Joy-Anna Duggar is grateful her 13-month-old son, Gunner, is alive and well after a terrifying health scare.
After their youngest child “bit off more than he could chew” during a family meal and immediately started choking, Joy-Anna, 26, and her husband, Austin Forsyth, decided to drive one hour to the local hospital to seek professional care.
“I just handed Gunner to Austin and I started crying,” Joy-Anna recalled in a new YouTube video posted Friday, June 14. “All those what-ifs come to your mind right away. [Gunner] threw up multiple times [and] still hadn’t thrown up the ham and was gagging and was not breathing for, like, 20 seconds.”
For the first half of the car ride, Joy-Anna — who is also mom to Gideon, 6, and Evelyn, 3 — was trying to keep her son awake as he continued to cry. After consulting with Austin (who is an EMT), the former Counting On star agreed that rest may provide some relief.
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“We let him go to sleep and I watched him closely,” she explained. “There were a couple of points on the drive that he stopped breathing again, and I was just crying out to God, ‘Please save him.’”
“I’ve never been to a point where I thought I was going to lose one of my kids,” she continued while wiping away tears. “It was just like that thought of, ‘He is going to die’ came to my mind, and it was terrifying.”
Fortunately, Gunner started sleeping better and breathing regularly. At the hospital, doctors performed X-rays to make sure nothing was lodged in his throat. They later confirmed everything looked clear and he was safe to be discharged.
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“I was just so thankful that God protected him,” Joy-Anna said, “and we made it to the hospital and that whatever was in his throat wasn’t bothering him anymore.”
When looking back on the day, Joy-Anna described the turn of events as “crazy” and “a roller-coaster of emotions.” Now that Gunner is sleeping better and back to his old self, his mom is reminding parents to savor every healthy moment with their children.
“After something like that, I feel like you just really hug your babies a little bit tighter and thank God so much for giving us life and breath and all the things,” she said. “You never know when something is going to happen. This is my third kid and I’ve never had anything this serious happen as far as choking goes.”
