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About Me, budgeting, Family Life, large family

The cost of having kids

October 27, 2018

Let’s start by stating the obvious: finances are pretty personal, and as such, everybody’s circumstances are going to look a little different. What seems like an insane amount of risk/exposure looks like daily life for another family. What seems like a nice, healthy income starts to seem a little anemic once you figure in the cost of living and housing in a hot market.

We started riding the Dave Ramsey train before we got married. We read through Total Money Makeover as an engaged couple, knocking out tens of thousands of dollars of debt (almost all of it student loans) in our first 5 years of marriage. We cash flowed our first two babies, lived in sketchy rentals, drove a single car, side hustled, etc, etc. We were ALL IN. And it worked really, really well until we pulled up our roots, sold all our worldly possessions, and moved half a world away to Rome.

After we returned to the US the following year and added baby number three to the mix, we started to see our debt snowball lose momentum. We had sold our (paid off) sensible sedan before our big move, and we found ourselves needing a car to live in the suburbs with 3 kids. We bought a well-used minivan and just like that we had a car payment again for the first time in years.

Time and babies have continued to pile up, and now we’re five kids deep and living in a wonderful home of our own that we hope to be buried in, because that’s about how long it will take us to pay off the mortgage.

We’re mostly happy we bought, except on the day that the mortgage payment is due.

I get a lot of questions about how we “afford” so many kids, and the short answer is: we don’t.

We’re probably overextended from a financial perspective. And yet, we have never gone without.

Working for the Church isn’t exactly lucrative, but it sure is nice getting sent to Rome every year or two for one reason or another.

Having kids is a pretty tremendous upfront cost, but hand-me-down baby stuff comes in handy for subsequent arrivals.

Daycare is exorbitant, but working from home during early mornings and late nights makes it possible to live on one-and-a-half incomes and avoid it.

A good Catholic school is expensive, but having a larger family enables us to apply for – and receive – generous financial aid.

All that to say, things seem to have had a way of working out. As I creep more solidly into my mid-30s, I’m happy we didn’t wait to have kids, or space them further apart.

I’m grateful we weren’t in a position where we felt like we had too.

I think being from large families ourselves, we both accepted early on that having kids meant going without certain things, and saying yes to being uncomfortable. I don’t mean like settling for mediocrity or being reckless, but just having a baseline level of familiarity with the unknown and a little bit of risk.

We’re both working like crazy to get our income up and to pay our debt down, but in the meantime, we’re still having babies, making memories, and learning how to perform a bunch of basic home repairs courtesy of Youtube.

What we don’t spend on lessons, activities, sports, and toys we definitely do spend at the grocery store and in doctor’s copays. We aren’t really saving for retirement or college, but I imagine we’ll get around to it once we’ve finally paid off my degree.

This has ended up forcing us to depend on God in a tangible way, and we’ve seen Him do some pretty remarkable things for us financially over the years.

I feel like it’s worth mentioning that we’ve been committed to tithing ten percent of our income for most of our marriage; it really does seem to open up space for God to work. I don’t mean like He’s magically multiplying our dollar signs (but come Lord Jesus, have your way with those), rather that there is room for Him to work because we need Him to work. We feel a little crazy making that first line item in our budget His, but we’ve never regretted spending “too much” on God.

(Some great causes to give to: FOCUS, the International Missionary Foundation, China Little Flower, Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Classical, and CNEWA.)

Do I worry about how we’ll be able to continue to afford Catholic school? Yep. But I volunteer as much as I’m able, support our school financially as best as we can, and gratefully accept the financial aid they offer us, one school year at a time.

Am I worried about what would happen if one of us were to die young? Definitely. Our life insurance premiums are a priority in our budget, even while we’re still paying off those student loans.

I try not to get too far ahead of the present when I think about our family, the future, and what we’ll need when we get there.

We’re trying to strike a balance between prudence and generosity, and to work as if everything depends on us but, you know, trust like everything depends on God.

I will say my stress over finances has decreased as our family size has increased, and I have no earthly reason for that. I guess I’ve mellowed with age? Or perhaps it is the repeated exposure to divine providence; presenting the Lord with one need after another and watching Him come through, time and time again, in a spectacular variety of ways.

If you have any specific questions feel free to ask them, and I’ll try my best to answer in a way that’s helpful. Obviously this isn’t an exhaustive list of all the expenses of having kids, and people have different priorities and consider different areas of the budget to be less negotiable than others. Eager to hear what other big or bigger than average families experience in the realm of personal finance!

About Me

What it’s like to have a 5th baby

October 23, 2018

I was reflecting on how life has sort of finally settled out for us as I exited the gym in the still dark morning, chatting with my neighbor who’d convinced me after months of suggesting to try a sprint spin class. Status: tried. Never again.

The main reason I was able to partake in such abuse? All 5 kids slept through the night last night. Maybe for the first time since Zelie was born? I can’t remember. All I know is I dropped into bed, exhausted, before 10 pm and so I was naturally(!!) awake by 5 this morning. Why not, what harm could it do?  I mumbled to myself sleepily, peeling back the covers and staggering downstairs to find my keys. (Discovery: my thighs. My thighs are what were harmed).

