Jinger Duggar Vuolo Was ‘Embarrassed’ About Needing to Learn to Swim as an Adult After Struggling as a Kid (Exclusive)

Jinger Duggar Vuolo is opening up about the experience of having to learn to swim as an adult.

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE to discuss her latest book, People Pleaser, the former Counting On alum, 31, shared how she felt “ashamed and embarrassed” to realize she couldn’t properly swim after growing up having to wear long, cumbersome swim skirts in the water.

The skirts were part of the modest dress code her large family adhered to as followers of the Institute in Basic Life Principles, a Christian fundamentalist ministry.

As a result of the constraining clothing, Jinger says, “I didn’t know how to swim. … It was something that I was embarrassed about for years.”

She admits she did not want to tell anybody she couldn’t swim and was “terrified” being near “any bodies of water.”

But when she and her family relocated to Los Angeles in 2019, Jinger knew she needed to face her fears.

“Once I had kids and we were in L.A., there’s water everywhere. Every other person seems to have a pool,” she explains. “And I realized I need to learn how to swim. I need to figure this out.”

She turned to a close friend for help. The friend, whom Jinger says is from Hawaii and “like a fish,” invited her to her house to give her one-on-one lessons. “She just is so good in the water. She’s taught all of her kids how to swim, teaches friends how to swim. And she was like, ‘Jing, just come over,’ ” Jinger recalls.

The former reality star was eight months pregnant with her younger daughter Evangeline, now 3, at the time. She remembers that she “got the basics down,” but then the summer ended and the weather turned cold so she took a break.

“Then when I came back to it, I was kind of still embarrassed. I  thought, ‘I don’t know. I don’t feel like I’m getting it. It’s going to take me forever to learn how to swim,’ ” recalls Jinger, who is currently expecting her third child with husband Jeremy Vuolo. “But I just kept working on it, slowly, but surely.”

When she finally had a breakthrough, she felt grateful for her persistence. “One day it clicked, and it was amazing because I was like, ‘I’m so glad I didn’t give up,’ ” she tells PEOPLE. “So now, I can jump in our deep pool, and I can swim.”

Jinger admits, however, that she is still learning and not completely comfortable in the water. She says she won’t swim in her family’s pool alone or let her daughters in the water if no one else is around because “I still don’t trust myself.”

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“But I do know how to swim, and I can save myself and maybe even save someone else,” she notes, adding, “I’m getting there.”

Jinger — who also shares daughter Felicity, 6, with her husband — announced her pregnancy in October and is due in March 2025. She told PEOPLE at the time that she is “super excited” to grow her family.

Jeremy, 37, told PEOPLE that even though the couple was expecting the pregnancy news, he was “still shocked.”

“When she told me, I was literally speechless,” he recalled. “She got me good. It was on Felicity’s birthday. Jinger says, ‘I’ve got a gift for you.’ It was in an Amazon bag. So I’m thinking, ‘What did she get from Amazon for me?’ Then I open it up and it’s the positive result, and I’m actually speechless.”

Last month, Jinger revealed that she and Jeremy have a baby boy on the way.

“We’re having a boy and we’re very excited,” she told Entertainment Tonight, before jokingly recalling her dramatic reaction to the news.

“I was so shocked, I almost fell off my chair,” she continued, explaining that having a boy is a “foreign thing” after welcoming two girls. “I was like, ‘How is this the boy gonna fit in?’ But we are keeping the name a secret until the baby’s born, which is what we always do.”

People Pleaser: Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations is available now wherever books are sold.