Kate Gosselin is opening up about fertility, pregnancy and birth in a six-part TikTok series, revealing that she experienced her own pregnancy loss after learning she was pregnant with multiple fetuses.
“We had our first ultrasound at six weeks and there were seven babies,” Gosselin, 50, shared via TikTok on Wednesday, September 3, in the fourth of six videos discussing her at times controversial reproductive journey.
“I think they had us come back the next week — it was either the next week or two weeks, I can’t honestly remember — to see how they had progressed,” she continued. “In between that time, the seventh baby stopped growing.”
Gosselin famously became pregnant and gave birth to six babies in 2004, going on to star on the TLC reality television series Jon & Kate Plus 8 alongside her then-husband, Jon Gosselin, their six newborns — Aaden, Alexis, Collin, Hannah, Joel and Leah — and their twin daughters, Cara and Mady. (Jon and Kate divorced in 2009 after 10 years of marriage.)
Kate suffers from Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), a chronic health condition that can make it difficult or even impossible to conceive without medical intervention, per the Mayo Clinic. The former reality TV star conceived both her twins and her sextuplets via various fertility treatments, including intrauterine insemination (IUI).
“Along the way there was another emergency — besides the kidney stones, besides the hyper-stimulated ovaries before that — there was another emergency, at some point I started bleeding,” she continued in the video. “I, of course, thought this was the beginning of a miscarriage [and] I was losing them all.”
@kate.gosselin Here’s the part 4 (of my Infertility, pregnancy and birth journey) you all requested!!! #storytime
♬ original sound – kate.gosselin
Kate explained that when she was back in the emergency room, she was “waiting on pins and needles” to learn the fate of her pregnancy, adding that the ultrasound tech was “kinda shielding us” from seeing the pictures.
“At some point, she just got really quiet and I thought, “Here we go, it’s done,’ and I was really, really scared,” she added. “All of a sudden, she said, ‘I see six.’ And I said, ‘You see six what?!’ And she said, ‘I see six heartbeats, they’re there.’”
While Kate was far too early in her pregnancy for any of the fetus’ sex to be revealed, she later posted in the comments section that she “always thought” that the seventh fetus would have been a girl if she had carried the entirety of her multiples pregnancy to term.
“Her name would have been Emma,” she added.
Despite the loss, Kate said that upon learning that the six other fetuses were still viable she became “committed to these babies” and whatever it took to maintain her pregnancy.
“From that point on, I was in it,” she recalled. “I was going to fight for them. I was going to do whatever. Not that I wasn’t before, but just the fact that it was dangled, I was threatened with losing them, it made me realize how much I already loved them. So that was very miraculous.”
According to the reality star, all six of her newborns were born two months prior to their due dates and delivered within a three-minute span. Kate didn’t get to actually meet her six children until a half a day after they were born.
“Family members had already seen them, and I felt like the last to see them,” she said. “I understand I was in huge recovery, I really had no muscle tone left. I could walk to the bathroom, which was maybe 10 feet [away], but that’s all the walking I had done for months.”
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