[Josh & Anna Smuggar: A Series of Unfortunate Events]

I’m guessing Miranda. Or they could go old-school and choose Millie or Maisie. 

[Joy and Austin: This One Time At Family Camp]

5 hours ago, QuinnInND said:

The pic of Joy and Austin with Annabelle. I lost it again. I hope Joy doesn't blame herself or think God is punishing her for something. With her upbringing, I could see her feeling that way.  I thought God was punishing me. It took a long time to get past that. It seems like Austin is being a supportive loving husband, which is what she needs. 

You know, I hope this doesn’t sound weird or anything, but I wanted to comment on how much I like your presence on these boards. It sounds like you have had a lot of heartbreak to overcome in your life, but you still manage to be funny and positive and supportive of other posters. I really appreciate that. I think you must be a really strong person, and I have enjoyed “getting to know you“ on the boards. Again, not trying to be weird, just wanted you to know you have a fan. 

Plus, I very much get the sense that Mini Mistake and your twins would really get along. Moms of spirited girls unite! 😀

[Joy and Austin: This One Time At Family Camp]

1 hour ago, BitterApple said:

I think that's where the Duggars could benefit from some social media coaching. Mentioning the hair and make up makes it seem like Joy was getting glammed up for prom. 

But at the same time, if Joy hadn’t mentioned that 1) Carlin did her hair and makeup and 2) why Carlin did her hair and makeup, I feel like there would be people who would be saying “that bitch, she obviously didn’t give a damn about her dead baby since she was able to spend an hour tarting herself up so she’d look good for the spread in People magazine.” I think the shoutout was necessary to give some context. Some people will still think she’s shallow, but I think a lot of people probably read that and thought “oh, okay, that makes sense.”

[Joy and Austin: This One Time At Family Camp]

36 minutes ago, ChocolateAddict said:

I just wanted to comment on why Joy and Austin would share such personal pictures with hundreds of thousands of people. I have not lost a baby but I have friends who have and shared similar photos on social media. 

For them, posting these pictures on Facebook/Instagram was a way of saying my baby was loved, my baby was real and I will not be ashamed of speaking about my child. It was about publically recognising that their baby will forever be part of their family and sharing their love. It was a way of saying to other people that they would not hide or be ashamed of what happened to their child. 

Joy and Austin may be finding comfort in sharing Annabell Elise with the world. It could be that they feel that her life is validated because they are speaking about her publically and recognising her short existence. By having her on their Instagram feed it says that they are proud of her and want her to be recognised as their child. This is also an expression of their faith. For a young Christian couple used to sharing their lives publically, this is an expression of how their faith and hope in God is helping through a painful, traumatic time. 

I think it's heartless to suggest that they are simply doing this for clicks and views. Joy and Austin are two young people who have experienced heartbreaking loss and come from a culture where this sort of grief is often unaddressed. In that context, speaking about it on social media could well be cathartic and it could provide some measure of comfort to hear to know that others are praying from them and Annabell Elise. When you don't get that sort of support from your own family, it's human to seek it elsewhere. For Joy in particular, support and love from strangers may be a comfort for her.   

This is all to say that I see these posts as being a way for Joy and Austin to share both their love for Annabell Elise and their grief at having lost her. And I'm not going to critique how a grieving couple wants to share the story of their loss. 

ITA. I shared similar sentiments in an earlier post that got deleted. I also wanted to add that there are practical considerations here. Joy shared the fact that she was pregnant on social media. Now that she isn’t pregnant anymore, it makes total sense that she would share that on social media as well. Nobody wants to make hundreds of phone calls to family and friends to explain a stillborn baby. Similarly, nobody wants to deal with hundreds of people coming up to them and asking them about the baby over the next six months either.  She needed a way to get the message out quickly and easily, and social media fit the bill. Also, for people who don’t know how Instagram works (I was one until quite recently), you can’t put a textual post up on Instagram. It has to be an image. So they didn’t really have the choice of just breaking the news without any illustration of their grief.

I just don’t think they feel forced or coerced into sharing these photos, and I don’t think they did it because they wanted likes or clicks. I think that, for whatever reason, it made them feel better. It might not be the way I would’ve chosen to grieve, but everybody is allowed to grieve in their own way.

[Joy and Austin: This One Time At Family Camp]

13 minutes ago, galaxychaser said:

Lauren comments: she is such a gift! Forever loved!

Wow, someone really must have talked to her. You know it was killing her to not be able to add “just like Asa” to the end of that post. 

[Joy and Austin: This One Time At Family Camp]

4 hours ago, Albanyguy said:

She wouldn't name her new baby "Annabell" as a "tribute" to Joy and Austin's baby (and to continue the "A" theme she started with Asa). Would she?

