As you’ve likely heard by now, Joy-Anna Duggar is pregnant with her first child.
And the question of exactly when she conceived has unexpectedly developed into the latest Duggar scandal.
According to her family’s official timeline, Joy got pregnant during the early days of her honeymoon, immediately after she married Austin Forsyth back in late May.
That would put her at roughly five months pregnant.
Based on her latest photo, however, many fans now believe that Joy is either carrying multiples, or she’s much further along than five months.
We don’t have much to go on, as while her sisters posted regular Instagram updates during their pregnancies, Joy-Anna has surprisingly taken a hiatus from social media in recent months.
Fans believe it’s part of an attempt to conceal the fact that Joy got pregnant much earlier than her family claims, but thus far those efforts have proven unsuccessful.
That’s the first photo of Joy’s baby bump to emerge in the past month.
Interestingly, the image didn’t appear on one of the Duggars’ social media pages, but on the Instagram page of a family friend named Ashley Salyer.
The Duggars still seem to be doing their best to prevent new photos of Joy’s belly from going public.
Prior to Salyer’s post, the only recent photos of Joy were a close up that showed only her face, and a candid baby bump photo that appeared on a Facebook fan page.
Of course, all the secrecy is lending credence to what had, until recently, seemed a wild rumor.
Joy’s efforts to keep her distance from social media is causing once skeptical fans to reexamine the evidence and concede that there’s a good chance Joy may have gotten pregnant before marriage.
For one thing, Joy and Austin admitted to breaking courtship rules prior to their engagement.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean they engaged in premarital sex.
Joy-Anna’s family is so strict that unmarried couples can violate the rules of courtship simply by holding hands for too long or spending time together without a chaperone.
Still, the fact that Joy and Austin alluded to breaking the rules but didn’t go into specifics might point to a premarital moment of weakness.
Also suspicious is the fact that Joy and Austin rescheduled their wedding, deciding to exchange vows in May of this year, rather than October.
Could it be that Joy broke the news to her parents, and they scrambled to make new arrangements in hopes of hiding the fact that she’d gotten pregnant out of wedlock?
If so, you can be sure the Duggars will continue to try and keep that secret buried.
But based on the latest photo of Joy, they may not be able to for much longer.
Watch Counting On online for more from reality TV’s most controversial family.