My friendly neighbors perched a few bikes down seemed happy and a little shocked to see me there, squinting and huffing like an out of shape old gal who hasn’t mounted a stationary bike since college. Because, well, I haven’t. But I did the class and it was fine and I’ll be able to say now, before I die, that once I rose before dawn and did a spin class while a stranger yelled at me to pull my shoulders back and dig deep.

When I got home, Zelie was riding happily in Dave’s arms while he flipped eggs onto a plate and brewed his coffee. I took the baby and cuddled her, setting her in her high chair for some breakfast to fling on the floor. I started rounding up big kids to get them suited up for school, remembering that kid number two, our grumpy old man, prefers to be woken up by a friendly baby. I doubled back and scooped her into my arms to go in search of the late sleepers.

As I watched my otherwise extremely morning-averse 6-year-old laugh and tickle the intruding baby sister I’d plopped on his bed, I gave thanks silently for the one millionth time since Zelie was born. She has brought so much grace, light, and joy into our family.

Things were great before. They’re better now.

She doesn’t have great clothes, I’ll just lead with that. She usually has a darling headband on, but from the neck down it’s a grab bag jumbled together with our hand me downs, (ahem, some of Luke’s, to be totally transparent) stuff from her aunties, random articles I’ve picked up at the thrift store, and sometimes just a plain old diaper.

I think I’ve bought her maybe 2 new outfits (onesie is outfit, yes?) in her 9.5 months of life. She is often sticky, receiving perhaps fewer baths than previous years’ models have. Our pediatrician had to remind me to feed her actual solid food at her 9 month visit because, ah, I kind of forgot that was a thing (She’s fiiiiine, by the way. She is easily drinking 40 ounces of the white stuff a day). She is often found napping in a car seat. Or screaming in a car seat. My mom says that babies 5 and onward “grow up in the car,” and, well, she’s not wrong.

But the good stuff? Oh, is she loved. By her parents, of course, but also by her 4 adoring to the point of smothering siblings. And her coterie of cousins. And even the 2 sweet neighbor kids across the street who drop their backpacks in my yard after school and vye for a chance to hold her. She has her every waking need anticipated and usually met, however sloppily, by a besotted 3 year old minder. She is greeted with the enthusiasm afforded to a beloved head of state upon our return home if ever I take her anywhere with me. She might not be getting three intentional squares a day, but she more than makes up for it with the scraps of Pirate’s Booty and shredded cheese she forages from the dining room floor.

She sleeps through the night because she is amazing, and also because her parents are older, wiser, and tireder. She takes bottles and eats non-organic bananas and is basically living the life that first time baby o’ mine couldn’t have fathomed, and she is very, very happy. First taste of sugar on her first birthday? Nah. We gave her gelato at 8 months old. Fancy high tech stroller? Please. She perches like a queen in a dirty 2012 model. That is, she does when I remember to bring a stroller somewhere. Mostly she rides on my hip or in a tattered old Ergo carrier that lives under the back seat of the car, or in a very sanitary shopping cart that confers upon its occupants the added bonus of non injected immunity from several common communicable diseases.

Other baby items that didn’t survive to round five: bibs, diaper bag, baby shoes, appropriate themed outfits/costumes for holidays, portable changing pad, and a million other things I’m sure I once considered essentials but now do not.

What she lacks in tot couture she gets back in sloppy older sibling kisses. An inappropriately late bedtime when she pops up at 10 pm for some quality time with mom and dad. An older, mellower mom who remembers specific moments of her babyhood: the first time she stood on her own, sat up, laughed… and knows well enough now to stop and take those moments in. A mom who doesn’t call the doctor for every fever, but knows to take a croupy cough straight in for steroids.

I was telling a friend recently that nobody ever comments on the size of our family in public anymore; maybe it’s because I’m too preoccupied with keeping everyone in line to notice gawking bystanders? I used to get at least two or three “you’ve got your hands fulls!” a week. Now? Nada. I’m not sure if we’re now just a single, solid mass of humanity to the naked eye or what, but at any rate, I don’t sweat taking all the kids somewhere by myself. Sunday Mass, maybe. I’ll have to give that one a whirl before the year’s out.

It has taken longer than usual to physically bounce back, especially to drop the baby weight. But I’ve also been much, much happier than I can ever remember being. For me, not breastfeeding has contributed significantly to better postpartum mental health and easier postpartum NFP. Breastfeeding is great! It’s also not everything. And it doesn’t work out for everyone. I’ve let go of the guilt that initially lingered when I wasn’t making enough milk for Zelie to thrive, and I’ve embraced the freedom that bottle feeding allows. There are blessings hidden behind hard things sometimes, you know? Like sleeping through the night and going away for a weekend. And having the emotional reserves to give yourself to your other kids, because you haven’t already given everything away to the baby.

(Super pro nursing, by the way. Did it for 40+ months. And I’m so, so grateful to my generous friends who make tons of milk and are happy to share. If nursing works for your family, that’s fantastic. If you use formula, also great. Let me know if you want the inside scoop on the best price for Baby’s Only.)

In sum, having another little person show up and make us an officially hard-to-seat party of 7 has been awesome. I’d probably do it again, truth be told. And very likely we will have more. People’s eyes usually bulge ever so slightly when I reply with “we don’t know” when asked “are you done?”

Because honestly, we don’t know. We’re tired, we’re financially stretched to the point of discomfort, and we sometimes lie awake worrying about the future and what it will look like for our kids when they inherit this mess of a world.

