Usha Vance gives birth to fourth child, U.S. vice-president announces

Vice President JD Vance, right, and second lady Usha Vance on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in Camp Pendleton, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, file)

Second lady Usha Vance has given birth to her fourth child, U.S. Vice-President JD Vance announced Sunday.

Alec Neel Vance joins siblings Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel.

“Usha and the baby are happy and healthy, and our kids are overjoyed to meet their little brother,” the vice-president said on social media, thanking the doctors and staff at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and the White House Medical Unit.

As they settle into life as a family of six, the Vances will be spending more time in rural northern Virginia, leasing part of a sprawling, multimillion-dollar property in the wealthy enclave of Middleburg.

The rental is an effort to provide the second lady and Vance children with a greater sense of normalcy away from the scrutiny of Washington, D.C., according to people familiar with the matter. The vice-president is expected to stay there on occasion, though he and his family are maintaining their official residence at the Naval Observatory.

In a recent interview with ABC News, Usha Vance reflected on that scrutiny and parenting as second lady.

“Everything that we do is in the public eye,” she said, adding that “people see it” if her children misbehave or get sick.

“We try not to put them in circumstances where they’ll be exposed and someday say, ‘Oh, you embarrassed me.’ So we try to keep most of what they do private, but when we are in public with them, we just let them be kids and let what happens happen,” Vance, 40, said.

The second lady left her job as a high-powered lawyer when her husband became U.S. President Donald Trump’s second in command. She’s appeared frequently by the vice-president’s side during his time in office and assembled her own small staff. Taking up childhood literacy as a platform, she launched a summer reading challenge last year and an accompanying podcast this year.

The arrival of the Vances’ fourth child marks the first time a second lady has had a baby while in office since 1870, when vice-president Schuyler Colfax and his wife, Ellen Maria Colfax, welcomed Schuyler Colfax III, who went on to become the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

By Betsy Klein, CNN