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Khloé Kardashian is getting candid about why she initially felt detached from her son.
On Tuesday’s episode of the “She MD” podcast, its host, OB-GYN Thaïs Aliabadi, interviewed Kardashian, who is also her patient, about the birth of her son, Tatum, who was born via surrogate in July 2022.
Kardashian and her ex-partner, Tristian Thompson, share Tatum and daughter True, 6, whom Kardashian delivered.
During the interview, the co-founder of the Good American clothing company revealed that she was in such a low mental state during Tatum’s birth that Aliabadi offered to take him off Kardashian’s hands until she was ready to care for him.
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The reality TV star explained about nine minutes into the interview that when Aliabadi called her to let her know that her surrogate was about to give birth to Tatum, Kardashian completely dissociated.
“Dr. A called, and she said she just had a checkup with my surrogate, and she said, ‘Khloé, we have to deliver within 24 hours,’” Kardashian recalled. “The baby wasn’t due for, like, another week or two, and this was my last weekend with my daughter, True. Like, in my head, I just needed the weekend.”
Kardashian continued: “So I go, ‘No, we can’t do this.’ And she’s like, ‘No, there’s fluid in the sac, we need to do this.’ I go, ‘I’m having a weekend with True!’”
Kardashian said that after telling Aliabadi this, she realized that what she said was unrealistic and then completely broke down.
“I started hysterically crying,” Kardashian recalled. “Because it wasn’t even about the weekend; it was about now this is real.”
Kardashian said that once she began crying, Aliabadi went into “Mother Teresa” mode and made her the very generous offer.
“And [Aliabadi] goes, ‘You know what, I’ll deliver the baby, I’ll take the baby and you let me know when you’re ready to pick him up.’”
“And I was like, ‘What? Who does this? Who even offers that?’ And she did!” Kardashian said. “And I remember, to myself, I was like, ‘Khloé, fucking snap out of it. This is life — we’ve got to do this.’”
Earlier in her conversation with Aliabadi, Kardashian explained that Tatum was conceived during a pretty devastating time in her life.
In 2022, Thompson, a basketball player for the Cleveland Cavaliers, publicly acknowledged that he fathered a child with model Maralee Nichols while he was still in a relationship with Kardashian. Kardashian said on the “She MD” podcast that she found out about Thompson’s infidelity just weeks after her surrogate became pregnant with Tatum in late 2021.
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Kardashian said the revelation made her feel “ashamed” — especially because Thompson had been at the center of cheating scandals before. Due to this, Kardashian said she decided to keep her surrogate’s pregnancy a secret — even from her family — out of fear of the news being leaked.
“I became very much a recluse. I didn’t even decorate the baby’s room because I didn’t want people in my home knowing,” Kardashian admitted. “I also film a TV show, like, nobody knew. I couldn’t admit this to anybody because I was so ashamed, just thinking I knew better. [I was] taught better.”
Kardashian also said that hiding this information led her to seriously “detach” from the entire experience.
“The entire pregnancy of my surrogate, I admittedly buried my head in the sand,” she confessed.
“I said to Dr. A, ‘I can’t do this.’ And the whole surrogacy pregnancy, I was really detached. I couldn’t really face it. I was very much, I think, in denial that this was happening.”
Kardashian said that she had difficulty bonding with her son once he was born because she was so removed mentally and physically from the pregnancy experience.
She confessed that it took her about a year to even give him a name — and listed it as “Baby Kardashian” on his birth certificate before legally changing it to Tatum in 2023.
Kardashian told Aliabadi that she now adores her son and that a few factors really helped her bond with him. She said it helped that Tatum looks a lot like her brother, Rob Kardashian, and that Tatum shares personality traits with Kardashian’s late father, lawyer Robert Kardashian.
“My son’s a year-and-a-half, and he’s sarcastic,” Kardashian said. “And my dad had a really dry, silly, crazy sense of humor. And there’s glimmers of my dad in Tatum, and I’m, like, ‘This is so freakin’ weird’ … but I love it!”