Jessa Duggar and her husband, Ben Seewald, welcomed their fifth baby on Tuesday, December 19, after previously suffering a miscarriage.
“Baby is here and we couldn’t be more grateful!” Duggar, 31, wrote via Instagram on Saturday, December 23, sharing a hospital photo with her newborn son.
The Counting On alum also shared a link to her YouTube channel, where she detailed her birth story.
“So, after laboring for about 12 hours, I was moved [from an emergency room bed] into my room and I was able to get an epidural shortly after that,” she recalled in the social media video. “And it worked great on one side and it was, like, sort of spotty on the other side. It wasn’t a perfect take, but I would say 80 percent better than what it was before getting it.”
After Duggar’s doctor told her that the baby was still “pretty high up,” she decided to “shut off” the epidural. Duggar then followed her midwife’s advice to move into various positions to try and rotate the baby. Once the baby started descending, Duggar felt more contractions and had doctors readminister the epidural.
Duggar was joined in the hospital by husband Seewald, 28, and her mother, Michelle.
“The sweetest moment [was] when they raised the baby up and put him on me,” Jessa gushed in the video. “Just holding him there, I think there were just so many emotions in that moment [and] so many things that you’re processing. It’s been a year since we lost our last baby and just a flood of emotions.”
The couple — who tied the knot in November 2014 — are already parents of sons Spurgeon and Henry and daughters Ivy and Fern.
Duggar announced in September 2023 that she was pregnant. “After a heartbreaking loss last year, we’re so thankful God has blessed us with a rainbow baby,” she wrote via her Instagram Story at the time, including a link to a YouTube video about the news.
The 19 Kids and Counting alum showed off her positive pregnancy test in the video shared via the family’s YouTube channel. “Just this past week we found out some wonderful news that our rainbow baby is on the way,” she said. “We couldn’t be more excited.”
Six months earlier, Duggar revealed that she had suffered a miscarriage. “Nothing could’ve prepared me for the weight of those words at that moment,” she recalled in February 2023, adding that she “immediately started crying” as she and Seewald began “trying to process the loss [while] sitting there and holding hands and crying.”
Duggar spoke candidly about the moments before she underwent a D&C procedure. “Right as they were wheeling me back [to the operating room], I just wanted to ask, like, ‘Just, can I please have one more ultrasound? Please, somebody check, make sure,’” she recounted. “I was having all these fears that maybe they got something wrong. … You know it’s irrational, but you just feel scared.”
Duggar — who previously suffered another miscarriage before welcoming daughter Fern — remembered the “hollow feeling inside” following the procedure because “the life that was in you is no longer there and you never did get to see your baby and say those goodbyes.”
Over the years, Duggar has been open about how her life changed when she became a mother. “I think there were so many things that I felt like, ‘I totally know how to do this. I’ve been around kids,’ but then when it’s your own kid, it’s totally different,” she exclusively told Us Weekly in July 2020. “For one, it’s your responsibility.”
As she navigated parenthood, Duggar leaned on experienced mothers for advice. “I’m constantly going to moms who are a season ahead of me, like my own mom, saying, ‘Hey, do you have a kid with this personality?’ Or ‘Have you dealt with this issue before?’ Or ‘How do you keep your cool?’” she explained. “That’s something I always ask my mom if I feel like I’m getting frustrated over little things. I’m totally just in awe of my mom’s patience, for sure.”