It hasn’t quite been a month since Joy-Anna Duggar gave birth to her son, Gideon Forsyth.
Now, however, the family has posted a photo that shows off Joy-Anna’s post-baby body, unobscured by her precious newborn son.
Take a look!
We’ve seen a couple of glimpses of Joy-Anna after her difficult childbirth.
Mostly, we’ve seen Joy-Anna cradling little Gideon with her husband by her side. That gives you little to no idea of how her body is recovering from the pregnancy or the major surgery.
Below, however, fans can see her figure, just weeks after her attempt to give birth at home backfired and forced her to have her baby in a hospital with doctors — and surgeons.
Gideon was a breech baby, and she had to undergo a C-section in order for him to be born safely.
Thanks to the wonders of medical technology, he was, and both baby and mother are alive to tell the tale. (Well, Gideon isn’t saying anything just yet, but you get the idea)
Take a look at how the new mother is doing after that ordeal of a chidlbirth.
Unlike in previous photos, fans can see Joy-Anna standing up and facing the camera directly.
She’s arguably a little bundled up … but only a little. Healing will take time, but right now, Joy-Anna looks like she’s made great strides towards recovering.
And her figure looks wonderful.
The Duggar family’s official Facebook page shared this photo of Austin, Joy-Anna, Michelle, and Jim Bob.
In the captions, they (most likely Michelle) wrote:
“This time last year, these two were engaged and we started wedding planning! Now, they are happily married with a precious son! #SoBlessed”
Fans were quick to notice and express their appreciation.
Though some Counting On fans had slammed Joy-Anna for having a child at such a young age, there were plenty of positive comments under the new photo of the mother with her family.
“Absolutely THRILLED for them… their sweet Gideon looks just like his very proud daddy.. and Joy is just beaming with joy over her sweet son …one precious happy family!!!!”
Gideon was not actually in the photo, but that fan just couldn’t help but mention the adorable baby.
“My husband and I did the same thing: engaged in October, married in March, baby in November. Now we’re 11 years in and still madly in love! Oh and we have seven kids.”
It has long been rumored that Joy-Anna got pregnant before marriage, though timetables show that it’s possible that she became pregnant on her honeymoon.
“What a precious family you have! Having Jesus at the head of it like you all do is the most important thing in this lifetime!”
As diehard fundamentalist Christians, the Duggars are of the same mind as this particular commenter.
It’s of course wonderful to see that Joy-Anna is recovering from her pregnancy.
Some fans, however, continue to debate whether she actually gave birth when she said that she did, and suspect that Joy-Anna gave birth earlier and that her family helped to cover it up to save face.
That sounds absurd, right? Reality stars will do a lot of things to preserve their brand, but … fudging their child’s birth date?
But for the Duggars, this is about more than just branding.
They believe that they each have a religious obligation to avoid sexual activity before marriage. Some can understand how, given recent scandals, they might try to bury the shotgun wedding rumors presenting the childbirth a month later.
It still sounds bonkers, but you have to remember that the whole family rehearsed Joy-Anna’s childbirth. They’re reality stars and they’ve covered up family secrets before.
Some fans didn’t react to Joy-Anna’s post-baby body or even her status as a new mother when they saw that photo.
Instead, they couldn’t resist deriding Michelle Duggar for describing Gideon as “precious” in the captions.
It’s a running joke among Counting On viewers that Michelle knows very few words aside from “precious,” because she uses it so often.
Obviously, we all fall into speech patterns. It doesn’t necessarily denote any shortcomings in anyone’s vocabulary.
Of course, many criticize Jim Bob for keeping his children uneducated, so perhaps that running joke isn’t entirely wrong.