But we’re also deeply, deeply happy. Provided for in ways that are unexpected and impossible to predict. Busy? Absolutely. But the hardest days (at least the ones that don’t involve me losing my substantial temper) I usually fall into bed exhausted and really satisfied that I’m spending my life for something beautiful. And there is real happiness in that, and a peace that surpasses all understanding.

About Me, Catholic Spirituality, Contraception, current events, Evangelization, feast days, JPII, Living Humanae Vitae, NFP

Coffee clicks: Nashville, Instagram bullying, and Communism

October 19, 2018

Heading into a kind of weird weekend for our crew: 2 days off followed by a day and a half of school and then fall break. I don’t remember having fall break as a kid, so I sure hope mine appreciate it.

Dave will be doing the lion’s share of parenting – I’m heading to Nashville on Sunday for a series of talks I’m giving on Humanae Vitae, and I’m thrilled that the first two fall on Monday, October 22nd which is the feast of St. John Paul II. I’m really leaning on his intercession as I prep for my first big speaking events since having babies number 4 and 5, both of whom have been less than cooperative with my prep.

I’ll be at the pastoral outreach center for the diocese of Nashville at 10 am and 7 pm on Monday, and at Belmont University on Tuesday, location and time TBA. Love to see anyone who’s local!

This week was the advent of my favorite hashtag in a long time: #postcardsforMacron highlighted a whole internet full of smart, accomplished women with families of all sizes, many on the largish side, and oh yeah, they happened to have an impressive collection of degrees and academic honors to their names, too.

I had a gross experience on Instagram after commenting on an incredibly inspiring Humans of New York post about the Rwandan genocide. A must read if you haven’t been following. I was praising the pastor who’d smuggled 300 souls to safety by refusing to back down to the roving bands of murderers who kept coming to his door threatening him with a gruesome death. I said I hoped his courage and goodness in the face of complicity and evil could inspire us in our own country to work for a future free from abortion. I got a few death threats and curses for my trouble, and a hundred or so ad hominems last I heard. I’m not stupid enough to keep tabs on comment sections, so I’ll have to trust my IG friends on that one. This piece really resonated with me after this week – I’m not sure I would have agreed otherwise, having largely found Instagram to be the “friendly” social media platform.

I think most Millenials – myself included – would do well to remind ourselves about what Communism really looks like. This story of a Polish hero’s life and death is a good place to start.

Archbishop Chaput has such a gift for communication that is both concise and profound. This is a must read and a great take on the Synod currently underway in Rome.

A third missive from Archbishop Vigano was released this morning.

Have a wonderful weekend, and please say a quick prayer for me on Monday and Tuesday if you think of it!

About Me, keto, large family, Living Humanae Vitae, motherhood, pregnancy, self care

Postpartum recovery: PT, hormones and keto

October 8, 2018

“9 months on, 9 months off” they say. Well, some of them say, anyway. I’ve found with each subsequent bebe those goalposts creep back a month or two, so let’s just say as Zelie rounds the bases to month 9 ex utero, I’m still looking and feeling much of the effort it took to bring Zelie earthside.

However, some vast improvements have been made. I want to record them here for posterity’s sake, and because in many ways I felt like I was charting my own course for recovery and healing, belonging as I do now to a rather exclusive club of moms of many.

Even my doctor, a nice pro-life guy who delivers plenty of babies a year and is comfortable around an NFP chart, was relatively clueless about what I could do to speed the healing process, to correct hormone imbalances, and to restore my body to a state of reasonable functionality.

What I’m about to share with you is my experience alone, and I’m not a doctor or any kind of medical professional, so grain of pink himalayan salt and all, okay?

First things first. I’ve had a contentious relationship with food since forever. If I could turn back the clock, I would have sworn off the Chic-fil-a milkshakes and the bags and bags of white cheddar popcorn I consumed this time around. I think Zelie is at least 30% popcorn cheese on a cellular level. Her pregnancy was a rough ride emotionally. We were living in a friend’s house for the first 6 months of it and commuting an hour each way to school. In my spare time I enjoyed meeting up with our realtor after a 55 mile drive with a carful of kids and looking at dozens and dozens of houses which for various reasons did not work out. 70, to be precise. So yes, I did a bit – a lot – of stress eating.

Having always gained massively with each baby, I figured weight was weight, whether or not I was working out and eating well. This premise proved faulty, as I would discover in the harsh hospital lighting on day one post delivery. I was at my all time highest weight, and had delivered a modest 7 pound peanut to show for it.

I waited the requisite 6 weeks postpartum and then started watching my calories, cutting back on sugar (more on this later), and began a swimming regimen that had me accumulating 400-500 laps a week. I kept this up until about 5 months postpartum at which point I had lost an additional (wait for it) … 3 pounds.

If you do the math you’ll realize that 7 pounds plus 3 pounds is 10, and having racked up something north of 60, I was…not doing great. I brought my concerns to one doctor who suggested that perhaps I was eating more than 1200 calories and just didn’t realize it, because “apps aren’t all that accurate”  and suggested I could up my gym regimen to 7 days a week instead of 5.

Long story short, but I eventually ended up at a women’s health care clinic that specializes in whole woman care. They did some targeted hormone testing and identified a deficiency that was making it almost impossible to lose weight, and which also contributed to anxiety and depression.

