Since returning to the public eye via her TikTok account, Kate Gosselin has shared more details about her life with fans (and critics) of Jon and Kate Plus 8. In a recent series of videos, she decided to open up about infertility and her sextuplet pregnancy. On Tuesday, September 9, the 50-year-old mom of eight revealed that her sextuplet pregnancy made her feel like she “knew what it was like to be 80” because of just how much her body hurt on a regular basis. “Everything hurt all the time,” she said.
In 2004, Kate welcomed her sextuplets.
Several years prior to that, in 2000, Kate and her ex-husband Jon Gosselin welcomed twin girls Mady and Cara. In a video shared on TikTok, Kate explained that when pregnant with her sextuplets, she started staying in the hospital when she was 20 weeks pregnant. Ten weeks later, she welcomed Hannah, Joel, Leah, Collin, Alexis, and Aaden.
She opened up about the ‘lasting effects’ the pregnancy had on her.
During one of her videos, Kate mentioned that a fan asked her about the “lasting effects” of welcoming sextuplets. “When I was pregnant with them, my stomach was squished up here, like 1 inch. You can see it on an ultrasound,” Kate said. “And my bladder was squished way down here, compressed the whole time with baby weight. Compressed, compressed, compressed.”
Her bladder ‘lost its ability to do what a bladder is supposed to do.’
After Kate welcomed her sextuplets via C-section, she had “a full-length catheter” inserted. She experienced an extreme amount of pain during that time. “I think they went to remove it maybe like the next day,” she said. “And all day I could not pee. And I had this pain that kept growing and growing and I was in horrible pain. I was nauseous, my stomach hurt. It just kept getting worse and worse.”
Eventually, her doctor decided to get her a foley catheter. “It filled one and a half times,” Kate revealed. “Which a foley catheter bag is huge … I’m telling you, that is a humongous amount of pee, and it filled one and half times.”
She added that medical staff “obviously left the catheter in” after that. “Turns out that my bladder was so compressed that it lost its ability to do what a bladder is supposed to do,” Kate added. “It’s a muscle. And it lost its elasticity or whatever. So I took the catheter home, like kept it.” She had it for about a week.
It changed her bladder forever.
@kate.gosselin Infertility, Pregnancy and Birth Journey Part 8 of 9 #storytime ♬ original sound – kate.gosselin
According to Kate, her bladder has “never been right” after that. “I can’t exactly explain it, or put my finger on it,” she said. “But it just is very different after that.”
She also had another thing to share, which she admitted was “probably TMI.” After welcoming her sextuplets, Kate started experiencing “really weird, awful pains.” When “a chunk of something came out,” Kate held onto it so she could show her doctor. “It turns out there were pieces of placenta left in me, which could be a horrific infection,” she said. “I think he put me on antibiotics and after that I was fine.”
