During an emotional sit-down with her sisters, Joy-Anna Duggar opened up about coping with the loss of her stillborn daughter, Annabell.
Joy-Anna, 27, appeared on the Wednesday, July 9, episode of the “Jinger & Jeremy” podcast with siblings Jinger Duggar and Jessa Duggar to reflect on their miscarriage experiences and grief. When she began to tell her story, Joy-Anna struggled to hold back tears.
Joy-Anna and her husband, Austin Forsyth, welcomed son Gideon in 2018. One year later, Joy-Anna got pregnant again, but when she went to the doctor for her 20-week scan, the baby’s heartbeat couldn’t be found.
“I guess looking back, I did have kind of a gut feeling of something may not be right,” she recalled on the podcast. “But also I’m like, ‘I don’t want to over exaggerate.’ Like, I don’t want to read into things. … I just remember feeling so numb leaving the ultrasound. … I was so scared.”
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The couple proceeded down “a really hard road,” with Joy-Anna forced to deliver baby Annabell at 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 … and I had a really good support team, but even with all of that, it was extremely difficult.”
Days later, Joy-Anna and her husband honored Annabell with a “little funeral ceremony” and burial, but coping with both the physical and emotional toll of the loss took time.
“You know, you recover physically, you stop bleeding,” Joy-Anna continued. “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 [for healing].”
Joy-Anna took that message to heart. “When I’ve talked to other people, I’ve shared that with them,” she explained. “[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, like, your body’s going through kind of a shock. And then that timeline is going to be different for people.”
Speaking to other parents who’ve gone through loss, she added, “Don’t put yourself on this, ‘I have to bounce back.’ … 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. So, there’s no set timeline.”
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Earlier this month, Joy-Anna marked what would have been Annabell’s 6th birthday with an emotional Instagram tribute. Following Annabell’s stillbirth, the couple went on to welcome daughter Evelyn in 2020 and son Gunner in 2023.
“We got pregnant with Evelyn about six months after [losing Annabell],” Joy-Anna said on Wednesday. “And we wouldn’t have been able to have Annabell and Evelyn. So for me, looking back … obviously, it hurt to go through that loss, but we wouldn’t have Evy today if we hadn’t have lost Annabell.”
While reflecting on how she and Forsyth moved forward from their loss, Joy-Anna admitted to feeling “selfish” during her grieving process. (The couple have been married since 2017.)
“I was the one going through the loss, but I remember it dawning on me, like, a couple weeks later, I’m like, ‘This was his baby, too,’” Joy-Anna told her sisters through tears. “He was trying to be strong for me, but there were many moments where he just kind of lost it and was crying. Looking back, I wish I would’ve been more supportive for him too, but he was really strong for me when I wasn’t.”
