Pregnant With Baby Number Two After Only Four Months Postpartum + Transitioning Out of the Military

While this pregnancy was very unexpected, we are so thrilled (now) to have our children so close in age. I'm not going to lie, I took it hard. I was overwhelmed at the thought of even being pregnant before I tested and in denial for the first couple of months after finding out. Some nights, I would wake up in the middle of the night to tend to Ella and feel like I just found out all over again. It wasn't until we told our family that it really sunk in and I started to get excited about it. We took the first couple of months to cope with it ourselves and to figure out our situation before we included anyone else because we didn't want anyone to sway our decision of staying in or getting out of the military - we wanted to make that decision ourselves. At this point, we had just given up buying our first home and to leave the military but we threw around the thought of staying in just for security. Ultimately, we felt lead by the Lord to continue our move back to North Carolina.

The first trimester of this pregnancy was COMPLETELY different than my pregnancy with Ella. With minimal morning sickness, actual cravings and a lot more motivation, I felt pretty dang good. However, when the exhaustion hit, it hit HARD and I would be going to bed as soon as I put Ella down at 8pm.

Moving back to NC was bittersweet. We loved the military lifestyle but we're so happy to be around family again, especially for our kids. It's stressful, the housing market. Being so close to buying the perfect home in Arkansas to not having any idea what we can afford yet caused some anxiety. Now that we have an idea since, thankfully, he found a job pretty quickly, it's the process of waiting out the market but dealing with inflation (which i'm still learning about myself) that's just icing on the cake. We are hoping and praying that God will lead us to the perfect home for our family soon.

I'm super thankful that we are able to stay with family and that the military will hold our household goods for a decent amount of time before we have to find storage for it ourselves.

In the meantime, we are enjoying this time we have with just Ella before our newest bundle gets here in December and soaking up all the family time we've missed over the last five years of us being halfway across the world and country!