10-07-2025
Joy-Anna Duggar, 27, Opens Up About 'Extremely Hard' Experience
Joy-Anna Duggar, 27, Opens Up About 'Extremely Hard' Experience originally appeared on Parade.
Joy-Anna Duggar opened up about the "extremely hard" experience of having a stillbirth during a candid conversation with her sisters Jinger Duggar and Jessa Duggar.
During the Wednesday, July 9, episode of the "Jinger & Jeremy" podcast, Joy-Anna, 27, got emotional as she recalled her 2019 miscarriage.
"Looking back, I did have kind of a gut feeling of something may not be right," she admitted. "But also I'm like, 'I don't want to over exaggerate.' I don't want to read into things … I just remember feeling so numb leaving the ultrasound."
The former Counting On star said that she went down a "really hard road" with her husband, Austin Forsyth, when she had to deliver their daughter Annabell early when she was just 20 weeks. "That was extremely hard, having to go through the whole delivery process," she said.
"I'm so thankful that I had [my mom] there that had been through it before," Joy-Anna said of Michelle Duggar. "And I had a really good support team, but even with all of that, it was extremely difficult."
Just days after Annabell's stillbirth, Joy-Anna and Forsyth, 31, held a funeral and a burial for their late daughter. However, she said that it took much longer to deal with the physical and emotional stress of Annabell's death.
"You recover physically, you stop bleeding," she said. "You have to kind of move on, and [someone] told me, they're like, 'I went through a loss and it took me a long time. There's no set timeline.'"
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Joy-Anna went on to explain that she's discussed the experience with others. "When I've talked to other people, I've shared that with them," she told her sisters. "Like, 'Hey, it took me six months.' I felt like I was in a cloud for six months. I felt like I was in a fog. You know, it's postpartum, your body's going through kind of a shock. And then that timeline is going to be different for people."
The TLC alum encouraged other parents in the same situation to give themselves grace as they process the loss of their children.
"Don't put yourself on this, 'I have to bounce back,'" Joy-Anna said. "There's gonna be days where you can have joy, but the next day may be really hard, and you're hit with that grief again. There's no set timeline."
In addition to Annabell, Joy-Anna and Forsyth parents to son Gideon, 7, Evelyn, 4, and Gunner, 2.
Joy-Anna Duggar, 27, Opens Up About 'Extremely Hard' Experience first appeared on Parade on Jul 10, 2025
This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 10, 2025, where it first appeared.
