Kailyn Lowry and Elijah Scott Open Up About Son Rio's 'Traumatizing Birth': 'He Didn't Cry' (2024)

Kailyn Lowry is opening up about her experience birthing baby No. 5.

The pregnant podcaster, 31, sat down with boyfriend Elijah Scott for a new episode of her Barely Famous podcast, where the two discussed son Rio's birth last year.

The two recall sitting down after dinner only for Lowry to start having contractions, a month ahead of her due date. When she got to the hospital with Scott, they did a "biophysical" on her baby, which the unborn child "failed every last bit of it."

"So that was a deciding factor that they were going to augment the process by speeding things up. I don't know how I feel about that now," Lowry admits, saying she felt very anxious during the process. "I had never experienced an augmented birth and that was a big part of it too."

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Lowry says she was in labor for about 17 hours when it was time to push. "I remember them asking you if you were ready to start pushing, and you said, 'Yeah,' " Scott recalls. "And from you saying that it was two minutes and he was here."

Scott laughs, calling Rio "Mr. Rocket." Lowry then asks him to explain why he didn't cry when the baby boy was born.

"I need you to tell the podcast listeners what you told me, because the first time I asked you why, I didn't want to keep bugging you about it," she shares. "I didn't want to upset you and I didn't want to upset myself, but I couldn't wrap my head around it. Why didn't you cry?"

Scott explains, "The reason is when he came out, they said [his breathing] was hard to find. They took him over to the little baby stand thing and he was barely breathing and also had fluid in his lungs."

"I'm worried about him and you're over here crying asking if he's okay. And I'm like, 'Yes, he's fine.'"

"But he wasn't fine," Lowry interjects, to which Scott replies, "No but I'm trying to keep you calm and still trying to worry about him. It's kind of traumatic in a way."

Lowry also says she only recently looked at photos from the birth because it was "all the way traumatizing" for her.

"When they took him over to the incubator thing, there were eight or nine nurses working on him," she says. "And I didn't know what was going on. We didn't hear anything. He wasn't breathing and they kept saying he wasn't breathing, so that's where I was like, 'Okay, this is near death.'"

Scott disagrees about it being a "near death" situation but agrees it was worrisome that Rio "didn't cry" for days. When Lowry was in a meeting with his medical team discussing her concerns about that, Scott's mom came in and reported that he was finally crying."

"And I lost it. Like I lost it. I just thought it was really weird because I know they do the stimulation and things like that to help the baby cry. I thought if they weren't crying something else could have been wrong. It could have been something else unrelated to the other health issues he was having."

Lowry also reveals that she couldn't see her baby for 12 hours out of concern the stress would trigger preeclampsia.

"I've had four children before this and never knew that you could get preeclampsia after you give birth," she shares.

And while she was still learning things when it came to baby No. 5, she also shares that Scott was no newbie to kids himself, explaining he helped raise his niece who was born when he was 14. The conversation then turned to how Lowry's older boys have pitched in.

Of son Isaac, 13, she jokes, "He may be tired of me having babies but he's not tired from helping."

"Lux will fight to help," she continues. "He wants to make bottles. We'll be getting ready for bed and he's like, 'Just let me make the bottle.' And I can make the bottle five times faster, but sometimes you just got to let them help because they're asking."

"My biggest thing right now is that I don't want my other children to be the responsibility of their older siblings," she concludes.