Kara Keough Opens Up About The Heartbreaking Loss Of Her Son

Kara Keough Bosworth, daughter of former Real Housewives of Orange County star Jeana Keough, is grieving a tragic loss. Her newborn son, McCoy Casey Bosworth, passed away after experiencing "shoulder dystocia and a compressed umbilical cord," during his birth in April, Kara revealed on Instagram. "He joined our Heavenly Father and will live forever in the hearts of his loving parents, his adoring sister, and those that received his life-saving gifts," she added, revealing that his organs and tissue were donated.

The heartbreaking loss is one that no parent should ever have to go through. Kara opened up about the tragedy in a recent interview with Good Morning America, saying that a full-term loss comes with a particularly awful type of grief. "It's this weird middle ground between losing a child during pregnancy and then losing a child that you have gotten to know," she said.

Kara admitted to placing some of the blame on herself. Shoulder dystocia, in which one or both of a baby's shoulders gets caught in the pelvis during delivery, is a rare and unpredictable condition (per ACOG). One of the risk factors is the baby being larger than average. McCoy weighed in at 11 pounds, 4 ounces — more than 3 pounds over the average newborn weight.

At Kara's 20-week scan everything seemed to be on track, so a follow-up ultrasound was not scheduled. At 38 weeks, her doctor confirmed that her baby was in a good position for delivery. When McCoy was born, though, everyone was shocked at how big he was.

"I will sit here and regret not getting [another ultrasound] for the rest of my life, because I'll think, 'Maybe we would've known,'" said Kara. "Maybe they would've seen that he had 7-1/2-inch shoulders. But that's just going to be [in] my head."

McCoy spent several days in the NICU fighting for his life until an MRI showed that, due to the trauma of his delivery, McCoy had severe brain damage and was unlikely to gain consciousness. After six days, Kara and her husband made the decision to remove McCoy from life support.

In addition to donating McCoy's organs and Kara's breast milk, Kara and her husband launched a March of Dimes fundraiser in his honor to benefit others who have lost a newborn or who have babies in intensive care. "We're at that point where we just want his life to mean as much to as many people as possible," said Kara. 

Now, they're just doing what they can to cope. McCoy's parents attend a bereaved parents group, and also see a grief counselor once a week via Zoom. "I've been lucky to hear from parents that are on the other side of it, or as far on the other side as you can be, and they say it gets better," Kara said. "They say eventually the waves of grief don't feel like they're knocking you over every day, and that you have to just get through it — but that you aren't alone."

Even though McCoy is gone, Kara said she can still feel her son's presence in the wind chimes loved ones have given the family. "The night he passed, there was a really, really big wind storm," she said. "Every time McCoy takes a sprint around the block in heaven, we hear the wind chimes."