No, I think that would be too subtle. I expect her birth announcement will be a photo of her standing next to Annabell’s grave, clutching her baby with one hand and a balloon with the other, with the hashtags #angelbabies and #rainbowbaby. 

I wish I was joking, but I could actually see her doing this. 

[Josiah and Lauren: He Has To Marry Somebody]

8 hours ago, GeeGolly said:

Lauren still couldn't leave herself out of it. She didn't get it.

Lauren is a terrible person. I feel so sorry for her children. She’s even more of a narcissist than Michelle. She’s going to be an absolutely appalling mother. 

[Joy and Austin: This One Time At Family Camp]

It sounds like Joy called Carlin and she came for the entire birth process. I’m really glad Joy had someone of her choosing with her during this time. And if Joy wanted to look nice for photos with her baby, then I’m glad she had someone to help her with that as well. I’m certainly not going to judge her for wanting her only pictoral memory of her baby to be as perfect as possible. 

I think whoever said Lauren is upset because Joy pulled ahead of her in the grief sweepstakes was dead on. What an awful piece of work that woman is. 

[Joy and Austin: This One Time At Family Camp]

3 hours ago, GeeGolly said:

Hmmm, Lauren's tweet is gone. Did she get it? Will it stick? Or did she delete it because someone told her too?

Both Erin B and Whitney B posted their condolences without a mention of their losses. Maybe the responses to Lauren's post and the examples of others will wake her up.

I certainly hope she gets it, but somehow I doubt she will. I wonder if Joe intervened? We know he and Joy are close and he and Kendra seem to be capable of empathy. I think it’s unlikely that Lauren would have removed the post unless someone smacked her upside the head with a clue-by-four.

I really do feel terrible for Joy and Austin. I hope they find some comfort and peace.

[Joy and Austin: This One Time At Family Camp]

6 minutes ago, Lunera said:

She is the freaking worst

The Bates girls: Here is a caring and appropriate message.

Lauren: ME! Meeeeeeee! You can’t spell awesome without ME! Oh, yeah, sorry about your dead baby. Hey, did you know Bay-BEE rhymes with ME?!?!

I mean, i’m a Christian but if I were Joy right now I’d want to cut a bitch. 

[Joy and Austin: This One Time At Family Camp]

8 minutes ago, heckkitty said:

Well that didn’t take long. There is a post on Joy & Austin’s Instagram post about the miscarriage from Si & Lauren saying she’s sure Anabell and Asa are “best buds”.  They (and I’m assuming it’s Lauren) really are intolerable. It’s. Not. About. You. 😡

Why is she such a terrible person? 

Also, i’m not sure I’d pull this crap with Austin and Joy if I were her. I think most of the couples would be too meek or Godly or whatever to speak up, but Austin seems to have a deeply protective side to his personality and I’m thinking he’s not a walk in the park if you piss him off. 

[Joy and Austin: This One Time At Family Camp]

27 minutes ago, PikaScrewChu said:

They're doing genetic tests now that can detect chromosomal abnormalities earlier and earlier. I remember friends doing them. However they are generally only available to people who can afford them.

There's also a stigma in a lot of evangelical Christian communities in getting genetic tests done because you should love a baby no matter what, even if it will pass away in utero or die shortly after birth.

If you have insurance, the NIPT tests you’re referring to are routinely covered for women over 35 or women who are at high risk for chromosomal abnormalities. They would likely not have been covered as a routine procedure for Joy.

Sorry, I just realized I should probably explain NIPT! NIPT stands for non-invasive prenatal testing. It allows fetal DNA to be isolated from the mother’s bloodstream and examined for evidence of chromosomal disorders. Prior to the advent of NIPT, all in utero genetic testing was invasive, meaning it required collection of material from inside the uterus, and carried a not insignificant risk of miscarriage (around 1%). Some women opted out of the testing for this reason. NIPT can be done as early as week 9 and poses no risk to the fetus as it involves just a blood sample taken from the mother’s arm. I had it with mini Mistake and it was amazing. It allows them to tell sex, too, although that’s not the main reason for the test.

[Joy and Austin: This One Time At Family Camp]

3 minutes ago, Zella said:

Is this something that would have been caught sooner ordinarily or is usually found at about this stage? (I don't mean that to sound accusatory. Am just genuinely curious.)

It depends. If Joy were getting routine prenatal care she might have been offered first-trimester screening consisting of an ultrasound and some blood tests that, when combined, can detect some chromosomal abnormalities including Turner syndrome.*  However, these are just screening tests and won’t detect abnormalities in every case where they are present. Currently, actual genetic tests such as NIPT aren’t routinely offered to women Joy’s age because their risk for chromosomal abnormalities is low. 

