Sumner Six: In Reply To... "7 Things You Should Never Say to a Mother in Her Twenties" on Babble

I absolutely HATE that everyone assumes 1) my kids are all by different men because I am young and 2) that they were “mistakes.”

We were serious right from the start and have only spent maybe a week apart from one another over the course of six years. (We are both 25.) We didn’t get married right away while we were attempting to conceive our first, which took well over a year, because we wanted to be married on a specific day in the future that we had both picked out.

Heaven forbid, that day was shortly after finding out that we’d finally gotten pregnant! No one believes us when we tell them that we didn’t just quickly get married because of the pregnancy either, especially since we didn’t tell our families we were trying to begin with. (They are exceptionally nosy and, honestly, it’s none of their business what we do in bed!)

Since we had trouble conceiving the first time, we started trying again shortly after our daughter was born. Surprise! She was born twelve days before her big sister’s first birthday.

The plan was then to wait a few years and try for a boy. That didn’t happen and he came sooner than we thought on the day before his youngest sister’s first birthday. We’re fine with that. We love them all! They are our children and they were planned enough, because we were afraid we would never have any.

Now we’re on number four, due in less than a month. We’ll both be turning 26 afterwards. The due date is our fourth anniversary.

My doctor doesn’t even like that we have so many children, and our families are not supportive either. It’s not nice to hear these horrible things from people that don’t know us. It’s harder to hear it from people who are supposed to support your decisions like your family members.

Just because everyone else is waiting until they’re 40 to have kids doesn’t mean everyone has to. Some people really do find love and happiness at a young age. I don’t think we should be criticized for that.

The only person in my “family” that understands is my childless aunt who knows my husband and I. She doesn’t see why people would ever ask us why we have children and the horrible, “So, are they all by the same guy?” questions. She doesn’t get it because she knows how we are together. It is a pity that no one else sees it that way.

7 Things You Should Never Say to a Mother in Her Twenties