We’ve all seen those families run by the smallest of the children, kids who haven’t yet heard the word no a sufficient number of times and who maintain a tyrannical rule of chaos over their frazzled parents. It’s tempting to shake our heads and the words spoiled rotten come to mind. However, rarely do we hear tales of it going the other way.
God in infinite kindness blessed us with a tremendously good and happy baby. Over the last few months she has certainly spoiled mommy and daddy rotten. We have been lulled into a simple routine of long walks and easy bedtimes so that even the slightest resistance seems nightmarish in comparison. The hubby and I have grown so accustomed to having a happy baby that it’s shamefully easy to snap into panic and stress at the first sign of displeasure from her. In the thick of a drawn out, traumatic bedtime, how easy it is to forget the far more frequent moments of pure sunshine when she smiles or giggles or simply dozes peacefully in our arms. Thank you God for this wondrous, sweet little girl!
One thing that has become abundantly clear to me during my short three years as a practicing Catholic is that God’s plan is infinitely better than ours. Every time something miraculous happens in my life which utterly upsets the status quo and shatters my expectations I am freshly reminded of God’s goodness. It happened when I moved to Indiana, it happened when I met my husband and it happened when we welcomed our daughter into the world. None of these events played out quite like I would have imagined. They were even better and I am forever changed because of them.
The most recent pivotal event, the birth of our baby girl, ushered in an entirely new way of life which called for no small amount of deliberation with my husband as well as a renewed trust in God. After months of consideration and a thorough look at our finances I became a stay at home mom. For the first time in my life, my daily routine is not centered around a career. The engineering job which I’ve spent the majority of my life pursuing is currently in the rearview mirror. Perhaps one day when our kids are grown I may return to it but for now I am simply a mother.
This decision was met with overwhelming congratulations and support from friends and family, though some of them naturally voiced a number of questions which had been on replay in my own mind for the past year. Are you ready to live on only one income? Won’t you miss your job? Will you get bored? What are you going to do with your time? These are all perfectly valid concerns and were taken into consideration as this was not a choice made lightly.
Given the high costs of daycare and other childcare arrangements, a second income would not have ultimately benefited our overall finances by a significant margin. My husband is picking up a few extra overtime jobs while I am our primary childcare but these are sacrifices we are both happy to make. Perhaps someday I may come to miss the comradery of the office and mill life. However, though I made many friends at work I haven’t yet had a chance to miss the work itself. I love being home with my daughter. How could I possibly pass up seeing her sweet little face, even on the bad days, to sit at a desk in front of a computer for 40 hours a week? Motherhood will undoubtedly have its dull seasons and sleepless nights but I can’t imagine doing anything else. I believe that the time and energy I spent earning my engineering degree and scoring a job in the steel industry was still pointing me to exactly where I am today. All that work was done in the name of setting myself up to one day be able to raise a family.
My husband and I are continuing our commitments to our various church ministries while baby girl and I are on a constant mission to get out of the house. She’s a nature girl, after my own heart, and loves making new friends. In those spare moments when we’re not walking the neighborhood, hiking the local trails, having a playdate or attending weekday mass she occasionally lets me set her down long enough to do a little cooking and home upkeep. So far there hasn’t been a day wasted and I’m always learning more efficient methods for getting things done around the house while juggling the little one. Of course, I am now more dependent on my husband than ever before and it’s always possible that tragedy may strike tomorrow. Our situation may change in the blink of an eye. I may be called to return to office life unexpectedly but I choose not to live in fear of what might happen tomorrow. We are simply called to bear the crosses of today. Relying on my husband while I watch our daughter learn and grow every day is a cross I am overjoyed to take up daily. God is so good.
Apologies to all for the lapse in post last week. Between being a first time mom and figuring out my employment situation the last few weeks have seemed to run together without time for much else. As such, today’s post is short and sweet.
These days there’s so much talk about main character energy. Given how few people seem to take a genuine interest in reading I find this a bit ironic but it does beg an interesting question. Should you be the main character of your own life? Before my conversion to the faith I would have answered of course. Who else could your life possibly be about? However, as with many things since I first entered the Catholic Church, my current response is entirely different.
I no longer strive to exude main character energy because my life became infinitely better when it stopped being about me. I found Christ, I got married and, most recently, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Certainly I still hold tremendous agency over my words and actions but my world no longer revolves around me and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I choose to place three other people at the center of it. In a hundred years if anyone is still telling my story I pray that through my efforts to be a good wife and a good mother, it’s a story which points others to the love and truth of Christ.
I’ve told my husband that before I met him I felt like I was just keeping myself busy and somewhat productive. I always felt called to be a wife and mother and though I worked toward those ends while still shaping myself into a productive member of society, I often struggled with a sense of aimlessness. I was entertaining myself until God brought love into my life. Now, I know beyond any doubt that the work that I do within my family is a fulfillment of God’s plan for me and there is no better feeling.
