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Counting On fans have watched, for more than a decade, as the Duggar family expanded. In recent months, however, interest has switched focus. Derick Dillard has made his feud with Jim Bob Duggar known, and in doing so, he’s forced fans to look at how he and his wife, Jill Duggar, interact with the Duggar family. Followers are now noticing that Jill’s interaction with her family has been strained for years, and some believe that the birth of the couple’s second child may be at the heart of the familial strife.

Jill and Derick haven’t spoken publicly about Sam’s birth

While Israel’s birth was aired on the family’s TV show, Counting On, little is actually known about the birth of the family’s second child, Samuel. While both Jill and Derick were featured on the series during her pregnancy with the now two-year-old, Sam, his birth special was not televised.

Initially, it was assumed that TLC decided not to show Sam’s birth after Derick made transphobic comments towards Jazz Jennings, the star of I Am Jazz. While that’s an excellent reason to yank the couple from the airwaves, fans have become skeptical that Derick’s tweet led to his firing. Many believe there was more to it than that. The prevailing theory among family followers is that something serious happened during Jill’s second, emergency c-section.

While the couple has never openly spoken about what exactly happened, fans do know that Jill attempted a home birth, but had to be rushed to the hospital for an emergency c-section. The couple’s first son, Israel, was also born via emergency c-section after a failed attempt to labor at home. Fans are also aware that Sam spent several weeks in the NICU after his birth, and, according to Derick, TLC refused to pay hospital bills associated with his hospital stay.

Fans theorize that the Duggars and the Dillards may have had a falling out over Sam’s birth

Sam’s birth is still a mystery, and it looks like it will remain that way, but that hasn’t stopped fans from theorizing about it. One Reddit follower notes that there was not a single picture of Sam with his family following his birth, and it doesn’t appear as though the Duggar family even showed up at the hospital to visit him. At the very least, there is no photographic evidence of such a visit.

If that’s the case, one must wonder if the family had some sort of dispute over filming the birth of Sam and monetary compensation regarding it. Derick has been outspoken about his family’s lack of financial compensation for filming. In fact, Derick has stated, more than once, that his family was volunteering to film. He has even alluded to the fact that Jim Bob hoards earnings from the show. If that’s true, it’s possible that the family had a massive falling out over Sam’s medical bills that later led to the estrangement that has become more evident recently.

Did Derick decide to walk away from Counting On, or was he fired?

Derick has long suggested that he and his family did not get fired from Counting On. Instead, he insists that both he and Jill decided to stop filming. He has gone so far as to suggest they would have made the decision sooner if they had not been threatened with a lawsuit. At the end of the day, fans likely will never know what happened. Derick and TLC seem to be at odds about how things went down, and it’s impossible to know the truth.

What is pretty apparent is that the Duggar family all but excommunicated Jill shortly after she stopped filming the show. Jill has only recently popped back up in family photos, and even then, she appears to be missing from some significant family events. She and her family did not appear to be present at Joy-Anna’s recent gender reveal party. They are also seemingly absent from the family’s weekly get-togethers, which Austin Forsyth mentioned in a recent YouTube video.  

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