I also found an incredible physical therapist who specializes in postpartum recovery and pelvic floor injuries, just from reaching out to my circle of local friends. As frustrating as it was to have to hunt and peck for the right doctors and the right diagnoses, I feel exceptionally blessed to live in a big city with a wide array of healthcare options, and to have good health insurance to be able to defray some of the cost. I do wish some of the less “mainstream” therapies were covered, but I’d be remiss to not acknowledge my privilege. Do I wish postpartum PT and hormone assessments were standard of care for new moms? You betcha. But for now I’m just glad to have found some good help!

The last piece of the puzzle for me has been diet. A lifelong yo-yo dieter, I’ve tried all the things. Atkins. South Beach. Weight Watchers. Whole 30. LightWeigh. Plant based. Low fat. You name it, I’ve done it. I had a pretty good handle on things by my mid 20s. I was exercising regularly, eating moderately, and had, well, the metabolism of a twentysomething who’d never been pregnant. I could kinda eat whatever I wanted, and I did. After spending ages 15-23 deep in the throes of an eating disorder, it was a relief to have a less fractious relationship with food. 

Once we got married and the babies started coming fast and furious, I remember being shocked by how swiftly and with what vengence the eating-disordered thinking returned once the scale started moving north as I grew our babies.

Nobody had warned me how triggering it would be to see my weight skyrocket over those 9 months of pregnancy, and my provider at the time kind of waved my fears aside and encouraged me that eating intuitively and moderately was good for me and good for baby. If I could do things over again, I’d escort my 27 year-old-self straight to therapy as soon as that second pink line appeared, but hindsight is 20/20, and as it turns out, I’ve learned and grown tremendously not in spite of motherhood, but through it.

I can honestly say that today, at age 35, and still significantly heavier than I’d like to be, I am more at peace with my body than I have been since childhood.

I can see the goodness of my childrens’ existence, acknowledging the sacrificial love that motherhood requires (in whatever form it may take for each particular woman), and the devastating unhappiness so many women feel when confronted with the disparity between their actual bodies and the idealized image the culture projects on us.

For some of us, the sacrifice is excess weight we never wanted to gain and struggle mightily to lose. For others it might be a flaring autoimmune disease, an injury, a tragic loss, the burden of infertility. Motherhood is costly, at any rate, and none of us can predict the cost ahead of time.

But it’s so worth it. And as I’m discovering after this magical fifth baby, God heals on His timeline, not ours. As I find myself making peace with my body at long last and in spite of its many imperfections, I marvel at the worldly illogic of it, that having a larger than usual family would result in better body image and deep healing. In God’s economy, the numbers work differently.

But back to the recovery process. If you follow me on Instagram you know that the biggest win for me the past few months has been discovering and implementing the Keto diet. Again with the disclaimers, but I’m not a healthcare professional, so do your own research, etc.

In a nutshell, Keto is almost an inversion of the FDA food pyramid. It’s fat focused with moderate protein and low carbs. Under 20 grams per day is my goal, and most days I end up around there. It’s no grains, no sugar, and no starchy veggies or sugary fruits. It is lots of eggs, spinach, broccoli, asparagus, lettuce, avocados, bacon, sausage, steak, chicken, fish, shrimp, full fat dairy, and a little bit of nuts. If that sounds restrictive, I suppose it was for the first week, but when I looked at the scale and found 4 pounds missing after months of stubborn inactivity, I was hooked.

The best part for me has been the weight loss (22 pounds in 9 weeks so far) but the surprisingly close second has been a radical reorientation of my relationship with food. I no longer crave specific foods, nor do I struggle much resisting “off limits” foods. For a girl who loves to eat, this feels like a miracle.

And I do still enjoy food! But now I enjoy food that makes me feel good before, during, and after eating it. I have seen a 180 degree turnaround in my energy levels between meals. Hanger is gone. I feel satiated and content for long stretches between eating, and have even been able to incorporate a little bit of intermittent fasting for the last month. For someone who used to be faint and weak from hunger on Ash Wednesdays and Good Fridays, this feels huge.

Do I think everyone should eat this way? I really don’t know. I think it is a healthy and helpful way to eat for people who struggle with hormone issues and blood sugar and certain mental health conditions, but I also know people who feel great on the Whole 30, which is decidedly higher carb.

I have a working theory that perhaps there is no one “right” way to eat, and that there are all kinds of makes and models of human beings out there. Some run on gas and others on diesel. I feel like I’ve found my perfect fuel, and that makes me feel great. I don’t force my kids to eat this way – I’ll often make rice or beans or gf pasta to serve alongside whatever fat + protein + veggie we’re having for dinner, but overall it has tremendously cut sugar from our diets. And we’re seeing some great immune system benefits to that.

If you are interested in anything I’ve shared here today, feel free to message me privately over at IG or drop a comment or an email. I’m an open e-book, as always. And if you’re a mama trying to get your groove back after baby, give yourself plenty of time and grace. You’re doing God’s work, and He will not abandon you in it.

About Me, budgeting, Family Life, large family

That budget life

August 8, 2018

I’ve talked about finances here on the blog a time or two, but I’m ready to talk a bit more frankly. After the financial fiasco that hit our sewer line last week drained our itty bitty emergency fund (but could have been much, much worse, as you know if you follow me on Insta), I decided the time had come to officially call the postpartum period closed for business.

