“We’ve been keeping a little secret!” wrote Jill Duggar in a Sunday (Feb . 27) blog post on the Dillard Family website. Jill, 30, revealed that she and Derick Dillard are expecting after being “devastated last fall by the miscarriage of our sweet baby, River Bliss.” Since losing the baby in Oct. 2021, Jill and her husband “have prayed that, if it was God’s will, he would bless us with another baby.” Their prayers were answered since they are “re expecting our rainbow baby due July 2022!”
“We are so thankful for a healthy baby and pregnancy so far, and we look forward to finding out the gender soon!” added Jill. She accompanied the good news with a photo of her and her family – husband Derick and sons Israel, 6, and Samuel, 4 – holding up a balloon that spelled out “baby” as part of the good news. In the photo, Jill cradled her growing baby bump while her eldest, Israel, wore a black shirt with “Big” on the front. Samuel, matching his brother, sported a shirt reading “middle.”
Jill shared the joy of their third pregnancy – and the heartbreak of losing the child – in an Oct. 11 post on both the family Instagram and YouTube channel. “We recently found out we were expecting our third baby. We were thrilled! However, a few days later, we started miscarrying,” she captioned the video about the early days of the pregnancy.
“We were all thrilled! It was fun to see so much joy in the boys’ faces as we shared the news with them,” the family wrote on their website. “They were full of questions and so excited as we talked about the pregnancy and how they would get to be involved along the way and after the baby was born.” Sadly, a few days after this reveal, Jill suffered a miscarriage. “Even though it was too early to tell the baby’s gender, we picked a name that we feel encompasses our baby’s significance and the life we will always remember: River Bliss Dillard,” the family wrote.
“Our baby doesn’t get to live here with us on earth, but is forever with the source of the river of life, in the presence of the Lord!” the couple wrote, after revealing that they picked “River” as a first name due to the abundance of “serene, beautiful” rivers in Arkansans and the various mentions of rivers in the Christian bible. “And we chose Bliss for a middle name because our baby is living in perfect bliss with the Lord and was such a gift that brought immense joy and happiness to us even though only with us here on earth for a short time.”