Even if a doctor had detected a problem, it wouldn’t have made any difference. There’s no way to fix a chromosomal abnormality in utero, and Joy and Austin wouldn’t have terminated the pregnancy in any case. They would have basically just been waiting to see if their baby lived or died. In many ways I think that would have been worse. 

*Obviously I have no way of knowing if this was actually Turner syndrome — I mention that specifically because it’s a not unusual cause of second-trimester fetal demise, especially of female fetuses. 

[Joy and Austin: This One Time At Family Camp]

40 minutes ago, PikaScrewChu said:

I wonder if she was getting any prenatal care besides woo woo midwives and Jill. Knowing this family, probably not. That picture of her and Austin is clearly at the hospital since Joy has an IV in her arm.

I know we all speculated that something "bad" was eventually going to happen to one of the women during pregnancy. I didn't think it was going to be so soon.

When a baby dies in utero they generally have three choices: labor induction so the mother delivers the remains vaginally, a D & E (where the cervix is dilated and the remains are removed by the doctor through the vagina) or a c-section. If I remember my OB class correctly, induction is the preferred method in a healthy mother because it has the lowest risk of complications. Any of these things would have to be done in a hospital.

I have to say that I think speculating that Joy’s diet caused the stillbirth is a bit unfair. We don’t even know if she was still dieting, and while I found research suggesting that a low carb diet in pregnancy can increase the risk of birth defects I didn’t find anything linking it to second-trimester fetal demise. It’s more likely that the baby had a chromosomal disorder like Turner syndrome that couldn’t be prevented or avoided.

Anyway I feel terrible for them. I’m actually glad they have their faith to help them through this difficult time.

[Sweet Fellowship: Duggars and Friends (aka the Bates Family and Other Featured Families Thread)]

If Nurie’s happy, I’m happy for her.  Nurie was never going to be a self-supporting career girl, and her courtship prospects were always limited by the fact her parents are leeches. Nathan can provide a home of her own, with ample portions of food and a bed she only has to share with her husband, which must sound pretty great after a childhood of starvation and two kids to a bunk in the RV. I mean, a fundie arranged marriage and being a stay-at-home daughter both sound like jail to me, but at least this way she gets to choose her own cell. 

[Sweet Fellowship: Duggars and Friends (aka the Bates Family and Other Featured Families Thread)]

39 minutes ago, Heathen said:

Ofchris Maxwell is from a family as fundie as the Maxwells, if not more so, but I think I've seen Melanie wearing floor-length skirts as well. 

I feel like Ofchris announced her pregnancy so early to compete with Melanie. No way those women don't have some pregnancy numbers rivalry going on even though Melanie is significantly older than Ofchris and has had a neonatal loss as well as a couple miscarriages. 

Didn’t Melanie just have a baby? Is she pregnant again already? 

[Josh & Anna Smuggar: A Series of Unfortunate Events]

21 minutes ago, kokapetl said:

Her hair is confusing. 

I’ve noticed that the earth-mother loose braid wraparound style seems to be in with fundies these days. Anna, Jessa, Joy and Josie Bates have all sported it recently. It looks pretty in the right context.

[Josh & Anna Smuggar: A Series of Unfortunate Events]

Just now, Lukeysboat said:

I know they are correct. I posted them with the “Please!” with hopes that people will use the proper spellings. I’ll never understand why so many people struggle with pluralization of surnames. 

Oh, I’m sorry. I completely misunderstood! I thought it was an exasperated please like “Josh Duggar is a fine-looking man... please!” 

[Sweet Fellowship: Duggars and Friends (aka the Bates Family and Other Featured Families Thread)]

4 hours ago, Temperance said:

I've never figured out how to do post a photo, but somehow I was able to bring this photo overhere. (I'm not sure how this worked or why it worked.) For one time only, here's the photo in question announcing a pregnancy for Anna Marie (OfChris) Maxwell.  I don't care about the quality of the photo, but the message it sends (beyond announcing the pregnancy). (She and Chris also have 2 sons.) 

 

Do they always dress like extras on Little House on the Prairie? Haven’t the Maxwells embraced modern modest? I swear i’ve seen Chelsy Bontrager Maxwell in a denim skirt. 

[Josh & Anna Smuggar: A Series of Unfortunate Events]

1 hour ago, Lukeysboat said:

I understand; I feel the same way about “littles” to describe young children. 

I’m not picking on anyone in particular, but I am COMPLETELY over the incorrect plural surnames! Bateses ... Gaineses ... Duggars (sans apostrophe). Please!