(And by that I mean the period of making declarations along the lines of “I just had a baby, so I deserve this carry-out iced coffee.”)

I possibly do deserve that coffee, but I can throw a handful of ice cubes into the conveniently-cooled mug that has been sitting on the kitchen table since breakfast and call it good.

In the name of transparency let’s address the reality that yes, we are solidly middle class. We have health insurance and wifi and my husband has a job that compensates him fairly for his work, and yet, we are still basically paycheck to paycheck. We do live in an expensive housing market, and we do have a large family, so that tightens the belt a bit right off the bat.

Could we cut back and be a bit more financially sure-footed? I think so. Which is what I’m aiming to do for the next four months, between now and Christmas.

We are not likely going to be getting massive pay raises any time soon, so I have to take a clear eyed look at the budget and admit why it isn’t working better. One word: convenience.

It’s convenient to buy already-shredded cheese. It’s convenient to buy disposable diapers, and baby food in pouches, and sparkling water in cans that could possibly have paid off one of my student loans by now if I had a dollar for every can of LaCroix I’ve ever guzzled. But looking backwards in carbonated regret is no way to live one’s life.

But, I mean, it’s embarrassing. I live a life of relative ease – luxury, even, by much of the world’s standards – and yet when faced with a potential home repair quoted (thankfully, erroneously) into the thousands, my life as I knew it flashed before my eyes. Would we pull the kids out of school to pay for it? Sell one of our cars? Get a second job at night for a couple months? Take out (yet another) credit card?

Thanks be to God, the company who quoted us the repair ended up being shady. So what could have cost us $7,000 ended up costing about a tenth of that.

Still, it was a wake up call. I want to be a better steward of our resources, and to help alleviate some of the pressure of being the primary provider from Dave’s shoulders.

I also just don’t want to worry about money any more. It’s fun to eat out and carry around a paper cup of steaming, liquid alertness. But I imagine it’s more fun to be able to go grocery shopping any day of the month, and to have a failed transmission be an annoyance rather than a tragedy.

Want a peek at where we’ll be cutting back? Here are the things on the chopping block:

My gym membership. OUCH. But not really. I prefer walking to swimming, it turns out, and if my body ever feels sufficiently recovered from birth, I think I’d prefer running even more. Swimming is great, but it wasn’t getting the weight off, and it’s a huge time suck to get a workout in. Minimum 75 minutes to get there/get in and out/swim a mile. Plus, we can’t afford the kids club for 5 kids, so I can only go at 5 am or 9 pm.

Takeout coffee. I love Starbucks. I know better and I have tasted better, but what can I say? As a dog returns to its vomit…

Eating out, period. We go on 2 dates a month because we swap childcare with one of my sisters. It’s awesome, but I think we’re going to pull back to eating at home first and then springing for “coffee or cocktails” for the scope of this project. (Date night funds come from a separate cash category than eating out. I’m aiming for $50/month or less for date nights).

Buying crap at Arc/Goodwill/Craigslist. I am an amazing thrifter. My kids have great shoes, I’ve scored some killer furniture deals, and we have a great and growing classic chapter books library. But I can get dangerously loose at the Arc. One thing leads to another and before I know it I’ve got awesome Nike soccer cleats for the next 2 seasons and another adorable Aden and Anais swaddle in organic muslin and 3 cute tops for Evie in my cart and…you see where I’m going with this. I might have to swear off the thrift stores entirely while we’re in belt tightening mode, so alluring is their siren call to me. I think thrift stores are for me what Target is to most moms.

Speaking of Target...well, not Target specifically, but brick n mortar stores, period. I’m going to take our local grocery store, King Soopers, up on their offer of 4 free uses of their curbside delivery program.

When I’m walking through a store, I tend to toss in unplanned items that I forgot to add to the list, plus the occasional box of diaper wipes just because can you ever have too many diaper wipes on hand? No, no you can not. But maybe I can slum it with a different and cheaper brand than the Huggies Naturals I’ve been faithful to since we brought home baby number one. Not gonna do the math on that one, because hindsight! It’s blinding! I am also hoping shopping only one time per week at a single store will help trim costs.

Starting/cooking dinner earlier than 4 pm. I am a notoriously reluctant cook. And I lose steam as the day progresses. A day that starts out with a hot breakfast may well end with frozen waffles, or some other convenience food that doesn’t actually fill anyone up. Cue wailing and gnashing of teeth at 9 pm and a whole fourth meal’s worth of snacks before bed. This morning I made the Pioneer Woman’s Sunday Night Stew at 10 am, and now it’s done same as I am.

Finally, we’d like to contribute to our parish capital campaign to renovate our ugly church, but haven’t been able to see much wiggle room in our budget. Suddenly things are feeling a bit looser.

I’m curious to see what other people’s “luxuries” are. I assume if you have internet access you have at least a few of them in your life. Maybe a whole lot fewer than we do, or maybe more. Are you debt free? We’re hoping to become so eventually – using that smart financial program you’ve seen me chatting up on IG, Wallet Win. Have you paid off your student loans yet, or would you like to do so before your kids start incurring their own? Kicked your Starbucks habit? Whipped up 101 different rice and beans recipes you’re dying to share with me?

