Jinger Duggar Vuolo is speaking candidly about her breastfeeding anxieties.
The Counting On alum, 31, opened up about her postpartum experiences with her two older children in an episode of her podcast with husband Jeremy Vuolo released shortly after they welcomed son Finnegan on March 29.
The reality personality, who is also mom to daughters Evangeline, 4, and Felicity, 6, revealed on the podcast episode, that she was “really not ready” to get pregnant again for a few years after her postpartum experience with Evangeline.
“Postpartum for me with Evie was hard. It was really hard,” Jinger said during the April 2, episode of her podcast, which was recorded before she gave birth to Finn. “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.”
She continued, “Talking to a couple of friends, they were like, ‘Oh yeah, why don’t you just stop nursing? Because I think that would help.’ When I did, I felt like I came out of this dark cloud that I’d been in for so long.”
Jeremy, 37, agreed he noticed an immediate change in his wife after she stopped breastfeeding. “I think it was because at that point, it was overwhelming for me to think of how I was going to wean Evie, but then at the same time, I was also so overwhelmed with nursing, I was like, ‘I’m just done,’” Jinger explained.
Despite being in “such a dark hole,” Jinger was able to lean on her friends and pediatrician to navigate weaning Evie, which “actually went smoothly” in the end.
The whole experience, however, left Jinger with some nerves when it came to nursing her son. “Even with this pregnancy, there’s a certain fear that comes back, that starts to creep in where I’m like, ‘Oh, now, this is going to happen again?’ And going back to that dark place where you’re just so down. I never want to be back there again,” the former TLC personality said, revealing that she had given her husband signs to look out for that would indicate she needed more help.
Now, Jinger continued, “Of course I want to be able to nurse this baby, but if that doesn’t happen, even 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.”
