Journal: Our Road to Three Kids

the full story

I’ve decided to move my Journal posts over to Substack as I’m absolutely loving this platform. I’ve always toyed with the idea of creating a space for a smaller community that felt like my girlfriends and I think Substack is it. So, once a week (usually Mondays) I’m going to be publishing a Journal post on my Substack that will be a little more personal. To that end, these weekly journal posts will be for paid subscribers only. My weekly What I’m Loving Lately newsletter will continue to be open to all subscribers.

On that note…let’s get personal.

When I was younger (teens and twenties), I always thought that I wanted to have a large family. I really looked up to young moms and thought it seemed sooo fun to have a table full of kiddos (I was an only child). As most people do, I grew up and realized the reality of the world (things cost money - a lot of money! your career takes time to build - a lot of time! you want to have FUN before you had kids - a lot of it!) I got married at 26 and decided to wait a year before trying to have our first baby. My mom struggled to get pregnant and I figured I would have issues as well, so we decided that “if it took us two years to get pregnant, we would be glad we started.” We were very lucky to get pregnant with no issues the first time around.

After having Liam, we knew we would eventually want to have a second. I always knew that I wanted to give my kids a sibling if it was in my power to do so. When you get older, it’s really nice to have someone to talk to when you’re dealing with things, someone that understands where you’ve come from and where you’re at, on a deeper level. Luckily I have my cousin Adriana who is a sister to me, so I was able to fill that void.

It took me two years to feel ready to start trying again for a second. I believe there’s more information coming out about how it actually takes two years for women to feel back to themselves after having a baby. That’s certainly how it feels for me (both mentally and physically). You’re obviously changed forever but I really start to see glimpses of my old self at the 2 year mark. When we started trying for our second, we had one miscarriage and then went on to have Charlie. I won’t get into everything surrounding Charlie’s birth (you can read the full story here), but needless to say it was the most challenging year(s) of my life thus far. We found out at 20 weeks in utero that Charlie had a (fixable) congenital heart defect. We then found out that the heart defect was more complicated than expected and he would require a life saving procedure within the first fifteen minutes of his birth. He survived that procedure, and then open heart surgery at 4 days old, and then another heart procedure at 6 months. He is now a healthy beautiful boy with a ton of energy and we owe everything to BC Children’s and the amazing doctors at The Heart Centre.

After going through what we went through, I basically vowed to never have another baby.