by Jenner, Kris
Kourtney started seeing the same OB/GYN, Paul Crane, who had delivered all six of my kids. Now he was going to deliver my first grandchild. The day Kourtney went into labor, we were all at my house, having a barbecue.
“Mom, I feel a little funny,” she said. “I think I’m going to go home.”
She went home to lie down and took Kylie and Kendall with her because she didn’t want to be alone. Scott was at the barbecue, too, but you know, guys are different. He stayed at the house for a few minutes and hung out with us until the girls called us from the house and said, “I think we should go to the hospital.” Kourtney thought her water had broken!
The birth began like almost everything else Kardashian: a little crazy and a little chaotic, and with the cameras rolling. We actually shot footage of Kourtney’s water leaking in an episode of the show. Kendall and Kylie ran around, giddy, unable to contain themselves, while Scott took somewhat shaky footage of Kourtney preparing to leave for the hospital.
We were all crazy with excitement, but Kourtney seemed almost serene. She calmly put on her makeup and packed her bag. When they arrived at Cedars-Sinai, she even took a nap. Soon the rest of us arrived, me at midnight, then Khloé at 5:30 a.m., and Kim sometime afterward, her hair extensions only halfway in because she left in the middle of prepping for a photo shoot.
The hospital room was crowded but full of love. There were only supposed to be two family members in the room, so we had to get creative about where we stood. Kim peeked from the closet while the nurse checked Kourtney, and we all hid in various corners. Kourtney was in her hospital bed with a look of determination. The rest of us didn’t really know what to do with ourselves. I even caught myself practicing my Lamaze breathing.
When Dr. Crane told her to push, we were with her: Scott, Kim, Khloé, and me. Khloé was able to help hold Kourtney’s leg while she pushed, and I watched from the doorway as Kourtney’s tiny body folded up on itself and the baby’s little head appeared. Kim covered her mouth in amazement. We were all crying—everybody but Kourtney. She had a job to do. She was quiet, serious, working. Finally, Dr. Crane asked her if she wanted to pull the baby out. “Can I do that?” she asked. She was able to put her hands around the baby’s torso and tug, gently, and finally Mason Dash Disick was on her chest, crying softly.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. The miracle of birth never grows old and never ceases to completely amaze me. The birth of a baby can humble anyone. I watched Scott’s face and how he reacted to the entire experience, and I saw him in a way I had never seen him before.
Afterward, Kourtney told our producers that Mason’s birth was life-changing for her, the most amazing thing she had ever experienced. That’s exactly how I would have described her birth so many years before. Watching your baby have a baby—it’s one of those moments that makes life a miracle.
I’ve watched Kourtney become the most amazing mother in the world, totally devoted and dedicated to her baby on every level. She makes selfless decisions as she raises her baby, and doesn’t go anywhere without him, nor does she slow down for a second. When I suggested, “Why don’t you just take a couple of months off?” she wouldn’t hear me out. She was determined to get back to work, even with a baby strapped to her back. I think Mason’s first photo shoot was when he was maybe four days old.
Scott, meanwhile, turned around 180 degrees. He’s an amazing partner, an amazing dad, and an amazing son. I’ve gotten to know his parents, and they’re wonderful. I think Kourtney has shown all of us that she is going to do life her way. And I even have to admit, I respect her for not succumbing to my wishes for her to be married just because she has a baby. She kind of did it backward. It wasn’t the way I did things, but it works for her.
As I write this, we’re just finishing up Season Six of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. I thought I was done, and then all of a sudden, as in all things Kardashian and in any family with six kids, something new happened . . . Kim fell in love.
Kris Humphries (great first name, right?) was a basketball player for the New Jersey Nets. Kim had met him at the end of shooting our spin-off show Kourtney & Kim Take New York. She had been dating Kris for about six months. I had never seen Kim so happy, and I could tell Kris was different. One day, Kris came to Bruce and invited him to go golfing. While they were on the golf course, Kris asked Bruce for Kim’s hand in marriage. Bruce and Kris came running home, where Kris asked me for Kim’s hand. Then he asked my advice on how to best pop the question to Kim. He wanted to surprise her, but he wanted to do it in a really low-key and private way, which I thought was really cool. He planned this big surprise for her, and that same night I planned an engagement dinner.
He asked Kim to marry him at her house by taking dozens of red rose petals and spelling out “WILL YOU MARRY ME?” on the floor of Kim’s bedroom. When she came home she didn’t even know he was going to be there, but there he was, down on bended knee when she walked into her rose-strewn bedroom. Of course she said yes.
They came over to our house, where I had gathered the entire family.
“It’s another nine-one-one!” I told everyone. “A nine-one-one barbecue,” which translated to: “Get your ass over here right now.”
Everybody came over immediately. I didn’t tell them why they needed to come. It was important that we kept the proposal hidden until the last second, because none of us can keep a secret from one another.
Once the whole family was gathered outside at the dining room table, Kim and Kris walked in. Kim was wearing her huge diamond ring, and she just started flashing her hands around and casually running her fingers through her hair. At first no one noticed.