About Me, Catholics Do What?, Contraception, Living Humanae Vitae, Marriage, motherhood, NFP

But what do the neighbors think? {Living humanae vitae part 8}

July 17, 2018

Lately I’ve been experimenting with a little mental exercise I like to call “what if there’s a nanny cam?” Now, being the queen of my domicile and the only avid Amazon clicker in the house, I can be reasonably confident this is only a mental exercise. However, it has borne some fruit when I play it out in my imagination to the logical conclusion and pretend there are tapes that we’re going to be playing back later tonight, after business hours, assessing my performance.

Did she keep her cool? Did she raise her voice? Did everyone feel seen and heard and cherished? Did someone learn a new curse word today?

Another less fanciful game we play, my inner monologue and I, is “what do the neighbors think?” — less fanciful because we are hemmed in on three sides by other suburban homes with human dwellers, most of whom are quietly retired and whose tranquility has been routinely shattered since August last when our noisy infantry rolled into the subdivision.

This morning I tossed the crushed wrapper of a pack of Marlboro Reds into the recycling bin. Yesterday it was lying in the middle of the street as the late afternoon rain poured down. Today it was lying 10 feet into my front yard, helpfully tossed there by a passing pedestrian who figured we were the hot mess it belonged to.

Fair enough, passing pedestrian. Fair enough.

I play this game at a higher level in the grocery store and the post office and oh my gosh do I play it on those rare and furtive visits to Whole Foods to retrieve 12-pack cases of LaCroix, marked down 60% thanks to their unholy alliance with Amazon. Keeping my eyes fixed on my offspring, we sweep quietly through the exterior of the store to toss magically-priced organic raspberries ($.99 cents a pint!) and sparkling water into the tiny cart already crammed with human cargo; I know that this of all places is where I can still reliably count on the questions and commentary.

Eyes down, children accounted for, clothes neat and applied correctly to body parts. That’s the best I can hope for.

I feel the weight of the entire reputation of my subversive cultural group on my tired, baby-wrenched shoulders during these errands. All the digital ink spilled on electronic page can’t undo a single poor impression made by an actual family in actual public, or so I tell myself.

Do I care less about appearances than I did when we first started our family? Yes, and no.

I have less time to worry about what random strangers think, but more time to worry about the impressions we’re making on our real neighbors, the barista at my local Starbucks, the teller at our bank. When we’re a recurrent fixture in their lives and they see it all, day after day, the solitary impressions adding up to a lifetime of reputation, what must they think?

Does she love them? Does she like being a mom? Gosh, she must have wanted a ton of kids. Are they all getting enough attention? Gosh, those two siblings seem spaced really close together. I wouldn’t want a life like that. Seems chaotic. I wonder if she’ll ever lose that baby weight. She’s really letting herself go…

And on and on it goes, the internal commentary viciously dissecting and passing judgement on my performance as a wife and mother and human being and all without anyone having to utter a single word!

I am my own worst enemy when it comes to embracing and living what the Catholic Church teaches about marriage and children and motherhood. I spend too much time in my head critiquing and not enough time on my knees begging for the strength to actually carry on.

I worry about what my thin dual income/two-kids neighbors think of our hot mess and my large thighs, trying to present an attractive enough image to justify this way of life, even presenting it as a viable option that really anyone could do! (insert strained and vaguely insincere smile.)

I let myself believe the lie that this could possibly compete with what the world has to offer.

That living this way, apart from Christ, could have any real merit compared to financial stability and a healthy weight and an annual tropical vacation.

None of this makes sense apart from the Cross. But I never want to show the cross in public –  gore is so off-putting.

Why not lead with what’s attractive? A subtle interior voice whispers. You don’t want to make this look too difficult. It wouldn’t be right to show someone you’re struggling. Best they only see the highlight reel. Smile! Or else you could be the reason somebody decides to never have kids one day….

It is so obvious that the voice whispering so urgently in my ear for much of the day isn’t God’s.

But I almost always fail to identify it as satan’s until he has done his dirty work, the sneaky bastard.

I let myself carry on, believing it is my own perfectionism whispering criticism in my ear all day long, not recognizing that the enemy of my soul has an axe to grind and a perfect opportunity to hit me where it hurts.

I long to do the good, and so he holds up an apparent good – impossible standards and all – and dangles it over my head, promising that if only I try hard enough, I can achieve perfection.

It’s pride mingled with a dangerous self reliance, all cloaked in a sticky sweet coating of good intentions and the desire for control.

My entire struggle with NFP can be summed up thusly: she wanted to be in control.

I don’t struggle with the theology of it. I appreciate the science behind it. I acknowledge the inherent dignity in it. And still, I wrestle.

If there is one thing I continue to ram up against, almost a decade into marriage as a practicing Catholic, it is the contradictory belief that I can both move peacefully and unobtrusively through this world and also fully embrace and strive to follow the teachings of Christ.

Silly me, I thought I’d get to choose my cross.

Being open to life is beautiful. But it’s not like, Instagram beautiful. There isn’t a filter strong enough for reality.

About Me, Catholics Do What?, Family Life, large family, Marriage, mental health, motherhood

5 months with the Fab 5

June 14, 2018

How about some OG mommy blogging on this Friday Eve? I thought I’d update all my wonderful readers who have not yet abandoned ‘ye olde blog’ for the flashier and more fragmented pastures of Instagram with a good old fashioned “life lately” post, and tell you a little bit about what having 5 kids has been like so far.

