In describing the emotional weight she carries to this day, Kelce recalled when doctors could not detect a heartbeat at her 12-week appointment, which also happened to fall on her husband’s birthday.
“It felt like everything went into slow motion,” she told listeners on Oct. 2. “They could not find the baby on the doppler.”
“I called my mom and told her that I couldn’t tell Jason because it was his birthday, which seems very silly. It seems very silly because obviously I’m going to tell my husband what happened. And I did. And it was hard for both of us.”
She noted that everything appeared normal at six weeks, when the pregnancy was initially confirmed, despite the fetus measuring slightly smaller.
“I remember being like, ‘Oh, there isn’t a heartbeat. You didn’t find one because there isn’t one,’” she said. “They estimated that the baby had stopped developing between, I believe it was nine and 10 weeks.”
“Essentially, I had had what you would refer to as a missed miscarriage. It means that your body did not realize that the pregnancy was no longer viable.”
She and Jason subsequently had four daughters—Wyatt, 6, Elliotte, 4, Bennett, 2, and Finn, 6 months—the eldest of whom was born in 2019.
But Kelce admitted the grief followed her and influenced her mindset in all the other pregnancies.
“Having had that experience messed with my brain for every consecutive pregnancy,” she said. ”So for Wyatt, we did not share that we were pregnant until I was after 20 weeks.”
“For consecutive pregnancies, I waited till I was at least 16 weeks,” she added. “I Googled almost every week what the percentage likelihood was that a baby could survive, which sounds really dark. I literally did it for Finn.”
