Kourtney Kardashian Details ‘Terrifying’ Emergency Fetal Surgery During Pregnancy

On Thursday’s Season 5 premiere of The Kardashians, the reality star detailed the medical emergency, revealing what led to her needing the surgery, and how she was feeling following the procedure.

Kourtney shared that a few months before she welcomed her son Rocky with husband Travis Barker, she was getting a scan at home when “something caught [her doctor’s] eye.”

“We had planned a scan at home, so all the kids could see the baby, and Travis was about to leave for tour,” she recalled in a confessional. “The doctor who will come to the house to do the scan is a high-risk doctor, who’s really detailed and thorough at looking for everything. And something caught his eye where he wanted me to see a couple of specialists and I had to go in for fetal surgery where they do surgery on the baby, which was terrifying.”

While discussing the health scare with her friends, Kourtney said it was “stressful,” especially because Travis wouldn’t be with her as he was on tour. She said her mom, Kris, took her to have the procedure, while her husband flew home, noting that Travis was having issues with Wi-Fi on the plane and wasn’t able to receive her updates. When he landed, he immediately rushed to the hospital to be with her.

“The timing of it was miraculous. That saved everything,” Kourtney said of doctors catching the complication. “I just feel so grateful how everything played out and for the doctors that really helped make the best decisions that really saved our baby.”

The Poosh founder added, “[The] doctor was like, ‘That was a trauma and I want you guys to be able to take a second and know that that was really traumatic.'”

She went on to open up about how she felt during the procedure.

“There’s some superpower that I have that in emergency situations, I get really calm. And then right when we left I was like, ‘Okay, I could take a deep breath. I could cry. I could get it out,'” she recalled during a confessional.

At the time, Kourtney posted about the emergency on social media (see above). She reflected on her decision to be open with her followers about the experience during Thursday’s episode.

“They were so grateful that I posted something about it because they said so many people don’t feel comfortable, even telling their friend or their family members because they’re like, ‘Did they do something wrong or different things?'” she told Hulu cameras.

“But my doctor’s like, ‘There’s nothing that you did wrong, it’s not age-related. It’s like just a super rare thing that happened,'” she added. “But then I was like, after this happened, I was like, ‘God’s got this. We’re good. This is a miracle and we’re just gonna be super positive.'”

Kourtney told her friends that she was feeling “good” as she recovered from the procedure.

“I feel good. But I also felt good. So I’m like, yeah, if I don’t feel movement for like five minutes, I’m shaking him up because of the emergency fetal surgery that I had to have,” she explained.

“I’m now mostly on bed rest because there’s a hole in the amniotic sac from where they had to go into the surgery,” she added. “So I’m not allowed to drive, I’m not allowed to stand for more than 20 minutes. I’m really not leaving the house.”

Kourtney and Travis welcomed baby Rocky Thirteen in November 2023.

While the baby boy is the couple’s first child together, they were both already parents. Kourtney shares Mason, 14, Penelope, 11, and Reign, 9, with ex-partner Scott Disick, while Travis is dad to Alabama, 18, Landon, 20, and stepdaughter Atiana De La Hoya, 25, from his marriage to ex-wife Shanna Moakler.

New episodes of The Kardashians drop Thursdays on Hulu.