“Real Housewives of Orange County” star Emily Simpson recalled her “traumatizing” miscarriage with twins on the Oct. 18 episode of Scheana Shay’s “Scheananigans” podcast.
“When [my husband] Shane and I first got married 15 years ago, we started trying to have kids pretty early because I was 32 at the time,” Emily shared. “I remember at 32 thinking, like, ‘My clock is ticking.’”
“I had multiple miscarriages — I don’t even know how many at this point, I think it was like five or six or something — just one after another after another. It got to the point where I did in vitro [fertilization].”
The “Real Housewife” continued: “I’ll never forget I was at Costco and I was pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl. I was four months along and I remember saying to Shane, ‘I don’t feel right. Something feels wrong.’”
“Right when I said that, my water broke just all over the aisle. Of course, you know when you’re only four months pregnant and your water breaks, something is wrong.”
Emily was taken to the local emergency room in Utah — where the couple was living at the time — where she “had to go into labor.”
“I had to have them knowing that they weren’t going to survive,” she remembered.
The ordeal resulted in Emily needing an emergency D&C and a blood transfusion.
“It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever been through in my entire life. I remember crying the entire time to just holding onto [Shane] saying, ‘I’m never doing this again. I can’t go through this.’”
After Emily’s hospital stay, the Bravo star said she told her sister Sara Moffitt of her experience.
“She said, ‘Please don’t do it again. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but your body just can’t do it.’ She said, ‘I’ll do it for you,’” Emily shared.
Moffitt, who had a child of her own at the time, went on to carry all three of the Simpson’s children — Annabelle, 11, and twins Luke and Keller, both 9 — as her sister’s surrogate. Shane is also dad to eldest daughters Shelby and Chanel, both of whom he welcomed during a previous relationship.
“I still do this day don’t know why I could never actually carry,” Emily told Shay. “It was traumatizing. It was the worst thing I’ve ever been through, so to look at my three children now, I always just think about my sister and how much she sacrificed.”