Just in case you were somehow able to miss it, Khloé Kardashian’s rep confirmed earlier this month that she is expecting a second baby with her ex Tristan Thompson.
The former couple already share a 4-year-old daughter, True, and their new addition is expected via surrogate any day now.
“We can confirm True will have a sibling who was conceived in November,” Khloé’s spokesperson said at the time. “Khloé is incredibly grateful to the extraordinary surrogate for such a beautiful blessing. We’d like to ask for kindness and privacy so that Khloé can focus on her family.”
Needless to say, people were stunned by the news, as Tristan had been involved in a paternity scandal just eight months ago, when he welcomed a baby boy, Theo, with personal trainer Maralee Nichols.
Khloé famously found out about Tristan’s secret son “with the rest of the world” when legal documents from his court battle with Maralee were leaked. She was left heartbroken by his deceit.
According to the timeline, Khloé and Tristan’s surrogate was impregnated just weeks before the scandal broke, but this means that Tristan was well aware of the baby already on the way as he planned his new addition with Khloé.
In fact, according to Maralee’s allegations, Tristan was actively encouraging her to have an abortion while simultaneously going forward with the surrogacy plans.
So, let’s break down the entire chain of events that got us to this point — but be warned, it’s seriously messy.
To take it back to the very beginning, Tristan and Khloé first started dating in 2016, but their relationship has been consistently dogged by his infidelity.
Videos of the NBA player cheating on Khloé throughout her pregnancy emerged online in the days before she gave birth to their daughter in April 2018.
Despite this, Khloé decided to stay with him and even told a critic that she was “proud of [her] strength” when they shared their disappointment at her choice to give him another chance.
@ChicBitchxo Not exactly Queen Persia, you have no knowledge of what goes on in our household or the enormous rebuilding this takes to even coexist. I’m proud of my strength. I appreciate your opinion and I hope you hold that same opinion to everyone else who has stayed in situations.
Less than a year later, in February 2019, Khloé was left devastated when it was reported that Tristan had been seen “making out” with her sister Kylie Jenner’s then–best friend Jordyn Woods at a house party.
Eyewitnesses reported that Jordyn was seen sitting on Tristan’s lap at the bash and the pair were “touchy-feely” before staying the night together.
Jordyn later said that she regretted putting herself in a compromising situation but insisted they only shared a brief kiss; she maintained that she's "no homewrecker."
This time, Khloé did call the relationship off, and the following year, she began to explore freezing her eggs, as she planned to give True a sibling at some point in the future.
In addition to True and Theo, Tristan shares 5-year-old son Prince with his ex-girlfriend Jordan Craig.
In a 2021 episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, Khloé revealed that she’d consider surrogacy for future children because she faces a “high risk of miscarrying” due to the low levels of progesterone in her body — a hormone that is vital for stabilizing the inner lining of the uterus.
Khloé started freezing her eggs in April 2020 and later revealed that she’d chosen Tristan to be a sperm donor after her doctor told her about the benefits of freezing embryos rather than eggs on their own.
“After my doctor's appointment, I talked to Tristan,” she said at the time. “If you can create embryos and do all the DNA testing, I do think that's the smarter choice. But it's weird because Tristan and I — we're not together.”
Around October 2020, Tristan and Khloé filmed Keeping Up scenes together that aired in March 2021. In the clip, Tristan seems hopeful that he and Khloé will be able to salvage their romantic relationship.
He says that they are “one step closer” to getting their “family back together.” He then adds: “It’s great and amazing that she wants to take a step forward with our family and it’s perfect, I’m happy.”
Tristan also hints at their impending surrogacy journey as he says: “I’ve always wanted four kids; I have Prince and True so two down, two more to go.”
In the legal filings, released in December last year, Tristan revealed that he first met Maralee in “late November/ early December 2020,” which would have been shortly after this clip with Khloé was filmed.
And while it isn’t known when Khloé and Tristan officially decided to give their relationship another go, they went public with their romance in March 2021.
But, as anybody who keeps up with the Kardashians would be aware, Tristan ended up leaving the lavish birthday party that Khloé threw for him on March 13 to receive a “birthday surprise” from Maralee in Texas.
Tristan had sex with Maralee that night and the following morning, and while he originally claimed that he’d only slept with Maralee those two times, court documents that were published on Dec. 15 saw him concede that they’d had sex “sporadically” for months before his birthday.
They would arrange when and where to meet for sex via his secret Snapchat account, which had the username blkjesus00. Tristan said that he used this form of communication to “protect [their] privacy,” as Snapchat automatically deletes messages after they’ve been read by the recipient.
“[Nichols] told me that she had been involved with other athletes and understood the limitations of our relationship; to wit, that we might see each other on a sporadic basis for consensual sex only,” he wrote in the filing.
Khloé was not aware of Tristan’s arrangement with Maralee as she pushed on with her surrogacy journey in the spring of 2021.
In the final season of KUWTK, which aired last year, Khloé met with a surrogate therapist and admitted that she found the whole process “way more overwhelming” than she'd first imagined. She discussed the challenges with her sister Kim Kardashian, who welcomed her two youngest children via surrogate.
Also on the show, Tristan said that he was excited to be embarking on a “new chapter” with Khloé and that he’d provide “whatever” she needed.
Unbeknownst to Khloé, at around the same time Maralee would have discovered that she was pregnant with Tristan’s baby.
In the December court documents, Maralee shared alleged messages from Tristan where he told her that he’d have “zero involvement” in raising the baby while appearing to offer her $75,000 to have an abortion.
