First photos of JD Vance and his new family of six released
In a social media post, Usha Vance jokes about the difficulty of taking 'a decent family photo with four children'
US Vice President JD Vance's wife, Usha Vance, has shared the first photos of the couple with their growing family, including their newborn son, Alec Neel Vance.
Listen to this article
It's the first time in 150 years that a child, the couple's fourth, has been born to a sitting vice-president.
Alec was born on July 19 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre in Maryland. The following day President Donald Trump shared a photo of the newborn on Truth Social.
"Congratulations! A perfect baby boy for the wonderful Vance family," he wrote.
Mrs Vance also posted a close-up of the baby and two pictures with her husband and their other three children, Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel, on social media.
“Thank you for all the good wishes as we settle into life as a family of six,” she wrote on X. “Meet Alec – and enjoy these attempts at taking a decent family photo with four kids!”
The photos were taken at the vice presidential residence at the Naval Observatory.
The Vance children are shown squirming on the couch as their parents try to make a proper pose.
The portrait shows Alec sleeping in his mother’s arms, wearing a blue onesie with animal and plant prints.
The US vice-president is also shown beaming as he holds the crying baby, as his older siblings smile at their new brother.
In an interview with 'Moms for America' published on June 30, Usha Vance opened up about her decision to have a fourth child.
"I had always wanted to have two kids, and then I thought when I had the second child, I just loved it so much that I wanted to have a third, and that just seemed so clear," Usha Vance said.
"But then we had our third child, and it was in the middle of JD's Senate campaign, and then of course our life has been just epic chaos since then."
She admitted that another baby was "really not on my bingo card at first," but her husband "always really wanted to have another child."
"We talked about it a lot," Mrs Vance said. "And I started to feel this sense of openness to it. And I thought, well, if I'm feeling openness, I should just see whether it happens or not. Give myself a window of possibility."
In his new memoir, "Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith," the vice president suggested that his wife changed her mind about having more children after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last September.
His widow had told them she wished she had had more than two children with her late husband.
"For years I had asked Usha to have another baby, and for years she had told me she was done – especially now that public service had elevated us into the national spotlight," he wrote.
"But something changed for Usha, and not long after we buried my friend, she became pregnant with our fourth child, a boy."
The last baby born to a second lady was in 1870, when Vice President Schuyler Colfax's wife, Ellen Maria Colfax, gave birth to Schuyler Colfax III. He went on to become the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.