Kylie Jenner is getting candid.
While it seems she bares it all on Instagram and her family’s reality series, The Kardashians, there’s a lot she doesn’t discuss online.
In a sit-down with British Vogue, where she served as the magazine’s latest cover star, the makeup mogul opened up about becoming a young mom and the way the it not only impacted her body and body image, but the postpartum depression she battled in the months after her two children, Stormi, 6, and Aire, 2, were born.
“I was 19 when I got pregnant, 20 when I had her,” Jenner said, looking back on becoming a young mom. “It was wild. “Looking back at it, I give myself more empathy and grace. But when I was a teenager, even my family were like: ‘You aren’t that young.’ I think maybe I carried myself [a certain way] or I’d already been working for 10 years. It didn’t hit me [straight away]. But it was a huge life change.”
Jenner, who shares both her kids with ex,Travis Scott, said that suffered from prolonged postpartum depression after both of her children’s births.
“Stormi’s lasted a year,” she said, with Aire’s lasting around the same length of time. “I’m going to be 27, and I’m finally feeling like myself again, and [looking back] I think, being pregnant, I wore sweatpants every day, I didn’t have time to figure out even some of the little things in my life, and then postpartum lasted a year.”
Jenner continued, “Mentally, it’s really hard. Hormonally, it’s really hard. I didn’t know how to dress. “It hit me differently both times. Probably with my son it was major baby blues, so I was just so emotional over things that I probably wouldn’t be that emotional about [typically].”
One of the things that hit her particularly hard with Aire? Coming up with his name. Some might remember that the reality star initially named him Wolf before leaving the little one unnamed for some time before re-naming him formally with his current moniker.
“On the phone with my mom all day hysterically crying, saying, “I can’t figure out his name.’ Now my advice to all my friends having children is pick the name before, because when the hormones hit you can’t make decisions. You can’t,” she added. “When I met him, he was just the most beautiful thing to me and I couldn’t believe just how perfect he was. I felt like such a failure that I couldn’t name him. He deserved so much more than that. It just really triggered me.”
She added that she actually called him “Knight” for “a long time” as well — a name Stormi tells her mom she liked “better.”
Another thing that’s triggered her is the mass amount of scrutiny she received about her body following her pregnancies.
“I was 200 pounds when I gave birth to my 9 pound babies: 8.3 and 8.9,” Jenner revealed. “I finally lost all the baby weight after my daughter and then got pregnant with my son two months later.”
Holed up together during the pandemic, Jenner and Scott, who were on a break at the time, ending up getting pregnant with their son while locked down together.
“And I felt in shape and it was working out, and then I got pregnant and did it all over again. I feel like people didn’t give me, or give women in general, enough empathy. I see pictures [online] and people are accusing me of being on drugs or something…,” she continued, referencing speculation that she was on the popular weight loss medication, Ozempic.
“I’m back at my weight I was before I had my daughter and son and people are putting side by sides of me three months postpartum,” Jenner said. “I’m like: ‘Does everyone forget that I had two children and I gained 60 pounds both pregnancies?'”
Despite all of that, and the constant scrutiny that comes with the fame that Jenner has been afforded, it’s those two babies that keep her grounded.
“No matter what I’m going through or what I look like or what the internet writes about me that day, I come home and my kids just love me unconditionally. They’re just obsessed with me and that’s taught me to walk through life a little easier,” Jenner expressed. “I’m like, ‘OK, well I have these little humans at home that need me and love me and think I’m the most perfect person in the world, so I don’t really need validation from outside sources.'”
As for the other things she holds dear, namely her closely guarded relationship with Timothée Chalamet, Jenner stayed largely mum, regarding her privacy as paramount in her life at the mount.
“It feels so good,” she only said of her love life.
See the full feature in the September issue of British Vogue is available via digital download and on newsstands August 20.
