It’s easy to forget about the other Duggar kids/adults in the wake of Jessa Duggar-Seewald’s harlotry. But Jessa’s brother Josh has been married to his wife Anna for six years. Josh and Anna were the one to give Jim-Bob and Michelle their first grandchild, back in October 2009, 13 months after Josh and Anna’s wedding. Since the birth of their first child, Mackynzie, Josh and Anna have added two more kids to their family: son Michael James in June 2011 and Marcus Anthony in June 2013. And now Anna is expecting their fourth!
Keep counting! The eldest son of the Duggar family, Josh Duggar, is going to be a father once more. Josh’s wife Anna Duggar took to Twitter on Tuesday evening, Dec. 2, to announce that she is pregnant with her fourth child.
“We are so excited to announce… we’re pregnant! #4andCounting #BlessingfromTheLord @joshduggar #19Kids,” she wrote.
Josh and Anna, both 26, married in September 2008 and quickly got to work on mirroring the massive brood led by Josh’s famously conservative parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. While Josh and his 18 siblings all have names that begin with the letter “J,” he branched out slightly, using the letter “M” for his own growing family.
The happy couple welcomed their first child, daughter Mackynzie Renée, in October 2009, going on to introduce sons Michael James in June 2011 and Marcus Anthony in June 2013. Anna and Josh have yet to announce whether their latest addition will be a Melissa or Mark.
The religious pair also teased the exciting news in a clip from TLC.
“This time of the year, there’s so many things we’re thankful for,” Josh says in the video, surrounded by his pregnant wife and three children. “From my sisters getting proposed to and married, to all the fans who are watching at home.”
Anna then chimed in, spilling, “One of the things we’re really thankful for this season, is that we’re expecting!” She added to TLC that she is nine weeks pregnant, a few months behind her sister-in-law Jill Duggar, who announced her own pregnancy news this past August.
“I’m having a lot of morning sickness so it is difficult, but it’s good because I know good things are happening,” Anna continued. “After Ben and Jessa’s wedding, we were still visiting with the family in Arkansas, and that was really exciting to get to share with the family the exciting news.”
If you’re anything like me, you were staring at those dates and doing the math in your head. Four pregnancies in six years isn’t totally bonkers, you know. I’m actually a little bit surprised by the gaps in pregnancies… I mean, Josh and Anna waited more than a year before conceiving Marcus? And then another 16-month pause between Marcus and this pregnancy. Wow. Back when Josh and Anna were working on their second kid, Josh spoke to E! News about their “family planning.” Or should I say, he talked around their family planning, because I’m still not sure if he thinks The Pill is the work of the devil or if he thinks it’s a good method for planning out one’s family in a modern world where having babies is really expensive. Maybe it’s one of those “don’t ask, don’t tell” situations with Anna and Josh. He gets to be super-conservative and against all forms of birth control and she hides her birth control pills because she doesn’t want to be pregnant every year, back-to-back.
Photos courtesy of Josh’s Instagram.
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