Joy-Anna Duggar Reveals 13-Month-Old Son Was Hospitalized After Biting ‘More Than He Can Chew’

Counting On’s Joy-Anna Duggar was “pretty shook up for a while” after her 13-month-old son, Gunner, was rushed to the hospital following a frightening incident at the dinner table.

“I was just feeding him a little bit off my plate, and I had a piece of ham, like Thanksgiving ham,” Joy-Anna, 26, said in a video posted on her and her husband, Austin Forsyth’s, YouTube channel on Saturday, June 15. “And I was letting him chew on it and take a bite off of it, and he bit off more than he could chew and immediately started choking.”

The TLC alum immediately attempted to help the baby spit out the stubborn piece of food and then passed the child to her husband, who works as an EMT.

“I started crying ’cause I’m just like ‘Lord, please protect him,’ like all of those what-ifs come to your mind right away,” she said. “He’d thrown up multiple times, still had not thrown up the ham, was gagging and, at this point, wasn’t breathing for like 20 seconds.”

After the baby started taking shallow breaths, the couple rushed to the hospital because Gunner “was still struggling and extremely lethargic.” During the one-hour car journey, the 19 Kids and Counting alum observed instances when her son “stopped breathing.”

“I was just crying out to God like, ‘Please save him,’ and I’ve never been to a point where, like, I thought I was going to lose one of my kids, and it was just that thought of, ‘He is going to die,’ came to my mind, and it just like was terrifying,” she told viewers. “And so I was asking God, ‘Please, please save him, please save him, Give us wisdom. Help us to get there.’”

After Gunner fell asleep, the reality TV alum said he started “breathing a lot better.”

“He started gagging every once in a while but it was not as life-threatening as we thought it was,” she continued. Upon reaching the medical facility, doctors conducted tests and an X-ray, both of which yielded clear results.

“I was just so thankful that God protected him, and we made it to the hospital, and that whatever was in his throat wasn’t bothering him anymore,” she said. “I’ve been cutting his food up into like the tiniest pieces now.”

The scare comes only one month after Joy-Anna and Austin, 30, celebrated Gunner’s first birthday on May 18. “These are the days that we’ll want back. Soaking up these days ….,” she captioned a carousel of sweet photos with the mother-son color-coordinated in blue tones. “Gunner had a great first birthday filled with LOTS of kisses and ‘Happy birthday!’ from Gideon & Evelyn! We love you BIG, Bubba.”