Although I officially entered the Catholic Church three years ago, my conversion did not end when I received the sacraments. Quite the opposite. I am still learning and growing in my faith as I suspect I will for the rest of my life. One blaring difference I’ve noticed since converting is my attitude toward children. I’ve known that I wanted to be a wife and mother from the time I was learning to walk. Despite our lack of faith in my upbringing, the importance of family was among the first lessons to be taught in ours. My childhood was truly blessed with an abundance of love from my mom, my dad and my big sister.
That kind of close-knit family unit seemed to me the ultimate recipe for perfect happiness, not too big and not too small. I grew up with so many reasons why four was the ideal number for a family. Although we bickered like siblings, I loved having a sister and I know she feels the same. We didn’t always get along but I wouldn’t have wanted to go through childhood with anyone else, especially in comparison to our classmates’ sibling relationships. When we were little we played together with the neighbors and when we got older we developed that strange unspoken communication that only two sisters who love each other can. This came in particularly handy during some sticky social situations or when we started being interested in boys. I was convinced that more siblings would have diminished our sisterly friendship and felt lucky to only have one amazing big sister. I figured that there was simply only so much love to go around in a household.
I could not have been more wrong. When my husband and I started Catholic marriage prep the priest asked us how many kids we’d like to have and for the first time I was completely happy to tell him we wanted two or three. After being married for two years and now with our first baby girl in the mix I’m singing a very different tune. “As many as God will give us” is my new answer. I can think of no greater joy than to nurture a large loving Catholic family. There may be a finite number of rooms in our house but the love I’m capable of feeling for my own children has shocked me over the last few months and I have yet to find its limit.
“Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” – Mathew 19:14
Recently my husband and I had the pleasure of being joined at our first Friday latin mass by my parents, my sister and her family and of course our own baby girl. My focus at this mass was admittedly at an all time low as our daughter was nursing for the first half and later required a diaper change and much soothing. My one year old niece was also a little fussy, climbing over her parents in the pews and being a bit chatty. My sister and I stood together at the back of the church bouncing our babies as the host was consecrated. By the time we rejoined our husbands in the communion line the little girls had settled. My daughter slept in my arms as I knelt at the communion rail and the priest blessed her with the sign of the cross.
As I rocked our sleeping baby in the communion line I was struck by the perfection of yet another answered prayer even if it wasn’t one that I myself had ever put into words. “We were that family,” my mom gleefully declared later that evening. We were that big, traditional, Catholic family all participating in their Sunday best. My mom, my sister and I veiled that evening as we do at every mass. Our husbands ushered us forward to receive communion first and our babies played and slept in our arms. Before there were any little ones to speak of, these were always the families I longed to emulate at mass. I believe life is about the people in it. God and family are the most important things. They say fairy tale endings only happen in the movies but loving and nurturing such a devout Catholic family is my ultimate dream come true and there’s still so much life left! As perfect as it is, I don’t doubt that the best is still to come.
These words are so often the most difficult to say, yet always the most necessary. When approaching any cataclysmic shift in life; the birth of a child, marriage to your dearly beloved, the start of a new job, a move across the country to a new city, we have a vision for how we want these things to go. Obviously, we pray that they will proceed without complication and will lead us to further fulfillment of God’s plan for our lives. However, in all the commotion, when faith and trust in God are most critical, we are prone to forget both altogether. We content ourselves to power through by our own grit and determination, throwing ourselves into any labor that might bring about that shining vision we had when we started. There’s always one more thing on the to do list to occupy our time which seems far more pressing than falling on our knees before the blessed Sacrament. Carving out time for this is never a mistake and I suspect there are few people who would regret it. I was personally reminded of this during the days leading up to my daughter’s birth.
“Lord, give me strength. I trust you. Let your will be done.” These were the words playing on repeat in my mind prior to and during childbirth. I’d spent the previous nine months agonizing over potential complications and interventions, praying everyday for a safe, smooth and natural labor and delivery. However, when the time came, all that worry fell away. My baby girl did what all girls do. She took her sweet time getting ready. She took so long in fact that my labor ultimately had to be medically induced due to concerns regarding a skinny, single artery umbilical cord. This was not the totally natural, intervention free experience I had prayed for but even in this, God was present.
