Kim Kardashian talks about pregnancy struggles with pre-eclampsia and surrogacy

Kim Kardashian has spoken openly about her struggles with pregnancy, which resulted in her turning to surrogates for the birth of her two youngest children, Chicago and Psalm West.

After two difficult pregnancies, Kim revealed she had to have “five different operations” in the space of a year and a half and that her doctors refused flat out to let her do IVF.

Kim opened up about her experience as part of an initiative called ‘Holiday Giving,' a charity campaign under her new shapewear line SKIMS. In a video, she explained,“When I was pregnant with my daughter North, I had a condition called pre-eclampsia or toxemia, which is basically when the mom’s organs start to shut down.”

“The only way to get rid of that is to deliver the baby. At 34 and a half weeks, I had to go into emergency labor — they induced me. North was 4 pounds. She was almost six weeks early,” she explained.

North West is Kim’s eldest daughter and was born in 15 June, 2013. Kim revealed that after she had given birth to North, “My placenta never came out… so my placenta grew inside my uterus and that is what women die from in childbirth.”

Kim revealed she had continued to freeze her eggs despite her nightmarish ordeal, then had an egg implanted again in 2015. She explained, “I was able to get pregnant through that with my son Saint, and then I had two embryos left. I had the same condition, same awful delivery that I had with my first daughter.”

Kim explained she was forced to have “five different operations a within a year and a half to fix the damage that all of that did on the inside.” At the time, she said she was busy with filming and photo shoots. In spite of everything, she still wanted to have more children.

“I asked my doctors, ‘Can I do it one more time?’ And they were like, ‘We won’t even put an embryo in you - that would be like malpractice,’” she continued. Instead, she turned to a surrogate for her final two children: Psalm and Chicago West.

“I’m so thankful for my beautiful kids, no matter how they came to me — they came to me,” she continued. “I’m so thankful for surrogates. I’m really thankful for my family. I grew up with so many siblings. I just loved being in a big environment. I would have gone through the same pain and back for the result of having my babies. It was all worth it.”

Kim shared her story as part of a charitable giving campaign run by Skims, which not only highlighted Kim’s story but also those of other women, including Amanda Booth and model Chalita Natakuatong. Kim and the women featured all chose a specific charity to promote, covering numerous issues from Haiti’s Children to I Am Beautiful.

Kim for her part chose to highlight The Bail Project, a charity which provides bail money to people that have been arrested - recycling the money it pays out as bail.

She said, “The charity that I’ve chosen is the bail project because I have seen that so many families are torn apart by just not having a fair bail system. It’s really important to me to make sure families are reunited and families are connected - especially this holiday season.”

Prison reform is an issue Kim Kardashian feels strongly about - speaking at the White House on the issue as well as helping to free Alice Marie-Johnson from prison. She is also working on a documentary for network Oxygen about reform and additionally has announced she is training to become a lawyer.