Kristen Doute is grateful to doctors after experiencing a health scare during her pregnancy.
“Something not so fun happened to us over the weekend,” Doute, 41, shared on the Friday, December 13, episode of the “Balancing Act” podcast. “We’ll be brief about this, but I feel like it’s important to talk about because if other women experience it … other women that I honestly read about online and a few friends are what got me through this.”
On December 6, Doute said she started bleeding “really heavily, and it was out of nowhere.”
“We were just on the couch,” she said when recalling the moments with cohost and fiancé Luke Broderick. “I wasn’t doing anything crazy and I just panicked.”
The Valley star decided to call her doctor, who advised her to visit an emergency room to be safe.
“I’m still bleeding, and that’s the scary part,” Doute recalled. “I don’t know what this means, because I’m in full panic mode, like, ‘How much have I actually lost? How much blood am I going to keep losing? Is this going to keep happening? Is it not going to stop ever?’ There’s crazy thoughts that go through your head.”
Once they saw a doctor, Doute and Broderick, 33, received the good news that their baby was OK.
“Everything worked out,” Doute said. “We still don’t totally know what happened. … What we think happened is that there was a shift in my placenta. The blood was all mine; the blood was not the baby’s.”
The former Vanderpump Rules star continued, “We saw her on the ultrasound, we saw… I’m gonna get emotional. We saw her heartbeat. We got to listen to her heartbeat, the tech was so fantastic at making us feel good and making us feel calm in that way. She was moving in there — moving and shaking — like nothing was wrong.”
Before being discharged from the hospital, Broderick said Doute received paperwork that stated she experienced a “threatened miscarriage.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, a threatened miscarriage describes vaginal bleeding and pelvic pain in the first trimester of pregnancy. Treatment usually involves watchful waiting. In most cases, the pregnancy continues and doesn’t end in miscarriage.
As the couple remains vigilant, they are grateful another doctor’s appointment reassured them that their baby girl is safe. They also expressed gratitude to The Valley costars Nia Sanchez and Danny Booko for their prayers during the scary ER visit.
“It was a huge scare,” Doute said. “I believe wholeheartedly that God and Luke got me through that because I didn’t think I was going to.”
Doute announced her pregnancy in late November. This will be the first child for both her and Broderick, who have been together since 2022.