Former ’19 Kids and Counting’ Star Expecting New Baby After ‘Heartbreaking Loss’

Jessa Seewald, a former star of “19 Kids and Counting” and its spin-off “Counting On”, is pregnant with her fifth child after tragically suffering a miscarriage last year.

Jessa is the fifth child of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s 19 children.

Seewald shared on her YouTube channel Saturday that she and her husband, Ben, are welcoming an addition after a particularly tough experience last year.

“After a heartbreaking loss last year, we’re so thankful God has blessed us with a rainbow baby,” she wrote.

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In February, Jessa revealed that she experienced a miscarriage while she was pregnant with the couple’s fifth child. She shared the sad news in a video published on YouTube where she gave viewers an insight into her pregnancy.

In December 2022, she experienced normal first-trimester symptoms like nausea, fatigue, and food aversions, but she also had the “tiniest amount” of vaginal bleeding. 

Jessa decided to get it checked out.

The 30-year-old explained that at the ultrasound she knew something was wrong.

“As soon as she started taking a look at the baby, I could tell there was some concern in her voice,” Seewald said of the ultrasound technician. “She said, ‘Well, the sac looks good; the baby does not.’”

Seewald said she was in “complete shock” and “immediately started crying.”

“I feel like, in some ways, missed miscarriages can be so much more jarring because you don’t have clear signs of something going wrong,” she explained. “I had minimal spotting for like 24 hours, and that was it.”

According to Today.com, Seewald underwent a procedure called D&C to remove tissue from inside the uterus to diagnose and treat uterine conditions, after an abortion or miscarriage.

Seewald clarified to her audience that her baby’s heart had stopped beating three weeks before the procedure adding, “Btw, this was not my first D&C— it was my second. My first was 2 weeks postpartum Ivy’s birth for retained placenta.”

A firestorm brewed online with some accusing Seewald of seeking an abortion.

Christian author and podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey defended the couple against the “blatant lies” of the “Left”.

“Leftist outlets are trying to convince people that Jessa actually had an abortion ‘whether she wants to admit it or not,’ because she had a D&C following the miscarriage. The problem, aside from the cruelty, is that that’s not how a D&C works,” she wrote.

Ben Seewald thanked Stuckey for standing up for his wife during a difficult time.

He wrote on Instagram, “Thank you for clarifying things, Allie! To all of you who have spread lies about my wife, I demand a public retraction and apology for your words, shares, retweets, or ‘likes,’ by which you’ve slandered my wife, further wounding a grieving woman. Please be humble and respectable enough to recognize your errors and insensitivity and set the record straight to your followers. Thank you. Thank you to all who’ve prayed for us amid this tragedy and the subsequent attacks on my wife’s character.”

The couple has been married since Nov. 1, 2014, and are parents of four children: Spurgeon, 7, Henry, 6, Ivy, 4, and Fern, 2.

READ: Jill Duggar Dillard Shares How Reality Show and False Beliefs Nearly Destroyed Her Marriage