Life is weird right now in so many ways, but time marches forward inexorably.

That means that Jessa Duggar’s baby, Fern, is no longer a one-month old.

The cute little doll is three months old, and Jessa is showing her off.

Jessa says that Fern is remarkably “jolly” … and judging by this precious photo, she’s right.

“She is such a jolly baby!” Jessa’s caption began.

She followed that sentence with a white heart emoji.

Certainly, the image matched Jessa’s description — that is a happy three-month-old baby!

“I have a hard time seeing my kids’ similarities,” Jessa confessed.

She explained that this is “because they all look so different to me.”

“However, people are constantly telling me that Fern looks a lot like Ivy,” Jessa noted.

“What do you think?” Jessa asked her fans and followers.

She followed that with a helpful tag: “#3monthsold”

With so many Duggar children and grandchildren, reminders of their ages are always helpful.

Ivy is 2, Henry is 4, and Spurgeon is 5.

While the quality of the names that these two give their children is enough to give you whiplash, we can all agree on this much:

These kids are so, so cute, just like their cousins.

Fern wasn’t just another child to Jessa and to Ben.

This sweet little dumpling was also their rainbow baby.

That term refers to the first child born following a miscarriage, as in the rainbow after a storm.

Of course, even a fully successful and healthy childbirth can be complicated for those familiar with the Duggars.

We don’t just refer to how many children the ever-growing family births.

What is complicated is how fans and critics feel about these children’s lives because of who their parents and grandparents are.

The Duggar family, the church that they attend, and the IBLP cult to which they belong are not safe or good places for children.

We do not simply mean that sexual predators find the sex-negative, repressed, and uninformed girls in this environment easy prey.

However, we cannot ignore that — and Jessa should know better than anyone how dangerous it can be to be a young girl in a fundamentalist cult.

But even without the sexual predators, the lifestyle and subculture to which the Duggars belong is toxic.

Their twisted ideology oppresses women for their gender, and doesn’t do any favors for the men, either.

We would not wish for any child to grow up in an abusive cult — a fate faced by all of Jessa’s children.

Fern is adorable, just like her siblings, but a number of social media users who keep up with Duggar activities feel that every photo is bittersweet.

Why? The answer is pretty simple:

It’s hard to “ooh” and “ahh” over a baby’s genuinely adorable photo when you know what kind of life she has in store for her.

Hope is never out of reach, however.

There is always a chance that Jessa or Ben or both of them could have an epiphany and leave the cult behind for a better life.

People flee abusive cults every day and build new lives for themselves and their families. We would all love to see that for this family.

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