14 DAY TRIAL // Jill Duggar is the second daughter of Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar, stars of the hit reality series 19 Kids & Counting, and she was married to Derick Dillard just 2 months ago. Today, she and Derick are proudly announcing they’re expecting their first child together – on the cover of People magazine, no less.
What makes the Duggars different from all other reality stars out there is the fact that they’re deeply religious and seem to live by a set of rules and principles that one hardly ever encounters these days.
This is also reflected on the way they raise their many children because, yes, the Duggars don’t believe in abortion or birth control. Jill, the latest to walk down the aisle, for instance, didn’t kiss or hold hands with her fiancé Derick until the priest declared them united in the eyes of God.
The Duggars don’t believe in dating and they most definitely don’t believe in having an active love life before marriage. Their kids enter courtships with boys they pre-approve, and they get to know each other as individuals, not physically, only in the presence of chaperones.
This said, it’s not really that surprising that Jill got pregnant in her second week as Mrs. Dillard because she too believes they will have as many children as God wants them to have, without them intervening in any way to change that.
She tells People magazine that, a few weeks into the marriage, she started taking pregnancy tests “just in case” and they all came back negative. When she took one of her mother’s, it showed her that she was with child.
“We got pregnant a little less than two weeks after we got married,” she enthuses for the magazine. “Derick and I want to leave up to God how many children we would have, whether that is two or 20.”
The print edition of the magazine will probably provide a bit more insight into Jill and Derick’s newly married life and how they’re preparing for motherhood. She says she’s about 6 weeks along but she and Derick are already talking about what they’ll be doing after the baby is born.
“It could be as early as two years or five years from now that we’d go,” Derick explains. “I know that navigating cultures can be hard for kids, [but] we will probably homeschool [them].”
Derick traveled a lot abroad before he met Jill. In fact, when they were introduced (by her father), he was in Nepal and they maintained a long-distance relationship on Skype and email for many months before they actually got to meet in person.
They fell in love then so, when they finally met, they knew they would be walking down the aisle together soon, so they entered formal courtship.