I don’t believe my scheduled induction was the refusal of a prayer but rather an answer to one. It required me to relinquish that glimmering vision of mine and instead place myself completely in His hands. Had things gone precisely according to my plan, I would not have been able to do this. After the better part of a year of fretting, I was blessed with the chance to simply let go and lean into His will and mercy. Once it at last became clear that I would almost certainly be induced all my fears evaporated. I had done everything I could do. Our daughter’s birth was now entirely in His hands. On the eve of my scheduled induction I told my husband that I didn’t know how to be nervous as I had no concept of exactly what it would feel like. The next morning I still couldn’t dredge up enough fear to be nervous; not during the drive to the hospital, not as I changed into the hospital gown, not even that afternoon when the midwife came in to break my water.
In that room as contractions mounted I could muster only one prayer for strength and that His will be done. I’m thrilled to say that He did indeed answer this prayer 100 times over. Although I was medically induced I was able to successfully deliver our baby girl without an epidural after a relatively brief labor, roughly nine hours in total. We’ve all heard stories of childbirth, the excruciating pain and gore of bringing a new life into the world. In many ways it was the most difficult thing I have ever done. However, at no point did it seem to me an impossible undertaking. I credit this entirely to His grace. Though it was a task that I alone could perform, I was never alone in the pain. God blessed me with a husband who was at my elbow the entire time ready to help in any way, even if it meant enduring a headlock from his laboring wife for three hours. God also blessed me with full confidence in the knowledge that He made me for just this purpose, to birth this beautiful little girl and raise her to know Him. He was there with me, assuring me all the while that this was exactly what I was meant to do.
This is not a parenting blog but in light of recent events I’m struggling to think of anything else. Of the many lessons I’ve learned over the last weeks as a first time parent chief among them is how to operate one handed. To many this may seem like a tremendous handicap, always having one hand occupied with the rocking and soothing of a delightful though frequently fussy newborn. However, I see it as a superpower.
It’s true that many things have temporarily gone by the wayside; things like cooking, cleaning and even blogging on the regular. My new superpower has granted me a hyper focus on my current number one job, caring for my baby. All else is a trivial second. Thankfully this single mindedness is made possible by a rockstar husband who has made it his mission to take care of everything else. All the while I have the supreme joy of staring into my daughter’s sweet little face at all hours of the day, no matter what that face is doing. Even when she cries I can’t help being overwhelmed with love for this little girl every time I look at her. I’ve also discovered just how much one can accomplish with one hand. Full disclosure, it’s not much but a little task here and there like emptying the dishwasher or flipping the laundry feels like a huge win. At the very least, it’s one less thing on the hubby’s docket.
I’m praying for the day when our daughter is big enough for her baby carrier, thus restoring mommy to two handed status. For now though, I’m savoring the blessings of only having one.
For many women, especially those approaching childbirth for the first time, any abnormality in you or your unborn child can feel like cause for alarm. Happily, not every finding in ultrasounds and prenatal visits poses significant risk to baby and such was the case for me. The only possibly alarming aspect of my pregnancy anomaly was how little research is available on the subject. I had an isolated single umbilical artery (ISUA). In simple terms, this means that my baby’s umbilical cord formed with one artery instead of the typical two and it was “isolated” because neither baby nor myself showed any indications of congenital conditions which are sometimes associated with SUA. I am not a doctor, midwife, nurse, doula or even an aspiring medical student. I do not seek to provide medical advice in the area of anomalous childbirth as I am certainly no expert but perhaps my experience can help to ease some mental tension for expectant mothers who happen to stumble upon this post
As previously mentioned, ISUA is not cause for worry. On its own it’s not even medically deemed a high risk pregnancy although a few studies indicate it may occur slightly more frequently in cases of twins. From what little information I could gather, ISUA occurs in about 1% of women and almost always results in a perfectly healthy baby. One small risk of ISUA is more rapid deterioration of the placenta, therefore depriving baby of essential nutrients toward the end of the third trimester. To monitor for this many providers will closely watch development and growth via extra ultrasounds and heartbeat monitoring. They will be very interested in information regarding baby’s movement and some providers may also recommend early induction. Some studies suggest ISUA might slightly increase the chance of c-section but there’s no clear consensus on whether this is actually linked to the abnormal umbilical cord or fetal distress brought on by early induction. In short, there is very little known information on ISUA but all sources agree that, excluding any additional risk factors, pregnancy, labor and birth are typically unaffected by this anomaly.
In light of all this as well as many conversations with my provider I approached childbirth feeling quite content about the anticipated safety of our baby girl and myself throughout the process. However, I was faced with a question which became a source of much deliberation during my third trimester. To induce or not to induce? The women in my immediate family have thus far been blessed with smooth, safe and even relatively brief natural labors for all of their births. I am of the opinion that the human female body is quite literally made to bear children and will generally do so just fine without intervention. Obviously complications can present themselves at any time for anyone which is also why I chose to birth in a hospital where extra care was readily available should it prove necessary.
