Joy-Anna Duggar Shares Her Birth Story & Reveals She Had An Epidural During Labor
Joy-Anna Duggar gave birth to her second child on Friday, August 21. She and husband Austin Forsyth had a healthy baby girl that they named Evelyn Mae. Now, two weeks later, the Counting On stars have shared the whole experience in a YouTube video that they put up on Saturday.
Taking to her Instagram stories, Joy-Anna announced that they filmed her during labor and delivery, and she encouraged her 1 million followers to go check it out. The couple decided early on to have a hospital birth this time around. Their firstborn, Gideon, 2, was delivered by an emergency cesarean section in 2018 after trying to have a home birth. Once they discovered that he was breech, things changed quickly. This time around, they seemingly didn’t want to take any chances.
When Joy-Anna went into labor with Evelyn, Austin seemed to be in charge of filming instead of the usual TLC crew. Once they arrived at the hospital around 8 p.m., she got an IV put in and waited for things to progress. She was given a low dose of Pitocin to help her along and her doctor broke her water the next morning. By the early afternoon, Joy-Anna started feeling the need to push. It took over an hour of pushing before the baby was born at 2:12 p.m. She weighed in at 8 pounds, 5 ounces, and was 19 1/2 inches long.
The Duggar daughter seemed to be very calm through the whole process as she kept her focus on her breathing technique. At one point about two hours before she was born, Joy-Anna put on some makeup in between contractions.
Joy-Anna also revealed that she got an epidural to help ease the pain. She admitted how much it helped her. However, she did have lots of lower back pain and that was because Evelyn was in the posterior position when she was born. The medical team had to improvise by having Joy-Anna change positions to get the baby out. The video cut out just as the newborn came out.
Joy-Anna was only allowed to have her husband in the room with her, as well as her birthing coach or midwife. That’s likely why Austin was behind the camera instead of a whole crew during labor and delivery. Joy-Anna had previously mentioned how much she would miss having her mother, Michelle Duggar, with her as well.
The mom of two has since posted some photos of her new little one, along with her big brother, and they are adorable. Her latest Instagram shares were of Gideon holding Evelyn and Austin getting some cuddles in with his daughter while she slept.