In a nutshell: tiring. I am just so tired. I’ve had all these blood tests done looking for vitamin deficiencies and asked all the questions about thyroid function and cut out all the food groups and…I’m still just tired. Bone deep and almost always, so I think it’ll just be a matter of time before things kind of normalize and my brain gets the memo that if it wants 8 hours of zzzs, it needs to shut down by 10 pm every night.

So earnest is my search for that mythical fountain of stable energy levels that I even (drops voice to a whisper) stopped drinking coffee again… I found myself slipping into a naughty little afternoon espresso habit that was surely not helping my circadian rhythms, so off the drip I went. In the past 6 weeks I’ve had 2 coffees. I know! Who am I? I don’t know! But it is slightly easier to wake up in the mornings now, and much easier to stay asleep (rooster babies permitting) once I get there. But gosh do I miss that artificial pick me up that helped me cruise through the 4 o’clock hour.

How are the kids, you’re wondering? Screaming in the backyard, currently. I have no idea why our neighbors don’t want to socialize more. In one particularly special encounter some friends who were staying with us last week were spraying the hapless preschoolers on the other side of the fence with the hose and also changing the words of a Vacation Bible School song to something borderline vulgar, which was very meaningful for neighborhood relations. I think everyone is really glad to have us on the block.

End of the school year visit to Whole Foods for kale chips and turmeric smoothies.

It has taken me 40 minutes to write the past 4 paragraphs. That basically sums it up. My margins are gone, erased by needs and noise and summer vacation and a not-quite-3-year-old who has decided to drop his nap but also acts feral from 3-5 pm every afternoon and is frequently found naked.

Every ounce of selfishness is being exposed and stripped away, violently and reluctantly. It is extremely painful and extremely worth it, and I can absolutely understand why people do not, in a culture that does not uphold the dignity of family life or the nobility of parenting, choose to have larger families. If I were not Catholic, I doubt that we would have more than 3 kids.*

Without a theology of suffering, the life I am presently living, however punctuated with moments of transcendent joy, makes little to no sense. I took 5 kids to the pediatrician this morning for a strep test for number 3 and felt every ounce the spectacle that we were, a baby tucked under my arm because her infant seat was too saturated in vomit to make the trek inside and a 2 year old with sandals on the wrong feet and lots of little faces that all look like mine, and everyone stared. Nobody was unkind, and everybody stared, and this is just life now, and I’m so busy most of the time I never even notice the attention. Nobody dares approach my RBF in the checkout line and crack wise about “what causes that.” They take one look at the sheer multitude of us and they know that I know, and they know better than to ask if I know.

So that’s a definite upside.

I’m not painting a very rosy picture, but the truth is that I feel like I’m drowning a lot of the time. And I’m disappointed with the many ways I fail my family hour after hour as the long days of summer (was it only 2 weeks ago I was moaning about carpool? manic LOLOLOL) crawl by, bringing another load of laundry, a bathroom accident from a totally unpredictable source, and a frantic tearful canvassing of the neighborhood for the missing cat, who always turns up but who always gives the anxiety-prone 6-year-old full blown panic attacks when she wanders outside the bounds of our property lines.

I know this isn’t forever. That it’s a really, really hard season…but only a season. I don’t feel the weight of PPD like I have after previous pregnancies, but I wouldn’t say I’m operating at 100%, either. I’m snappish and frustrated and the baby weight is very, very reluctant to leave its comfortable perch around my midsection. Zelie is an angel baby and I have no regrets about adding her to the mix, and still, life is harder than before she got here.

I sometimes catch myself chanting under my breath “you can do hard things” and also “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” while I’m wiping up another puddle or getting up with someone else in the night for the third or fourth time and especially when it’s 4:15 and the entire universe feels like it might be tilting out of alignment and time is actually physically slowing down.

(I’m really making the case for being open to life, right?)

Here’s the thing. We all have hard stuff. Something is really hard in your life right now, whether it’s your job or your marriage or your grad program or a sick spouse or a terrible family rift or, or, or…there is no such thing as a comfortable life. A comfortable life is an illusion, and it is often a lonely one.

On my darkest afternoons (y so terrible, witching hour?) I occasionally have the wherewithal to project my imagination into the future and I envision these 5 needy puppies as teenagers who are joking and tossing a football and going to dances and games and parties together, getting into trouble but also keeping each other out of trouble, walking hand and hand through life long after I’ll be out of the picture. This foresight sustains me, and I can lean on it reliably because I have witnessed it come to fruition with my own siblings.

And it’s not only the future I’m working towards, but also the almost indecipherable improvements in the here and now. I can only hope that these rough edges of my personality and areas of sin and selfishness really are being scourged away, making room for new growth and a strength and resilience that I can’t imagine now, at age 35. I’m not the mom I was at 30, much as I might wish I still looked like her. I’m stronger than her, however, and softer too.

I was talking with a priest friend about how difficult this season of motherhood has been, wondering if I were essentially still 17  on the inside, maybe? Because I struggle so much with anger and selfishness when “my will” is transgressed by one of the kids, and I often still feel like my shallow teenage self. He laughed and said “Jenny, if 17-year-old you were dropped into your current life circumstances, she would run. And you’re not running.” (He didn’t know teenage me, but he’s right.)

