't want to be out."
October 2015: Just weeks before giving birth to Saint, Kardashian was over it. "I'm gonna keep it real: For me pregnancy is the worst experience of my life! LOL! I don't understand one moment of it and I don't understand people who enjoy it," Kardashian wrote on her website. "I'm not sure why I don't like the experience like others do. Maybe it's the swelling, the backaches or just the complete mindfuck of how your body expands and nothing fits... I just always feel like I'm not in my own skin. It's hard to explain. I don't feel sexy, either - I feel insecure and most of the time I just feel gross."
November 2015: Shortly before giving birth to her son, Kardashian told Ryan Seacrest that she was 100% done with having kids naturally. "I said this last time. I said I am done. Don't ever make me go through that again. I am so honest about pregnancy. I think sometimes they (people) think I am ungrateful for being pregnant," Kardashian said. "It was really hard this time for me to get pregnant. How miserable it is, swollen feet and heartburn. It is the worst."
She also told E! News that she feels like she's run the gamut of every possible high-risk pregnancy complication, including preeclampsia (which introduced the possibility of needing a hysterectomy immediately after delivery). "Every medical issue that you could probably have I feel like I get and I worry so much about it," Kardashian said. "This pregnancy, I have a little bit more anxiety just because I know what's to come and it's really inevitable some of the issues that I'm going to have. You know, I have a high-risk delivery and all of that gives me such anxiety."
December 2015: Saint West was born on December 5. Days prior to his birth, Kardashian had a procedure to turn the breech baby. "This weekend I checked into the hospital and underwent a procedure called an ECV (External Cephalic Version, or a Version), which is done to manually turn the baby from a breech position to a head-down position," the reality star wrote on her website. "They don't give you any pain medication, and let me tell you: This was soooooo painful. Probably more painful than childbirth. BUT it worked!!!"
July 2016: In a TMI conversation with her maybe-sorta-ex-brother-in-law Scott Disick, Kardashian shared the reason she's done having kids - because she's worried about what a third baby will do to her vagina. "I was like, 'I don't think I can carry another one.' I just think, 'Ugh, I'll never be the same down there.' Kanye says it feels the same," she said. "It's like the same house but the furniture is rearranged."
November 2016: In yet another change of heart, Kardashian revealed that she wanted to "explore surrogacy" in order to have a third child. On a November 13 episode of KUWTK, she even met with a woman who had both carried a child and used a surrogate and seemed to be seriously considering using one. "If the two doctors I trust have told me it would not be safe to get pregnant again, I have to listen to that," she said. Kardashian's BFF Chrissy Teigen even offered to be her friend's surrogate.
March 2017: Despite earlier suggestions that she was coming around to the idea of surrogacy, the TV personality recently revealed that she's determined to have a third child naturally and is considering uterus surgery in order to conceive - despite the fact that doctors have warned her about how high-risk another pregnancy would be. "Having more kids is definitely going to be a struggle," she said. "I've gone through so much with really bad deliveries that the doctors don't feel like it's safe for me to conceive again myself. This surgery is really the one last thing I can try. I want my kids to have siblings and I want to know that I did everything that I could to make this happen."
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