Joy-Anna Duggar Broke Family Tradition With Her Hospital Birth

Joy-Anna (Duggar) and Austin Forsyth welcomed their first child, son Gideon Martyn, on Friday, Feb. 23, but some fans are convinced there’s more to the story than they’re letting on — that they may have broken family tradition and opted for a hospital birth rather than a home birth.

Joy-Anna’s cousin, Amy King, congratulated her cousin and her husband by sharing an Instagram picture a day after the birth announcement of Joy-Anna and Gideon in the hospital, surrounded by machines. She also shared a second image, this time of baby Gideon in her arms while sitting next to Joy-Anna’s hospital bed.

King has since deleted both photos, although they have both made their way onto a fan account. She also made her Instagram account private.

It should be noted that for their Monday announcement on Joy-Anna’s Instagram of Gideon’s arrival, the husband and wife posted at their home and made no mention of the hospital.

Prior to welcoming their son, Joy-Anna and Austin discussed their pre-baby prep in a video shared to TLC on Monday.

“We got the birth pool set up. We got our house somewhat cleaned out and trying to finish a lot of the bigger projects before the baby arrives,” Joy-Anna said of the home birth in the TLC video. “I think now we just need to fill up the pool and hopefully set up some beds in the guest bedroom and we’ll be good to go.”

She also shared that some advice she received was to be “flexible” and “prepare for the birth and have plans but if something doesn’t go as planned then be OK with that and just have another plan.”

It looks like Joy-Anna and Austin may have had to use that advice in the end and break family tradition by heading to a hospital — perhaps in an emergency situation. While no one in the family has ever released post-labor hospital photos on social media, a few of the Duggar women have sought help from a hospital in dire situations.

For example, when Joy-Anna’s sister Jill Duggar (Dillard) was in labor for over 70 hours with her son Isael, she was rushed to the hospital, where they found out the baby was breech and had to perform an emergency C-section. Jill’s second son, Samuel, was also born via C-section.

Their other sister Jessa Duggar (Seewald) was rushed to the hospital after giving birth to son Spurgeon at home but losing a lot of blood after labor.

Joy-Anna’s son Gideon weighed 10 pounds, three ounces at birth and measured 22 inches long. Some fans wondered if he was too big to deliver at home.

“At least she used a hospital. Baby had to have been to [sic] big for home birth,” one fan wrote on King’s now-deleted post.

Gideon is the first child of Joy-Anna and Austin; they tied the knot in May 2017 and announced the pregnancy news three months after their wedding.