One of the messages read: “Btw if you think having this baby is gonna make you some money. It's completely wrong. You are aware that I'm retiring after this season. So in terms of support it will be whatever is required monthly for someone who's unemployed."
A follow-up added: "It's Texas so it will be only a couple hundred dollars, so you better off taking this 75k I'm offering cause you won't get nothing near that with having a kid with a father who's unemployed."
Maralee’s lawyer noted in the filing: “It is also apparent from the context and substance of these communications that they are from Tristan to Maralee, which reflects that Tristan is addressing the parties’ relationship, and even with respect to her pregnancy insisting that she get an abortion and threatening that she will get next to nothing with lesser support requirements in Texas."
Tristan denied that the messages were from him, instead claiming that they were “fabricated” by Maralee.
While all of this was going on behind the scenes, Tristan and Khloé’s relationship ended once again in June 2021 amid reports that he’d been seen entering a bedroom with three women at a party in Los Angeles.
A source told E! News that Khloé had broken things off after Tristan “lost all of her trust and the relationship could not be repaired.” They also claimed that Khloé "really tried" to make the relationship work this time around but "felt too betrayed," was "done," and would "not go back."
But as seen in Hulu’s The Kardashians, which began filming in the fall of last year but premiered in April, Khloé and Tristan had rekindled their relationship and he was even seriously talking about marrying her.
Khloé echoed that marriage was their “end goal” and that she was excited to “get out of that toxic place [they] were in.”
While it wasn’t mentioned on the show, it appears that the on-again, off-again couple picked up where they left off in their surrogacy process after getting back together. It was confirmed that the embryo was implanted in the surrogate in November 2021.
At this point, Tristan was embroiled in a secret legal battle with Maralee after she filed to sue him for child support and pregnancy-related expenses.
Tristan’s response to Maralee was filed in a legal declaration in December 2021, and he admitted in the paperwork that he’d had sex with Maralee nine months earlier.
He believed that his declaration would not be made public, and he appeared to have no intention of telling Khloé about Maralee or Theo, who was born that same month.
Instead, Khloé — and her entire family — learned about the paternity scandal when the news broke online, with Kim’s raw reaction being caught on camera when the crew for the family’s reality show turned up to film something else.
Kim was clearly panicked as she read Tristan’s declaration out loud to her sisters, Kourtney Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, having been unable to get ahold of Khloé. Kylie seemed to speak for everybody when she asked if Tristan was “the worst person on the planet.”
Despite this, it seems as though Khloé’s sisters didn’t know that a surrogate was already pregnant with her and Tristan’s embryo at this point, with Kim referencing the fact that Khloé wanted to have a little boy.
“The whole thing that's so sad is Khloé wanted a boy, and this girl is having a boy,” she said. In a March 2021 episode of Keeping Up, Khloé had revealed that she had three healthy embryos, one girl and two boys, and it has since been reported that the surrogate is having a boy.
Another hint that suggests Kim was not aware of the surrogate’s pregnancy came when she told Khloé over the phone, “If this isn’t the biggest sign for you to not have another baby with this human being…” to which Khloé meekly replied, “I just would like the truth.”
Khloé could also be heard sobbing inconsolably as Kim reiterated: “If this isn’t the most clear situation, I don’t know what is.”
Speaking on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast in May, Khloé admitted that finding out about Maralee “with the rest of the world” was probably “the most offensive part” of the whole situation.
"I mean, all of it is fucked up, but I just, like, can there be, like, a little respect, could you have let me know before I find out on Daily Mail? That would be nice," she went on.
While Tristan denied being Theo’s father in December, he confirmed that a paternity test had proven otherwise in January of this year.
Posting on Instagram at the time, the basketball star wrote: “Now that paternity has been established, I look forward to amicably raising our son. I sincerely apologize to everyone I've hurt or disappointed throughout this ordeal both publicly and privately.”
One month later, Maralee’s representative claimed that despite his public declaration, Tristan had “done nothing” to support their child and had “not made any attempt” to meet his son or provide any financial assistance.
In a separate post, Tristan apologized to Khloé for the “heartache and humiliation” he’d caused her over the years, and while she hasn’t taken him back, she has insisted that Tristan is "a good person" and a "great dad."
After news of their second baby broke, sources revealed that Khloé and Tristan “have not spoken since December outside of coparenting matters.”
Insiders also acknowledged the bewildered fan reaction to the surrogacy as they explained that Khloé kept it a secret in a bid “to protect her mental health from judgment from the public as a result of Tristan’s actions.”
Meanwhile, although his fourth baby is due any day now, Tristan has spent the past couple of weeks partying across Europe. He was filmed holding hands with a mystery woman in Mykonos, Greece, over the weekend.
On Tuesday, Khloé returned to social media for the first time since the news broke, sharing photos of herself and True on holiday. In a sweet tribute to her daughter, she captioned the post: “Me and my best girl making the best memories. I will forever have your back my angel girl 🤍”
Her choice not to address her second baby confused some, with one person commenting on a Reddit forum: “Oh….okay i guess we’re ignoring this entire thing huh?”
But someone else alluded to the very messy situation as they replied: “Did you really expect her to say anything publicly?”
And while she didn’t say anything on her own social media accounts, Khloé did acknowledge the situation with Tristan by liking a fan account’s post that defended him being out with other women.
The post’s caption said that “Khloe and Tristan are both single” and later added: “I don’t know why it would be crazy for Tristan to be with another girl as long as he’s a good dad to his baby.”
And in true Kardashian style, we’re sure that Khloé will share every detail from the past nine months as soon as she feels ready.
