Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker just welcomed their first child together, sources confirmed exclusively to People — and it’s been a long journey to get here.
The Lemme founder, 44, and her Blink-182 drummer husband, 47, turned their longtime friendship romantic in late 2020. Barker proposed to Kardashian in October 2021, and the two tied the knot officially in 2022, celebrating their nuptials with a star-studded bash in Portofino, Italy.
Yet even before the couple married, the two were hoping to expand their already-large blended family. Kardashian is mom to Mason, 13, Penelope, 11, and Reign, 8, with her former partner Scott Disick, while Barker shares Landon, 20, and Alabama, 17, with his ex-wife Shanna Moakler. Barker also is stepfather to Atiana De La Hoya, who Moakler shares with her ex Oscar De La Hoya.
Kardashian and Barker confirmed their plans via a March 2022 teaser for the reality show The Kardashians. “Travis and I want to have a baby,” Kardashian told the cameras, before revealing the two were beginning the process of in-vitro fertilization (IVF).
However, during an April 2022 episode of the Hulu series, Kardashian admitted that IVF was taking a toll. Calling the experience “awful,” Kardashian said it was painful for people to assume she was pregnant, when in reality, it was her fertility medication causing weight gain.
In a Sept. 2022 WSJ Magazine interview, Kardashian shared that while the couple started their IVF journey, they ultimately stopped. “It was a lot,” she said at the time. “I took a break to just focus on our wedding and getting married.”
In an interview the following month with the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, the reality star admitted that the hormones used to stimulate ovulation took a toll on her mental health — and that that process didn’t really gel with her more natural lifestyle.
“I felt like we kind of got pushed into doing IVF,” she shared with the hosts. “If you look online, it says if you’re over 40 go right away to an IVF doctor. So I felt a little bit pushed.”
In Nov. 2022, Barker spoke to GQ about being so open about their journey to conceive — which included giving a semen sample in a fertility clinic on an episode of The Kardashians.
“It’s real life,” he said. “And if any of that can help people — seeing Kourtney’s journey through IVF, which is super hard for a woman. You saw her struggle with it and talk about it. That’s real. And there’s however many millions of dudes that have to go give their semen for this same procedure. So it’s, like, relatable, you know? I’ve never been fazed by any of that.”
Ultimately, the couple did not use IVF to conceive: in June 2023, the two announced Kardashian’s pregnancy at one of Barker’s Blink-182 shows. In the video of the moment, Kardashian held up a sign that read “Travis, I’m pregnant” — a nod to a moment in the music video for the band’s song “All the Small Things.”
In an Oct. 2023 interview with Vogue, she shared that after pausing IVF, she “got pregnant naturally.”
“It was an indescribable feeling,” she shared. “Shock, then super-happy, fear sets in, worry, but I remembered then to have gratitude.”