Skip to main content

Controversial ex-reality star Kate Gosselin is opening up about how giving birth to her sextuplets in 2004 affected her body. 

“Somebody asked me if I had lasting effects on my body from having sextuplets, and the answer is yes,” Kate, 50, said in a video she shared on TikTok on September 9. 

Kate Gosselin gets candid about giving birth to six babies at once 

Related

Kate Gosselin of ‘Jon & Kate Plus 8’ Admits She Has Nothing Saved for Retirement Despite Reality TV Fame 

“When I was pregnant with them, my stomach was squished up here,” the Jon and Kate Plus 8 alum explained, gesturing a spot just below her breasts. “One inch across, you could see it on the ultrasound. And my bladder was squished way down here, compressed the whole time from baby weight. Compressed, compressed, compressed.”

Because the sextuplets delivered via C-section, Kate had a catheter put in. But she was unable to urinate, leading to some unpleasant complications. 

“I was in horrible pain. I was nauseous. My stomach hurt. I just kept getting worse and worse,” the mom of eight shared. 

“Turns out my bladder was so compressed it lost the ability to do what a bladder is supposed to do. It’s a muscle. It lost, I don’t know, it’s elasticity, whatever,” she continued. 

While Kate eventually had the catheter removed some days after giving birth, things have been the same since. 

“Ever since then, my bladder has never been right. It has never been right. I can’t exactly explain it or put my finger on it, but it was just very different after that,” she said. 

After she was discharged, Kate continued to deal with the aftereffects of giving birth to six babies at once

“I was having, like, really weird, awful pains and a chunk of something came out,” she said. She went to her doctor, who explained that “there were pieces of placenta left in me, which could [cause] a horrific infection.” 

“He put me on antibiotics,” Kate said. “And after that I was fine.”

Those weren’t the only after effects of her sextuplet pregnancy. 

“I had low muscle tone, I could only walk like an old lady, really, for a long time,” she said. “I had the up-and-down, hideous scar, you know, like the jowls of a dog … that I had a tummy tuck to get rid of.”

“Other than that,” Kate says she didn’t experience any other serious complications. “Which is quite amazing.”

For more​​ news and exclusive interviews, follow Showbiz Cheat Sheet’s Instagram.