Then Kylie screamed, “Are you engaged?!”
“Yes!” Kim said.
Everybody started screaming, jumping up and down, and crying. It was just a great, great night. We had dinner, and once again I just sat around looking at my six children, my husband, my grandchild, and my three sons-in-law (one honorary and one future), thinking, Life is so good. We had a gorgeous pink Cinderella cake and as a joke, I had rented two mini-horses covered in glitter, and we all wore fake engagement rings.
Of course, the camera crew caught every second.
EPILOGUE
The Epiphany
I never imagined that a neck-lift would be a transcendental, life-changing experience for me at the age of fifty-five. People think about plastic surgery and they think “self-absorbed,” not “life changing.” Yet my neck-lift surgery taught me some amazing lessons about life—and about love, friendship, loyalty, self-control, and the power of letting go. Most of all, it taught me about the importance of overcoming fear. My husband often says, “Fear is like fire: it can burn your house down, or it can keep you warm and cook your food.”
It depends on how you look at it. I’ve looked fear in the eye and chosen to overcome it, and that applies to all kinds of facets of my life, from emotional to physical. But few things compared to the neck-lift I had last summer.
Since my first surgery in childhood, when I had the tumor in my leg removed, I have been terrified of going under anesthesia. When I went under anesthesia as a child, I wasn’t sure if I would wake up with a leg or not. Going under for that surgery seemed like I was surrendering control of my life. I don’t like surrendering control. I am a control freak. When I went under again for breast implant surgery in 1988, it was again a very frightening and disorienting experience. I also had a recent knee surgery from a torn meniscus, but that happened so fast, I didn’t have a choice or a chance to really worry about it. Even though the surgery—both surgeries—were very successful, I woke up feeling terrible, throwing up in the car on the way home from the anesthesia and vowing: I’ll never do that again!
I had been seeing my plastic surgeon, Garth Fisher, for years, but never for myself. One time, Kendall needed a little stitch. Then Bruce had his face-lift, and I went with him to his appointments. Another time, my son, Rob, was injured playing basketball and needed a stitch in his
shoulder. Every time I was in Garth’s office, I would barely get halfway down the hall before I would start taking my shirt off to show Garth my boobs and ask him if I needed them done again. He always told me I looked great and to relax.
Then, in the summer of 2011, I went back to Garth’s office.
“Okay, I’m ready to have my boobs done again,” I told him. “I think that they make me look matronly. They’re too big. Now what do I do with these implants?”
My self-esteem was taking a beating because I was aging and I didn’t feel as good about myself as I once did. I was also an absolute workaholic, obsessed with work, addicted to my office, and traveling like crazy. I was working hard all the time, not taking any time for myself, and I felt like doing something like this—just for me—might just give me a boost of confidence and make me feel better. I also knew that if I was ever going to be put to sleep again for surgery, I needed a surgeon I trusted 150 percent. That surgeon was Garth. I knew I could give my control over to Garth and be okay with it.
“You don’t need your boobs done,” he told me. “Why in the world would you mess with them? They look great.”
Then he added, “But I will do your neck.”
“What?!” I said. “You’ve been telling me all these years you would never touch my face.”
“It’s time,” he said. “It’s the perfect time. We can fix your neck. It’s been bothering you for a while. So let’s do it.”
I was, like, What? Here I had just gotten up the nerve to redo my boobs after thirty years, and now he was telling me, “No, your boobs look great, but let’s do your neck.”
I walked out that day still in a fog. It was finally time. Then the fear took over: all I could think about was what would happen during the surgery. I would be put to sleep. I would lose control. I would be OUT. It was a visual I just could not get out of my head. I debated with myself for days, worried about something going wrong. I spent weeks preparing for the worst. It wasn’t a medical procedure; it was elective surgery, something I didn’t really have to do. Something I said I would never do.
I kept berating myself:
How selfish are you to do this for yourself when you are everyone else’s manager?
What if, God forbid, you don’t awake from the anesthesia? Who will take care of everybody? Who will be their manager? Who will drive the ship of Keeping Up with the Kardashians?Who will take care of the brand?
It was very hard for me to let things go. Fear became my enemy. Fear was overwhelming and powerful.
Finally, I scheduled the surgery. By then it had become a challenge that I couldn’t deny. Yes, it was something that I really wanted for myself. Still, it was something that also scared me to death. I had done my homework on the subject, and I had decided that I wanted to do it. I looked around. Lots of people have plastic surgery. So, yes, I wanted the surgery, and it just became a challenge for me to overcome my fear and do it.
Then something amazing happened: my children, family, and friends wrapped me in their arms and made me feel so loved.
As I was contemplating the surgery, I was also thinking about my relationships, both past and present. Even after all these years, I was still suffering from the loss of some of my closest friends during my divorce from Robert. That was very, very painful. Not only did I lose a spouse in my divorce, but I also found I could not replace or fix all the relationships I had undone in the process. There were people I let down, people I disappointed, and in the twenty years I have been remarried to Bruce, there were still wounds that never seemed to heal. Despite everything I had, there were still people missing in my life.