You aren’t supposed to use an apostrophe to make a surname plural. Apostrophes are only for possessives and contractions, period. (Pun intended.) All of the examples you cited are grammatically correct.

I think Anna is encouraging Josh to stuff his face in the hopes that he’ll cork off from a heart attack at an early age. Assuming he has life insurance, this is probably the best life outcome she can hope for. 

[Jill, Derick & the Kids: Moving On!!]

5 hours ago, Scarlett45 said:

I think she’s also got body issues. The girl is not heavy or plump or even curvy by any means (Joy is the most voluptuous girl by far), but she’s dresses like women I know who were picked on for having breasts or a buttocks. They think baggy clothes make them invisible. 

I think in Jill’s case the issue might be that she’s not fat but she does have the flabby belly of someone who has had two kids in close succession. I don’t think any of these girls except maybe Jinger do any significant exercise unless they’re trying to get in shape for their wedding, and so Jill’s never gotten back the muscle tone of her prepregnancy body. I’m not shaming her, I think she looks totally fine, but I can see how she might feel self conscious in tight tops. I think this might also be why Jessa hasn’t embraced the pants thing. Swing dresses and loose skirts are way more forgiving than pants. 

[Jill, Derick & the Kids: Moving On!!]

12 minutes ago, truebluesmoky said:

Jill’s Instastory... I actually like the outfit. The shirt is wrinkled, but otherwise she looks good.

Well at least this pic should put the pregnancy speculation to rest. She’s looking quite slender and those aren’t maternity jeans. 

[The Duggalos: Jinger and the Holy Goalie]

54 minutes ago, Absolom said:

That was true of Jill and possibly part of Jessa's courtship, but by Jinger they were having private conversations.  Jessa even had unmonitored phone conversations IIRC.  In person they would have chaperones in the vicinity, but not right up on top of them.

Jeremy and Jinger exchanged private texts and probably had private phone/Skype conversations as well. Given how comfortable they seemed kissing at the wedding, I also suspect they went farther physically than hand-holding. I think Jim Bob and Michelle were super strict with Jill because she was the first daughter to court, but after her I think they were kind of over the whole 24/7 monitoring, especially with so many kids (Jinger, Joy, Si and Joe) courting in close succession.  I don’t think any of them would’ve had enough privacy to have sex or anything, but I do think the rules got quite a bit laxer.

[The Duggalos: Jinger and the Holy Goalie]

9 hours ago, lucy711 said:

Yeah there are upsides and downsides to having kids at any age, but I'm not going to try for any more kids after a year or two (I'm 34) because I want to enjoy my 60s while I'm hopefully in good health and getting ready to retire instead of worrying about having minors to raise.  If that means I only have the one I currently have, then so be it. 

I think that because we see so many celebrities having kids older (late 30s and 40s), it gives us a false rosy picture.  I don't think that having a kid in your late 30s is uncommon at all, but once you hit 40, the numbers tell a different story.  Celebrities have all the money at their disposal for various treatments that most of us don't.  Even still, if you look at the statistics of women who can successfully conceive- naturally or with IVF- over 40- they are relatively small.

Anyway, I'd rather have a few kids early like Jinger might and then enjoy my life rather than spend decades raising a small army!

What a lot of people don’t realize is that the celebrities who are pregnant in their mid and late forties are almost certainly using IVF with donor eggs. There’s nothing wrong with that, if that’s how you want to do your family, but I do think they’re doing women a disservice by implying that it’s super easy to conceive naturally at 46 or whatever. 

I honestly don’t buy into the idea that Jeremy is selfishly prohibiting Jinger from fulfilling her life purpose of having zillions of children. I never got the feeling Jinger particularly liked children — she seemed the most disengaged of the “sister moms” and even when her older siblings had kids she wasn’t constantly offering to babysit or grabbing them for photo ops. I have no doubt she loves Felicity, and I think she’s probably fine with having one or two more, but I think she’s 100% okay with having a normal-sized family. Besides, even raising two or three is going to keep her busy for the next 18+ years, so it’s not like she’s going to be an empty nester at thirty. 

[The Duggalos: Jinger and the Holy Goalie]

5 minutes ago, MsJamieDornan said:

Maybe they did mess with the timeline. In her blonde picture, she did not look pregnant. And now she seems much bigger. Hmmm.

She didn’t look at all pregnant in the earlier pic she posted of her and Jeremy with Michelle and Jim Bob and that photo was taken in Arkansas so it must be recent. Her hair is also still blond in that photo. If you look closely at the original hair pic you can see that her roots are still pretty dark. If she pulls her hair back like she did at the funeral the blond wouldn’t be obvious from the front.