Jessa Duggar revealed why it can be “hard” to be “emotionally invested” in pregnancies after suffering from miscarriages.
While appearing on the Wednesday, July 9, episode of Jinger Duggar’s “Jinger & Jeremy” podcast, Jessa, 32, Jinger, 31, and sister Joy-Anna Duggar discussed pregnancy, baby loss and grief.
When Jinger asked about navigating fear and anxiety after a miscarriage, Jessa admitted that the experience can be “scary.”
“I think it’s hard to allow yourself, early on, to feel excited when you see that positive pregnancy test because you feel like you’re bracing yourself. You’re like, ‘This may go how it went last time,'” she said.
Jessa and her husband, Ben Seewald, share kids Spurgeon, 9, Henry, 8, Ivy, 6, Fern, 3, and George, 18 months. She has been open about suffering miscarriages in 2020 and 2022, while she is currently pregnant with her sixth baby.
“I’ve had friends who have had back-to-back losses and it is just devastation upon devastation,” the mother of five continued. “I feel like my losses were separated. They weren’t back to back, but I definitely felt that, until I was past the marker of where I lost my last baby, it was very hard for me to feel like, really emotionally invested, or to, like, get attached because I was, like, ‘Any second, this could be gone,’ and you’re terrified. I mean, just, like, basically every time you go to the bathroom, you’re like, ‘Is there blood? Like, am I? Am I losing this baby?’ And so that’s, like, the hard side.”
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While miscarriages are extremely difficult, Jessa has been able to find silver linings such as feeling “a lot more grateful” for the kids she already has.
“I took a lot less for granted,” she said. “You know, when those pregnancy symptoms of, like, nausea or whatever, like, went past into the second trimester with one of my babies, I was like, ‘This is going on really long.’ But then I thought, ‘But it stopped short with the other baby that I lost. And like, I wouldn’t have it any other way.’”
She continued, “I’m thankful even for, like, hard aspects of pregnancy because your baby’s still there and you’re still pregnant. I feel like it just caused me to be so much more grateful and to cherish life even more.”
