Parenting influencer Karissa Collins is detailing how she is coping with pregnancy loss in the midst of online backlash.
“I am currently, possibly, still pregnant with a missed miscarriage baby,” Collins, 41, said in a Thursday, July 17, TikTok video. “I have not fully miscarried the baby, which I found out about a month ago. I have been carrying this miscarriage … anywhere from four to six weeks.”
She added, “The baby passed six weeks ago, but it takes a long time for your body to figure it out.”
Karissa announced in a since-deleted TikTok video earlier in July that she and her husband, Mandrae Collins, were expecting their 12th baby. She later revealed that she had suffered a pregnancy loss, her fourth miscarriage overall.
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“I found out in the ER about six weeks ago that there was no baby. I spent a lot of time mourning,” Karissa recalled. “I mourned this pregnancy for a while. I took a good two weeks off, got really close to God … and you want to know if you did anything wrong. I went through all those feelings.”
Karissa then went to visit her OB-GYN, who claimed “there was a baby,” but it did not have a heartbeat. The fetal tissue subsequently started to “disintegrate.”
“It takes your body a while to figure out that you don’t have a viable pregnancy and to expel [the tissue],” the social media personality explained. “There are three options that doctors give you. They give you the option of letting your body do what your body does, [which it] will expel the pregnancy … [or] the abortion pill, and the third option is a D&C.”
Karissa, who had several D&Cs in the past, opted to allow the fetal tissue to pass on its own this time.
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“I always opt for letting my body do its thing,” Karissa said. “Miscarriage is not cut and dry. It’s not black and white. I think people think that when you miscarry, it’s [like], ‘Oh, it’s all gone and it’s done, and you go on with your life.’ But, you don’t. A lot of women have missed miscarriages. … It can go weeks and months.”
She continued, “At all costs, I say, ‘Always let your body do what it was meant to do. Don’t do any interventions unless an emergency is necessary.’ … I just believe the healthiest option is to do what your body was created to do.”
As Karissa dealt with her pregnancy loss, she shared a since-deleted video of several of her younger children playfully hitting her belly, which sparked widespread backlash from social media users.
“I apologize. When I posted that video, what was on other people’s minds was not on my mind at all,” she said on Thursday. “I never thought of it that way. It was a cute moment with me and my children. I didn’t think anyone would even watch it.”
Karissa noted that her kids had been squeezing her belly “like Slime and Squishmallows” as if it were a sensory toy.
“t was the funniest thing. I never wanted to forget that moment of them finding so much joy in my belly,” Karissa said. “They were not hurting me. They were not hurting anything inside of me.”
