Kristin Cavallari opened up about the births of her three children — and revealed that welcoming her first baby, son Camden, was a difficult experience.
The reality star, 38, recalled during the Tuesday, August 26, episode of her “Let’s Be Honest” podcast that she initially experienced false labor before Camden, now 13, was born in August 2012. Two days later, however, the real contractions began.
“It was brutal,” Cavallari remembered. “The contractions were really bad, I have to say.”
Her then-husband, Jay Cutler, tried to help by timing the contractions for her, but his methods backfired when he started telling her they weren’t far enough apart to go to the hospital. “I was like, ‘F*** off,’” Cavallari said with a laugh. “‘Literally f*** off.’”
The couple ultimately decided to call Cavallari’s doctor, who told her to come in after she had a contraction during the phone call. When they arrived, Cavallari remembered thinking the doctor seemed “a little on edge” but wasn’t sure why.
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Cutler, 42, later told his then-wife why exactly her medical team had been nervous: They couldn’t initially hear Camden’s heartbeat when they checked into the hospital. “And thank God I didn’t know that because I would have been freaking the f*** out,” the Hills alum added.
Cavallari went on to note that she got an epidural, which she did for all three of her kids, and has no regrets about it.
“I would do things differently I think today, if I were to have a baby today, but in the same breath, I remember at the time being like, ‘I have nothing to prove, I know I’m strong and right now I’m f***ing dying, I want the epidural,’” she recalled. “So, while I think in my mind, like in my perfect head, I’m like, ‘If I had a baby today, it would be a water birth and I would do it all naturally,’ but I was dying. I mean, I was dying with Cam, and I think at the end of the day, we should never judge other moms, other women, for their birthing plan and what they end up doing, because pain is different for everybody.”
The Very Cavallari star added that the epidural didn’t completely eliminate the pain. “It took away the contractions, but it didn’t take away the feeling of my vagina literally feeling like it was ripping in half. Ripping in half!” she said. “I was still f***ing suffering.”
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Despite the pain, Cavallari said she had “relatively easy” labor with Camden and only pushed for about 20 minutes. “It feels like you’re pooping out the baby,” she quipped. “That’s just literally what it feels like.”
When delivering her two younger children, Cavallari was induced. (She welcomed son Jaxon, 11, and daughter Saylor, 9, in 2014 and 2015, respectively.)
With Jaxon, Cavallari was nervous about the potential traffic in Chicago, where she and Cutler were living at the time while he played for the Chicago Bears.
“I will say it was a pretty seamless experience,” she recalled, noting that she only pushed twice. “I also don’t really remember the feeling of my vajayjay ripping in two. … I really look back at this experience and it was really easy — like, really easy.”
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With Saylor, Cavallari chose to be induced because she was due around Thanksgiving, and Cutler was set to be out of town as the Bears played the Green Bay Packers on the holiday. She ended up having Saylor the Monday before the holiday so that Cutler could be present. (Cavallari and Cutler split in 2020.)
“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to have a baby with my mom. I love my mom, but I don’t want my mom in the delivery room,” the Uncommon James founder explained. “There was no one else I wanted to be with other than my husband at the time. And I didn’t want to do it alone. … I’m sorry, but I want my husband there.”
While Cavallari noted that she respects every parent’s birthing choices, she advised anyone welcoming a baby to take plenty of time for recovery and use all of the items the hospital offers post-delivery.
“I lived with those ice packs on the coochie-coo,” she recalled.
