Baby Jack will always have a special place in Chrissy Teigen and John Legend’s family.
The model and her musician husband experienced the pregnancy loss a year ago after a delivery at 20 weeks. Teigen was diagnosed with a partial placental abruption. She later shared on Instagram that she and Legend “had started to call this little guy in my belly Jack. So he will always be Jack to us.”
Teigen recently opened up about the loss in a candid interview with parenting website Scary Mommy, and about how her two children, Luna and Miles, have coped.
“We told them that we lost him, but it wasn’t really until we got his ashes back, I think, that they started to be able to say, ‘OK, this happened. Here he is now. He didn’t make it,’” Teigen said. “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.’”
“At school when they draw things, they draw him as an angel. We talk about it a lot,” the “Cravings” cookbook author said. Luna and Miles, she added, know “he’s still very much a part of our lives.”
“What felt comfortable for our family was him always being around. Whether we go on a vacation or something, they always say, ‘Don’t forget baby Jack,’” Teigen said. “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,” Teigen said. “And they really love being a part of it.”
Teigen has been open and honest with followers about her grief, and shared a heartbreaking message on what would’ve been her due date earlier this year. She’s also written about the pain of losing Jack in an emotional essay published on Medium, and has talked about how becoming sober has affected the way she processes feelings.
“I don’t really feel like I fully processed Jack and now that I don’t have the alcohol to numb it away, things are just here, waiting to be acknowledged,” Teigen wrote in August on Instagram. “I guess what I’m saying here is life is so fucking complicated.”