Kim Kardashian Isn't the Only Mom Having Trouble Getting Pregnant Again
Kim Kardashian’s revealing confession that she’s “begging” to be pregnant a second time on Keeping Up With The Kardashians Sunday highlights how challenges with baby No. 2 aren’t that uncommon. Yahoo Parenting’s experts explain why. (Photo: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images.)
Kim Kardashian has made no secret about her desire to have another child with husband Kanye West. (She’s joked, “I’m like, ‘I’m ovulating in five minutes! Get over here!’“) What she’s kept under wraps until recently is that health issues may prevent her from giving daughter North, 21 months, a sibling.
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On Keeping Up With The Kardashians this past Sunday, the reality star, 34, tells West that her “placenta grew onto her uterus,” and doctors have asked her to consider surrogacy.
“I complain so much about how I hated being pregnant, and I never thought I would be begging to be pregnant,” she adds before the episode ends with her going into surgery for the condition.
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As Kardashian and many women have discovered, the second time isn’t always the charm when it comes to pregnancy.
“I see women who have one pregnancy go very smoothly and subsequently have trouble or have a high or higher risk pregnancy and it often comes as a surprise,” University of Pennsylvania obstetrician/gynecologist Nathaniel DeNicola tells Yahoo Parenting. “But unfortunately, things can happen differently the second time.”
Conceiving gets more complicated with age, for one thing. “Obviously, every woman is older when she is trying for a second child compared to her first,” Shari Brasner, an obstetrician at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, tells Yahoo Parenting. “And for any woman, her fertility declines with age. The significant drops are in the late 30’s and then through the early 40’s but it differs from woman to woman.” That goes for the guys too. “As men age, their sexual performance can change as well as the health of their sperm,” she adds.
New medical diagnoses are more common after women hit their 40s, adds DeNicola, citing diabetes, high blood pressure, and thyroid disorders that can impact a woman’s ability to conceive. “Pregnancy can unmask these conditions,” he says. “Maybe a woman didn’t have diabetes with her first child but she developed gestational diabetes during pregnancy and it stayed with her. Same with high blood pressure, gestational hypertension can continue on. It’s not that the first pregnancy caused these things but it may have revealed them.” And now, they’re a factor to deal with as you try for No. 2.
Unfortunately, complications from a previous birth can also affect women trying to conceive. “If a woman has a C-section, there is a small possibility that the surgery or complications from it could affect getting pregnant,” says Brasner. “An infection, for example, could scar Fallopian tubes, blocking them.”
Kardashian’s presumed condition, placenta accreta, is one such complication — and why her doctors may be recommending that she consider not getting pregnant again even if she is able. The condition — when the placenta grows into the uterus and is extremely difficult to separate — “is one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in the U.S,” Jose Carugno, an assistant professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, tells Yahoo Parenting. The Mayo Clinic reports that “limited research suggests that women who are able to avoid hysterectomy after having placenta accreta are at risk of pregnancy complications with subsequent pregnancies, including miscarriage, premature birth and recurrent placenta accreta.”
Each pregnancy “carries it’s own unique set of risks, joys, and challenges,” says DeNicola. “The hope is that once you’ve had one, it’s autopilot then after. And the majority of patients will experience that but there are definitely lot of reasons to keep expectations in check.”
None of the things that happened with even the nicest, healthy pregnancies are guaranteed, he adds. “Each pregnancy should be thought of as its own entity — and treated as its own miracle.”
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