Jinger Duggar’s anxieties surrounding motherhood have affected her decision to breast-feed her newborn son.
“We have a four-year age gap between Evie and this little boy because I was not ready,” Duggar, 31, said on the Wednesday, April 2, episode of her and husband Jeremy Vuolo’s eponymous podcast. “I think postpartum for me with Evie was hard. It was really hard. Once I think I was about 14 months or so, I was still nursing and it was something that I just felt, like, I was in a dark hole and I didn’t know what to do.”
Jinger, one of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s 19 children, and husband Vuolo, 37, are parents of three. They share daughters Felicity, 6, and Evangeline, 4, and son Finnegan, who was born late last month.
While Jinger navigated what she said was a bout of postpartum depression, several of her friends advised her to stop nursing Evangeline.
“When I did, it just felt like I came out of this dark cloud that I’ve been in for so long,” the Counting On alum recalled. “You saw it.”
Vuolo, for his part, noted that his wife “was struggling” before weaning Evangeline.
“I don’t think you knew the cause [of your postpartum depression] and I don’t know the dimensions of it,” Vuolo added. “When you did [stop nursing], it was, like, [instantaneous].”
Jinger replied that she felt “so overwhelmed” with the concept of continuing to nurse her second daughter.
“I was like, ‘I’m just done,’” she recalled. “I didn’t know how to do the weaning process because I was already in such a dark hole, but then just talking to a couple friends [and] my pediatrician gave me suggestions and it actually went smoothly. She had the easiest transition [and] she started taking a pacifier at 14 months.”
According to Jinger, she hadn’t initially “considered” nursing to be part of the reason for her postpartum depression. Once she did realize its apparent contribution to her mental health struggles, the former reality TV star was able to navigate certain feelings better while pregnant with Finn. (Jinger filmed Wednesday’s podcast episode before giving birth.)
“Realizing that about yourself and then working past it, that’s helpful,” Jinger said. “Even with this pregnancy, there’s a certain fear that comes back [and] that starts to creep in where I’m like, ‘Oh, now, this is going to happen again and [I’m] going back to that dark place’ where you’re just so down. I never want to be back there again.”
Jinger has also come to terms with the realization that she might not be able to nurse Finn.
“Of course I want to be able to nurse this baby, but if that doesn’t happen [and] if I need to pump instead and that’s just what I have to do to not [go] back into that postpartum depression then that might be what I need to do,” she said.
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