Khloé Kardashian Vulnerably Admits She Was ‘Really Detached’ During Baby Tatum’s Surrogacy Pregnancy: ‘I Buried My Head in the Sand’

The ability to welcome a baby via surrogate is one of the most wonderful inventions of modern medicine, especially if you can’t physically carry a baby on your own. But that doesn’t mean it comes without challenges. Khloé Kardashian got candid about one such challenge in an emotionally charged new interview.

The Good American founder, who is mom to daughter True, 6, and son Tatum, 22 months, with ex Tristan Thompson, appeared on the SHE MD podcast with Mary Alice Haney and board-certified OB-GYN Dr. Thais Aliabadi, who is Kardashian’s doctor. During the appearance, she opened up about the challenges of her surrogacy journey with her son Tatum.

“The entire pregnancy of my surrogate, I admittedly buried my head in the sand and I said to Dr. A., ‘I can’t do this,’” Kardashian said.  And the whole surrogacy pregnancy, I was really detached….So I didn’t get to really attach during the pregnancy part.”

And despite having “one of the world’s best surrogates,” Kardashian struggled with feeling connected to her son through the whole pregnancy. “I wasn’t at a ton of the doctor’s appointments while my surrogate was pregnant to protect her privacy, I didn’t want paparazzi finding out…but I would always be on FaceTime, but it’s not the same and it’s not being there…for Tatum,” she said. “When Dr. A put him on my chest to do skin to skin [right after he was born], my face that we filmed for Kardashians, and my face, looking back now, it’s like I was a deer in headlights. I was so scared.”

It also didn’t help that her sister Kim Kardashian had a “very different experience” with the two children she welcomed via surrogate.

“Hers was great and everything was fine,” Kardashian explained. “So her going through that gave me more comfort to go through mine, but then I even felt more guilty when I still felt so disconnected and she didn’t. I think comparison is definitely the thief of joy….I think I probably compared myself a lot to my sister’s experience and I would feel bad about myself all the time and I would pretend. I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah, me too.’ And then inside I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s wrong with me?’”

Once Kardashian got the call that her surrogate was in labor, she felt hesitant at first. “I was like to myself, ‘Khloe, snap out of it. This is life. We got to do this.’ And my sister Kim was my prince on a white horse. She comes, she takes me. Kimberly, all my family members are sensational, but the way Kim pulled up because she knew that I- I don’t even know if a thread counts, but I was… hanging on by a thread. And if you ever watch that episode, and when you place the baby on my chest and I’m wearing a COVID mask, but you could see my eyes, they’re blank. I’m just like, ‘How is this happening?’”

At the time, Kardashian was also dealing with the emotional (and very public) fallout of her relationship with her kids’ father. “It was a couple days before Thanksgiving and I ended up doing the [embryo] transfer,” she said. “And then the first week of December, I found out that my ex was actually having a baby with somebody else. And I never told my family I did the transfer. I wasn’t going to tell anyone until it took, because I wanted to surprise everyone. So no one knew.” She added, “No one found out about my pregnancy with Tatum until a couple weeks before. And it devastated me because that’s when all the judgment and the knives were thrown at me. And it was terrible….And so I became very much a recluse and I didn’t even decorate the baby’s room because I didn’t want my people in my home knowing.”

She has shared similar sentiments before. In a Season 3 confessional on The Kardashians, Kardashian revealed how she felt after Tatum was born. “I felt really guilty that this woman just had my baby, and then I take the baby and then I go to another room and you’re separated,” she said, per PEOPLE. “It’s such a transactional experience because it’s not about him. I wish someone was honest about surrogacy and the difference of it. That doesn’t mean it’s bad — it’s great, but it’s very different.”

“It’s a mindf—,” she added. “Kim said hers was easy, and this is not easy.”

In an Oct. 2022 appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Kardashian opened up about some of her anxieties that she faced while her surrogate was pregnant. “For me, I’m such a control freak, [and the surrogate is] a stranger,” she said. “I just have to trust you. And I love my surrogate; she was amazing, but I’m still like, ‘I need you sitting next to me all the time. I need to know what you’re doing. What are you eating?’”

Although things were rocky at first, Kardashian is so grateful for her children. She said on SHE MD today, “I was meant to have both of these little angels in my life.”