Over the weekend, Jessa Duggar announced that she is pregnant with Baby #5.
To many Duggar fans, the news of her rainbow baby is exciting. Others have very fair concerns about what it means to bring a new life into this infamous family.
But Jessa’s announcement wasn’t a surprise. Not really.
Fans had speculated that Jessa was plotting her baby reveal to sabotage sister Jill Duggar’s book launch. And now, it looks like they were right.
If someone recently called you “cynical” for predicting that Jessa would make an announcement like this, well, that someone may owe you an apology.
Over the weekend, Jessa opened up to her fans and followers that she is expected Baby #5.
Her Saturday, September 9 video began by showing off a pregnancy test. Curiously, much of the video depicted a vacation from April of this year … even though
“After a heartbreaking loss last year, we’re so thankful God has blessed us with a rainbow baby,” Jessa announced.
“Just this past week we found out some wonderful news that our rainbow baby is on the way,” she announced.
Jessa then proclaimed: “We couldn’t be more excited.”
It’s interesting that Jessa claimed that it was only last week that she and Ben learned of her pregnancy.
First of all, most people don’t announce a pregnancy as soon as they find out. The Duggar cult views things a little differently, however.
Secondly … that same week, the entire Duggar fan base (and critics) were abuzz with pregnancy speculation. About Jessa specifically. Is she saying that she didn’t know until fans felt that it was a foregone conclusion?
Simply put, fans aren’t feeling convinced that this is new information to Jessa.
Some have raised questions about the rest of the video. It depicts Jessa and Ben’s vacation getaway from this past spring.
We don’t think that Jessa recorded the pregnancy news that far back. But it does make the timeline a bit murky in the eyes of many fans.
For days leading up to the announcement, many fans circulated a theory that extended beyond “Jessa is pregnant.”
The theory was that she would make an announcement soon — likely just before Tuesday, September 15. Possibly even on the day of.
Why? Because that just so happens to be the release date of her sister, Jill’s, memoir: Counting The Cost.
The idea would be to preempt or usurp any big news or headlines surrounding Jill. She can’t bury the story, but she can distract from it.
Sometimes, search results are a zero sum game.
Jessa’s pregnancy can displace a few headlines about how evil her parents are and replace it with something that obliging fans would, frankly, rather read.
Now, no one believes that Jessa thought of this. The theory is that Jim Bob aims to weaponize his loyal daughters to silence Jill — or anyone else who criticizes him.
Obviously, we cannot confirm this. We cannot speak to what was on Jessa’s mind when she made this announcement.
But we can point out that the fan theory was that she’d make this announcement now, to sabotage Jill. Well, she made the announcement now. It’s not unreasonable to wonder if Jill’s book was on her mind.