When I married Bruce, it took some time for me to reconnect with friends like Joyce and Larry Kraines and Sheila and Randy Kolker. After Robert passed away in 2003, we seemed to find one another again, and it has been one of the most amazing joys. A true awakening, and I feel blessed to have them in my life again.
When I had my boobs done in 1988, the two faces that were there to greet me when I woke up from surgery were Sheila’s and Joyce’s. They were the ones who drove me home from the hospital and put me into bed, who took care of me at the moment when I truly felt the worst I ever had. Making plans for this neck-lift reminded me again how important these girls, as well as my other friends, were and are to me, and I knew I needed them to be there for me again.
The morning of the surgery, the most spectacular thing happened: all of my best friends and all of my children surrounded me when I got to the hospital. I had asked a few of my girlfriends to be with me when I went into surgery since Bruce couldn’t be there. So when I sat there in the waiting room, waiting for the nurse to call me in for the surgery, I looked around and I saw Shelli Azoff, Joyce Kraines, Sheila Kolker, and Lisa Miles, along with Kimberly, Kourtney, Khloé, and Rob. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world, blessed by love and friendship. I suddenly realized that this was the same group of girls who sat with me so many years ago, waiting for Rob to be born. I burst into tears, overcome with emotion. I almost forgot about being petrified.
With everyone standing around me in the operating room, most in scrubs, I was able to find a complete peace. I was so grateful for where I had been and how far I had come in my life, through drive, ambition, focus. Now I was able to let go, for the first time in twenty years, because I realized in that moment the power of friendship, the power of love, and the power of feeling complete.
There was another essential group of friends in that operating room: the entire camera crew from Keeping Up with the Kardashians. They were all in scrubs, too, doing their best to be invisible. A camera crew in the operating room? Absolutely. There is no way I would have had the operation without them. They had been through the last six years of my life, documenting every second. Although most people would cringe at the thought of having a surgery filmed, for me it wouldn’t have been the same without them. This crew are members of my family now. They laugh with me and they cry with me. They have been with me every moment for the last six years. Why in the world would they miss this? As I promised in the beginning: the cameras roll no matter what.
I looked over at Farnaz Farjam, our wonderful and beautiful producer and now one of my best friends. She was in scrubs, too, and I thought she was going to cry. I looked over at all of my girlfriends, and I could see the love in their faces. I looked over at my kids; they were holding my hands.
As the anesthesiologist prepped me, I thought about the people in my life I had lost. I thought about how Robert Kardashian would surely get a good laugh out of all of us being together again in a room like this under these circumstances. He would have also surely loved to see us being silly and loving one another and being there for one another.
I thought about Cici, Robert’s cousin and my longtime and ever-loving friend and closest confidante, who was in Houston and couldn’t be there, and how much she was missed. I thought about her parents, Auntie Dorothy and Jack, who had been such a big part of my life. I thought about my girlfriend Mary Frann, and my girlfriend Stephanie Schiller. I thought about my grandparents, Lou and Jim and Mary Lee and True. I thought about Nicole, about how much I loved and missed her and how she would have loved to be there, to go through something like that with all of us. I thought about my stepfather who became my dad, Harry Shannon, and how much I loved him, and how excited I was that my mom was coming up to be with me right after the surgery.
I thought about everyone I’d loved, everyone I’d lost, and everyone who was there in the room with me that day. My whole life seemed to flash before my eyes as I thought about all the people who had joined me on the journey of my lifetime.
I was thinking about all of this as the nurses wheeled me into the operating room. They let me recline while the anesthesiologist administered the IV. Now my biggest fear—going under, losing control—was now my biggest challenge, and I was going to accept it, embrace it, and conquer it. I took a deep breath and exhaled.
“You’ve got about thirty seconds,” said the anesthe
siologist. “Then you will really start to feel this.”
I looked back at my family and friends.
“Oh, I love you guys so much,” I said.
I acknowledged everyone individually:
“I love you, Kourtney.”
“I love you, Kim.”
“I love you, Khloé.”
“I love you, Rob.”
I went through the entire list. Love, love, love, love, love, love, love. Six incredible kids, one incredible husband, a world of wonderful friends, an amazing life.
I took people for granted the first time around, in my first life. In my second life, I realized what I had missed so much and how special the people in my life are to me. Although I have always had so many girlfriends, it was this original little group being together again that was so powerful that day. We were all there, and we had all gone through so much. We had all lost a lot, but in spite of those losses, I couldn’t help but think: Wow, look at what we still have to look forward to. Even though we’re getting older—we’re in our fifties, not our twenties or thirties or forties anymore—life is going to be as fabulous as we make it. How lucky we all are to have each other!
As I lost consciousness, I exhaled and, finally, I let go, trusting in God and my doctor that I would emerge from this experience better, stronger, and ready for the next challenge.
The next thing I knew, I opened my eyes. It had been a ten-hour surgery. But it seemed like only a moment had passed. It was midnight by then. Everyone was still there, including the camera crew, but the only faces I saw were those of my daughter Kim and my best friend, Shelli Azoff, standing over me.
