Jill Duggar has been a reality TV star since childhood.
As such, she’s accustomed to sharing just about everything with her family’s massive fan base. Just about everything, but not everything.
Yes, despite a lifetime in the spotlight, and a financial future somewhat tied to this, there are things that Jill would prefer to keep private.
When Jill welcomed her second child back in July of 2017, she waited several weeks before posting a photo of baby Samuel.
Now, fans believe they’re starting to realize why.
Jill’s husband, Derick Dillard, posted the above photo on his Instagram page this week as part of a montage celebrating his mom’s birthday.
Fans were shocked, for obvious reasons.
The never-before-seen image of baby Samuel hooked up to wires with tubes coming out of his nose was jarring, to say the least.
The image was both unexpected and alarming, and as such, some of Derick’s followers were deeply concerned by what they saw.
Others insisted that while they’re certainly unsettling, such scenes are not uncommon, even among newborns that are perfectly healthy.
Little ones do have a hard time adjusting to the world early on, but what happened here? Opined one fan who seemed to have an idea:
“That is a tube to suction fluid out of the lungs. When babies are born by C-section the fluid does not get pushed out by contractions."
"It is normal to have to get this out, not a complication."
"Happened with both my C-section babies.”
Others continue to suspect that Samuel experienced serious health problems immediately following his birth last year.
They believe that the Duggars – for reasons only they know – did their best to downplay the severity of the situation.
"Don’t think he was as healthy at birth as you said originally," one of Derick’s fans wrote on Instagram in response.
“Omg poor Samuel, feeding tube and oxygen."
At the time of Samuel’s birth, the Duggars did reveal that he was born via C-section following a difficult and complicated labor.
“After 40 hours of labor, he was delivered via C-section at the hospital,” the family revealed in a statement released just after the birth.
“Thank you for your continued prayers and support!”
“His birth didn’t go as expected,” Jill, who also had a traumatic experience birthing first-born son Israel, later told People in an interview.
In all likelihood, fans will never know exactly how serious Samuel’s health problems were at the time of his birth, or what caused them.
Not only did they keep this matter private, Derick Dillard has since been fired by TLC as a result of some controversial public statements.
Derick later denied that he was fired, saying he is simply no longer filming Counting On, which was never an actual job.
That’s one way to spin it.
However you want to describe things, it certainly appears as though his family will be leaving the spotlight along with him.
Going forward, the only reliable source of information about the Dillard family will likely be the Dillards themselves.
Given their history of asking fans for money and being shady about where the funds go, it’s unclear how reliable they are.