Joy-Anna Duggar and Austin Forsyth welcomed their first child, a baby boy named Gideon, back in February.
But since reality television takes time, we’re just now seeing all the good baby stuff on Counting On.
We’ve seen Joy-Anna talk about her plans for a home birth, and then when she went into labor, we saw her dramatic rush to the hospital once her midwife told her the baby was breach.
She ended up having a c-section, a little Gideon turned out not to be so little — at birth, he weighed 10 pounds and 3 ounces.
After watching all that on the show, we’re now at the point where we get to see Joy and Austin actually caring for their new baby.
And as you can see in this new clip from this week’s episode, it’s turning out to be a little more difficult than they thought it would be!
As the video begins, the new parents are preparing to give their son a bath in the kitchen sink, and they say that he usually enjoys the process.
Joy, who’s looking about as exhausted as you’d expect the mother of a newborn to look, also says that she’s been having to wake Gideon up during the night to feed him, because he doesn’t wake up to eat on his own.
A producer tells Austin that when his own kid was born, he was “freaked out” for the first few nights, and Austin could relate to that.
“The first week it was, ‘Is the baby breathing?"” he recalls. “I would just lay there and see if I could hear it, and multiple times I got out of bed, you know, making sure it was breathing.”
“I think I’m finally coming to the realization that there’s always going to be something for the rest of my life, and the rest of his life.”
Because, as he acknowledges, “that’s just part of my job as a dad.”
When Joy has her turn to speak with producers, she admits that “Being a mom is, in a lot of ways, easier than I thought and then, in a lot of ways, harder than I thought.”
She says that she knows her mom, good ol’ Michelle Duggar, “had gone through a lot with all of us kids,” but that she didn’t think having a kid of her own would be “that hard” because she’d always helped to take care of her siblings.
“It’s given me a whole new appreciation for moms out there that have kids,” she adds.
Next, Austin reveals that he’d never changed a diaper before his son came along, but that since Joy had a c-section and wasn’t as able to “get out of bed much,” he had to step up and take care of business.
He actually says that Joy only changed about five diapers during the first two weeks, so it sounds like he really was taking over diaper duty.
“Austin really stepped up,” Joy confirms, “especially since I had a c-section. I couldn’t really hardly get up at all by myself.”
“He had to help me up and I mean, do all the dirty work, for me and for the baby, and just … I mean, he’s amazing.”
And then, and this is the super interesting part, she adds that “I haven’t ever seen a guy give so much of himself for his wife.”
It’s interesting because the Duggar family is very, very close, and Joy has seen a lot of interactions between married couples.
There’s Jim Bob and Michelle, Josh and Anna, Jill and Derick, Jessa and Ben, Jinger and Jeremy, Joseph and Kendra, Josiah and Lauren …
So in all of those marriages, she’s never seen a man take such good care of his wife?
Also, Austin took care of his kid and his wife after his wife had a pretty major surgery, which is great, obviously, but it’s also just what a spouse should do, you know?
Is she saying that the men in her family wouldn’t take care of their children if their wives weren’t able to do it?
Because that kind of sounds like what she’s saying.
Come on, Duggars, if you can’t do better, at least do the bare minimum.