Family Business

Kennedy's Ultrasound

With it being 9 years since having my last child, Idk what was causing me to have the crazy baby fever but it kept happening.  It was consistent as it would happen at the weirdest times... a month here or a day there.  My mind would convince me that having another child would give me the opportunity to do it "right".  But, why didn't I feel like I had done it right before with my other (3) children?  That was the bigger discussion I needed to have with myself.

I'll try to make this walk down memory lane as short as I can.  Taylor is my oldest child that I had at 19 years old.  Her father (my ex-husband), immediately joined the Navy and we both dropped out of college to raise her together.  Neither of us knew what we were doing + honestly we had no business getting married at 19 years old.  But that's what trying to "be grown" will get you, along with giving in to the pressures of your family.  Needless to say, it wasn’t the ideal situation to bring a child into the world but far from the worst tbh.  Then, shortly after my marriage began falling apart, I found out that I was expecting my 2nd child, Gregory.  Talk about pressure from your family!!  Now I had two children and no one thought it was a "good idea" to break the family apart.  Well, I tried and tried but what I eventually realized is that the family had already been broken apart and it wasn't by me.  Then years later, I met Steven, my current husband, and we had Kennedy (the youngest).  We both worked full time jobs, had our own place but still struggled financially with student loans and other bills.  Things weren't "horrible" as we were able to afford everything we needed but believe it or not, we qualified for Medicaid + other financial support offered by the state.  Yes, you read that right... (2) people working full-time still qualified for food stamps in Virginia Beach.  That's good ole low pay + cost of living in the Hampton Roads area for ya. Eventually we had Kennedy, got married and moved up to Northern VA where things quickly turned around for us... I’m talking a complete 180!!  We went from qualifying for food stamps to not even qualifying for reduced lunch.

Now that story time is over you might see why I thought that I had never done it right.  The biggest mistake was that I was only looking at the circumstances surrounding their births.  We've come a long way from all of those situations and things are a lot different now.  Here I was wanting a baby so that I could create the perfect outcome at it's birth but shit, this is a whole human we're talking about.  There's a whole lot of life to live after the birth!  And the life my children have lived and are living are loads better than my own childhood.  My own insecurities about my past were causing me to desire major changes for the wrong reasons.  I don't know if it was this or if my husband just thought (3) children were enough but he was DONE.  Also since he's a man in finance, I'm sure us having our shit together financially was also a big deal for him.  It mattered a lot to me as well but I was allowing my insecurities to overshadow that.

So what changed?  One day I just asked myself if I really wanted to have an infant AND a teenager at the same damn time.  The answer was a clear no.  Instead of continuing to focus on having a baby or baby fever, my focus shifted to being the best mom I could be for the (3) children I was currently raising.  To keep things on track, my husband and I agreed that he should get a vasectomy since having more children was no longer on the table.  An appointment was made that day + we really haven't looked back since.  Luckily, I have my sister + friends who are still having children so I can live vicariously through them if I ever want to smell a baby or something.  Other than that, I'm gucci.  I am so happy that I didn't give into my very temporary desires of having another child because I'm really happy with my crew as it is now.  My Fab 5 brings me so much happiness + I haven't felt 'baby fever' since changing my prospective!!  Now that we are 100% sure that our family is complete, time for a Family Picture already.  I will definitely be using Paperless Post to send our family picture out via Holiday Cards.  If you’re behind on taking your family photos, join me + do it for the holidays.  Use this link:  https://www.paperlesspost.com/ to create your own Holiday Card with me.  Don’t forget to share it with me on IG so I can repost it!!

Until next time.
XOXO
Candice