Rumors that Jill Duggar is pregnant have been circulating for months now, and the couple has remained mum on the issue despite countless direct questions from fans.
Despite all their secrecy, however, it looks like the cat is out of the bag thanks to a photo that Derick Dillard posted to Instagram yesterday.
Yes, fans have claimed that Jill appears to be hiding a baby bump in several recent social media photos, but she certainly ain’t hiding it here.
Obviously, this could be a strange angle or simply an unflattering shirt, but if we had to guess, we would say Jill is several months along here.
If you know anything about the Duggars, you know they’re big fans of procreation, so it may seem a bit puzzling that Jill has been keeping news of her second pregnancy a secret for so long.
We’re sure under normal circumstances, she’d be shouting it from the rooftops and asking fans for baby name suggestions.
In this case, however, Jill and Derick have had good reason to keep things on the down-low.
You see, for most of the past year, the Dillards have been doing missionary work in El Salvador.
Unfortunately, the Central American nation is right at the heart of the Zika virus epidemic.
Zika has resulted in devastating birth defects in the children of mothers who are pregnant when they contract the illness, and women in that part of the world have been advised to avoid getting pregnant for a period of two years.
So Jill could be putting her baby in peril by getting pregnant while living in a Zika hot spot, and she’s sure to receive plenty of flak from fans as a result.
In addition to the monumental risk she’s taking with her unborn child, Jill could be in for a tremendous PR nightmare, especially if it turns out she timed things so that she’s be pregnant at the same time as her sister Jessa.
For several weeks now, there have been rumors that the Jill and Jessa hoped to coordinate their conceptions as a sort of PR stunt for their struggling reality series.
For obvious reasons, it that turns out to be the case, it likely won’t go over well with fans.
So if the Dillards are expecting a second child we’d like to offer our congrats – and wish them a tremendous amount of luck.
