Photo:Phant3m Productions
Phant3m Productions
Terrell and Jarius Josephare officially dads of three!
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Michelle Haley Photography
The couple says this pregnancy experience differed from those of Aria and Ashton, who were born 5 weeks apart in 2017 via two different surrogates, as they had a “very close relationship with the surrogate this time.”
“We were able to come together and really have a solid plan of attack for how we were going to approach it, what it was going to look like, instead of just meeting someone, getting to know them for a little while and then embarking on a journey,” Jarius explains. “I think this is years of relationship development. I think that was what made this process a lot easier.”
Aspen Noelle, whom Terrell says the couple named after their “first daughter who we lost to miscarriage, Aubrey Noelle,” was in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in Oregon for 44 days before the couple returned home to Atlanta with the newborn on May 11.
“We had to be away from our two kids for an extended amount of time,” says Terrell, who explains the couple was flying back and forth from Atlanta to Oregon during Aspen’s time in the NICU. “We felt guilty being away, which made it really hard to feel all the joys of being parents of three. We felt like our kids really missed out on a lot of things that we would have wanted them to be included in as well.”
Now that Aspen is home, Jarius says it “feels like a blessing.”
“She’s growing amazingly and it just warms my heart because I feel like what I keep saying is that she’s just such a fighter and she just did so well the entire journey and I’m just so proud of her,” he adds.
Aria and Ashton are also relishing their new roles as older siblings.
“They’re absolutely in love with her,” says Jarius. “Our son is definitely the big brother, super protective but nurturing at the same time.”
Courtesy Terrell and Jarius Joseph
“I think it just became real for them when they got to see her, feel her, touch her in person,” says Terrell. “But they were always on board with having another sibling.”
Now as a family of five, Terrell says he’s “super excited to be able to implement the knowledge that we’ve learned together, the bond and our parenting journey that Jarius and I have cultivated together onto our new child.”
“We’re just at a different place in our lives now, so it’s exciting to just think about what our future looks like,” adds Terrell.
Along with staying busy as dads of three, Terrell and Jarius also pour their love and energy into being full-time content creators, where they use their platform to share videos like styling their daughter’s natural hair or performing the latest dance trends as a family.
“Terrell and I, coming from a very small town in Louisiana, being a part of the Black community and then also being gay, we thought that this wasn’t really a possibility, based on just all the things that we have been taught, all the things that we have been exposed to,” Jarius begins. “So I think for us to be able to dream about having a family one day and just changing the narrative and saying we are deserving to have this no matter what anyone says, I feel like was really important to us.”
When the couple first began talking about starting a family, Jarius says they tried to seek out others with similar experiences but “there was no one really out there that looked like us.”
“So when we started embarking on those journeys and having those conversations, we wanted to make sure that we filled the void so that no one else behind us went out to seek that comfort and that representation and didn’t find it,” he adds. “That was really the main purpose in us starting sharing our lives online, was that we really knew that we could not be the only ones that looked like us.”
Adds Terrell, “One of the reasons that we do it also is just because now that we have kids, I think it’s all the more important that they see a positive representation of what families can look like. Maybe not even just our family, but families with two moms, families with one parent, or single-family homes.”
“We just want to make sure that we provide that representation,” Jarius concludes.
source: people.com
