TLC "Counting" On might be canceled but TLC alum Jessa Seewald still wanted to share her fourth baby's birth with the world.
“Counting” On might be canceled but TLC alum Jessa Duggar Seewald still wanted to share her fourth baby’s birth with the world.
The former TLC star posted a two-part series to YouTube on July 20 that showed her labor and birth. She also revealed baby No. 4’s gender and name. On July 18, Duggar and Ben Seewald welcomed their fourth child, a girl they named Fern Elliana Seewald.
Fern weighed 8 pounds, 5 ounces, and was 21 inches long when she was born. She’s joining her three Seewald siblings: brothers Spurgeon, 5, Henry, 4, and sister Ivy, 2.
The second video started with Duggar and Seewald walking through the halls of the hospital on the afternoon of July 18, where Duggar’s contractions were three minutes apart. After nearly 14 hours of contractions, Duggar experienced some relief after getting her second epidural. The first one didn’t work, according to the TLC alum.
She was ready to start pushing just before 8 p.m. ET on July 18.
The following day, Duggar and Seewald called their children via Facetime to introduce the new baby to her siblings. At first, the boys thought their mom had another son. But after they saw a bow on her head, they realized it was a baby girl.
Duggar matriarch Michelle visited her daughter in the hospital and posed with the baby. If Duggar patriarch Jim Bob stopped by for a visit, he wasn’t included in the videos.
Part one of the birthing story went viral on YouTube, climbing to the No. 6 spot on the trending setion. Within 24 hours of being posted, it garnered more than 772,000 views.
Though Duggar opted to do her first three pregnancies at home, she wanted to have her fourth child in the hospital.
“That’ll be different,” she said in a June YouTube video, per Us Weekly. “I’ve had three great home births, good experiences. No complications with the birth itself, but I have had postpartum hemorrhage two times with my first and my third.”
Duggar & Ben Struggled to Find a Baby Name
As parents to three children, Duggar and Seewald weren’t strangers to the process of choosing a baby name, but they still had a hard time agreeing on Fern’s name. Duggar explained that she looked through her old list of baby names but none of them felt right. Instead, she had to “start from scratch” to find an appropriate moniker for her fourth child.
“Ben and I have been sitting on the [sex] here for forever — months and months — and you’d think we’d have a name by now. But it’s harder than it seems,” she explained in her YouTube video.
“I feel like the more kids you have, the more you’ve used up, you know, the favorites. And I haven’t even always liked the same names from pregnancy to pregnancy,” the 28-year-old confessed. “It’s kind of changed.”
Fern Is a Rainbow Baby
Duggar and Seewald announced the new pregnancy in February after the TLC alum experienced a miscarriage.
“After the heartbreaking loss of a baby last year, we’re overjoyed to share that another little Seewald is on the way,” the couple said in their joint statement via TLC.
“Spurgeon and Henry are very excited. They understand,” the couple added. “We have little pregnancy apps on my phone that we look at and they get to see updates of the baby’s progress and growth.”
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