Over the course of this pregnancy I also educated myself on the different methods of intervention as well as the risks associated with each. Among the women on my husband’s side, labor and delivery without an epidural are practically unthinkable. Modern technology has made leaps and bounds in ensuring the safety and even the relative comfort of mothers and babies during childbirth, an incredible feat for women everywhere. Nevertheless, I personally tend toward the natural approach. Each additional intervention comes with additional risks and side effects, rare and minor though they may be. Perhaps I’m a bit naive, never having given birth before, but from what information I’ve found, unmedicated births are often uncomplicated ones and this is the goal I’m striving for as the due date nears. However, there is no correct answer to childbirth, even one involving an anomaly like ISUA.
Throughout this pregnancy I’ve taken birth classes, read books, researched interventions and spoken with many mommas from all walks of life. All their stories are different and their advice similarly varying. There is no correct way to birth a child and I don’t think it’s for me or anyone else to pressure expectant mothers into decisions they aren’t comfortable with. This post is not a rule book or a blueprint for the perfect childbirth. If such a thing exists I haven’t found it. However, I do hope this post can impart a little peace of mind and a degree of confidence to the mommy readers. Regardless of what you hear or how many horror stories you find online, you were made for this. God shaped this beautiful miracle in your womb for a purpose and you absolutely do have what it takes to bring that baby into the world.
They say you should stay busy in your third trimester of pregnancy. Make plans, go out, take walks, tackle some gentle home improvement projects, anything to distract you from glancing at the calendar every five minutes in anticipation of your imminent labor and the birth of your baby. While this is all perfectly sound advice which I’ve worked to take to heart I can also attest to the fact that none of it actually works. Certainly a little continued hustle and bustle is the perfect way to keep you energized and your spirits up as you approach childbirth. However, if you’re anything like me, nothing on the planet will possibly be able to distract you from the tiny life beginning in your womb.
Due to a blessedly uncomplicated pregnancy and an engineering job I’ve maintained a full time, in person work schedule with occasional days worked from home to accommodate prenatal appointments. I’ve also continued to run a couple of church ministries at our local parish for the duration of this pregnancy. Our schedule has been every bit as crammed with activity as we could manage. At no point have I considered myself sufficiently distracted from daydreams of maternity leave when I will simply be home with our brand new baby girl.
I’ve been blessed with a happy, healthy and generally easy pregnancy but no amount of activity can take my mind off of everything that comes next. I’m overflowing with excitement for all the joys and woes that parenthood brings. I’ve even been known to partake in the occasional spontaneous happy dance while at work alone in my office with the door closed. Thankfully I believe these have largely gone unnoticed by my coworkers. There simply is no preoccupying the mommy brain during the third trimester.
With the due date for our baby girl fast approaching everyone wants to know how I’m feeling. All the mommies in my life are excited to commiserate on all the aches and pains of third trimester pregnancy, the itchy stretch marks, the ill fitting clothes, the inability to sleep comfortably and of course the sad realization of one’s newly increased girth. I know countless women have faced these and many more discomforts during pregnancy and I don’t diminish them in the slightest. However, on the whole, I’ve been blessed with a very easy pregnancy. There were a couple of sleepless nights and I certainly haven’t been immune to feeling a bit bloated on occasion but in general I’ve felt remarkably well throughout this experience.
After a necessary closet reset I’ve found that I’m still perfectly able to move, get outdoors and do most of the things I enjoy. Evening strolls around the neighborhood are a welcome means of clearing my head, breathing in some fresh air and getting the blood flowing. I’ve also been able to savor all of my favorite foods, maintaining healthy eating habits, with only slight adjustments to frequency and portion sizes. I have thankfully not been afflicted with unexpected and nauseating aversions to anything in particular. When people ask me how I’m feeling I can honestly say that I feel great!
I am totally overjoyed to be pregnant. Even the occasional jolt from a baby kick to the bladder makes me smile. She is constantly on the move, wiggling into more comfortable positions in my belly. She’s especially active when we go to mass or whenever we pray our daily rosary, as if she already knows that those prayers are for her. Those tiny kicks and flutters are welcome reminders of the beautiful life beginning inside me. We’ve also found that she responds to the sound of daddy’s voice and my husband has already begun the practice of bedtime stories for the little one.
We are both over the moon to soon be able to meet this baby girl. I can’t wait to hold my daughter, to soothe her with lullabies and cowboy songs as my parents did for me, to rock her to sleep at night and love her in every way a mother possibly can. Even the dirty diapers and traumatic bath times seem a welcome gift as I think about what the next years of our lives will bring. I truly can’t wait for every messy and exhausting detail of motherhood. It certainly will not always be easy or pleasant but there isn’t the faintest doubt in my mind that this is the very best thing I will ever do.
Blessed in the Midwest 