Chrissy Teigen revealed in a new interview that she and her family travel with her late son Jack‘s ashes. Teigen lost baby Jack after she was hospitalized in September 2020 during her pregnancy. In October, a year after her miscarriage, Teigen held a memorial service, alongside her husband, singer John Legend and their children, Luna and Miles. This week, Teigen told Scary Mommy they never shied away from explaining to their children what happened to Jack, and they often remind her not to “forget baby Jack” when they have to travel.
“At school when they draw things, they draw him as an angel,” Teigen said of Luna and Miles. They talk about Jack “a lot,” and their family has “felt comfortable” with Jack always around. That’s because they often travel with his ashes. “Whether we go on a vacation or something, they always say, ‘Don’t forget baby Jack,’” Teigen explained. “And then I have to pack him up. And then we get to where we’re going, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, he must be thirsty.’ This might sound crazy to people, but they’ll put a little glass of water next to his little box of ashes. And they really love being a part of it.”
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Earlier in the Scary Mommy interview, Teigen said Luna, 5, knew “everything” about what was going on. When Teigen came out of the bathroom, Luna would ask her mom if she was still bleeding. “So there was going to be no escaping it, even if I wanted to,” Teigen said. The couple told Luna and Miles, 3, that she lost Jack, but it was not until his ashes came back that they really understood he “didn’t make it.”
“It was something for them to be able to put a story to, where we could say, ‘OK, Jack is in here and he is going to stay with us. And maybe one day we might release him. And he loves that we still think about him, and he loves that we’re still emotional about him, but more than anything, he loves that we talk about him. That makes him really excited and really happy,’” Teigen recalled. “So they know that he’s still very much a part of our lives.”
However, Teigen isn’t sure her children will ever fully understand what happened, since she still doesn’t completely understand it herself. She repeatedly asked her doctor what caused a placental abruption. “[The doctors] were like, ‘We physically would’ve run out of blood in the hospital. Were we going to do that for 20 weeks in the hospital?’ That’s still something that I’m coming to terms with, why we gave up,” she said. Whenever her children notice she is “in a funk,” the first thing they ask is, “Is it baby Jack?” Teigen added.
Elsewhere in the new interview, Teigen discussed how she handled the bullying backlash she faced earlier this year. Courtney Stodden shared screenshots of old tweets and private messages Teigen sent them in 2011 when they were married to Doug Hutchison, telling them to take their own life. Fashion designer Michael Costello and reality TV star Farrah Abraham also accused Teigen of bullying them. Teigen did apologize and admit to cyberbullying after Stodden came forward, but she accused Costello of faking the messages she supposedly sent him. Amid the scandal, Teigen told Scary Mommy she coped by working on a new cookbook, Cravings: All Together: Recipes to Love, which comes out on Oct. 26.
“When everything happened, all I wanted myself was comfort recipes, so I decided I wanted to be fully immersed in this cookbook process,” Teigen said. “It’s funny because the [process of writing] Hungry for More was kind of – there were bouts of incredible depression postpartum. I was physically there for it, but I wasn’t necessarily mentally there. This one, I needed it to survive.”ย