Some of the less esoteric stuff: Joey is 7 and will be 8 in September. He is extraordinarily helpful and sensitive and responsible and also goofy and loud and forgetful and always, always screen-seeking. We joke that his middle name is actually “where the party at?” and I do shudder when I think about what that means for college, but we are not in college yet, mom brain, so find your chill. He can make breakfast, carry a baby on his hip, feed said baby a bottle, and process a load of laundry. You’re welcome, future daughter in law. The age of reason is amazing because it’s real. Over the past few months his goodness and his conscience have really come out in full force, and I literally see the lightbulb going on behind his eyes when he realizes he has done something wrong. It’s amazing. He’s obsessed with all sports, our new trampoline (free on Craigslist, with an enclosure, don’t tell my chiropractor) and the neighbor kid, Andrew. Also screens, of which we do none but a few shows on the laptop or PBS kids on the tv in the afternoons after 4, much to his dismay.

John Paul is 6, wishes he were 7 like Joey, can’t understand that he and Joey are not actually twins, and is about as sensitive and melancholic as they come. He has big feelings, good and bad, and is very sensitive to the needs and moods of others. He adores our cat and will pine for her if she doesn’t come indoors in a timely manner at night. He’s amazing at climbing trees and he has zero fears of high places despite being so anxious about other stuff, which is interesting. He loves holding Zelie and is the only one who actually asks to do so on a regular basis. He is great at sports and runs with an older crowd, namely, Joey and the 9-year-old neighbor kid. They bounce between our two yards playing basketball and Bey Blades, which has nothing to do with Beyonce as far as I can tell, but which is apparently all the rage.

Evie is 4.5 and is crazy like a fox. She’s incredibly smart and funny and throws tantrums the likes of which I have never seen before. I don’t know yet if it’s a girl thing or if it’s an Evie thing, since she is our oldest and first girl, so…I watch in fascinated horror as the meltdowns unfold. She has zero regard for other people’s opinions of her, is a little bit terrifying at library story time and/or playdates, and will either play college rugby or perhaps run a small corporation before she’s 22. She scares me and impresses me and infuriates me at turns, and I love her fiercely. I also think now, with 3 years of hindsight and personality observation, that all of her refusal to hit milestones was 100% pure stubbornness. She had no underlying medical issues; she’s just like an angry housecat, is all. And if she didn’t want to crawl/walk/stand at 17 months, nobody (and I do mean nobody, entire PT/OT team) was going to make her.

 

Luke is almost 3 and has an immense joie de vivre and also, appetite. He’s our little human garbage disposal who eschews clothing and shoes and prefers scavenging food and running wild and free through life. He has the vocabulary of a 3rd grader, wears size 4/5T clothing, and can sing along to my entire Tom Petty greatest hits album, so he’s pretty amazing. Except when he’s not. Yesterday I caught him crouched on the bathroom sink drinking from JOEY’S DIRTY SOCCER CLEAT AND I HAD ZERO CHILL ABOUT IT. Zero. Parenting has crushed my obsessive tendencies towards cleanliness but you haven’t really lived until you’ve seen someone’s tongue in someone else’s athletic shoe. His alibi? “I couldn’t find a cup, mommy.”

OK THEN.

Zelie will be 6 months old at the end of June (how??) and is delightful and placid and has an amazing crow-like squawk during the rare moments of non-placidity. She sleeps pretty great both day and night and just rolls with the punches as they come. Someone asked me her nap schedule recently and I had to laugh because what is a nap schedule? And can I get one for myself somewhere? She is the most chill and pleasant baby and never really cries unless she is in the car between 3-4 pm (#carpooltrauma) or very dirty. She loves water and had her first dip in the pool last weekend and was smitten.

She is sleeping through the night-ish in her own room and alternates passing out in the swing with being laid down flat on her back, still swaddled but with arms free, and falling asleep completely on her own. She just pivots and adjusts. Life is grand with her, and none of the problems (ahem, except for that pregnancy weight) that I’m currently puzzling over have anything to do with her. It’s more of a threshold of chaos that we’ve crossed over and can’t seem to find our way back. Yet. I know I’ll read this a year from now and laugh because things will have settled so much and there’ll be new and bigger fish to fry with my super effective worry, but for now it’s the lbs and the lack of sleep and a general ambient noise level of 140 decibels that are really giving me a run for it.

On a closing personal note, my parents just arrived in Arizona to say goodbye to my last living grandparent, my Grandma Jean, who is in her final hours. She’s my dad’s mom and is the only grandparent I had much of a relationship with, including letters and emails back and forth over the years. She was also kind/crazy enough to let my sister and I stay on her sailboat for a 3-week stint when she and my grandad were cruising down in Mexico and we were sneaky, angsty teenagers. Señor Frog’s, anyone? If you would remember her in your prayers today and pray for the Lord’s mercy upon her, and that my parents make it to her bedside in time to say goodbye, I’d be so grateful.

Whew, how was that for a good old fashioned, high word count random bit of mommy blogging? Guess I’ve still got it.

*Not all big families are Catholic, and not Catholics have big families. If the HV series I’ve been running has demonstrated anything, I hope it’s the reality that not all couples who are open to life are blessed to actually have their children with them this side of heaven. We are humbled by what God has entrusted us with, and also, completely overwhelmed.
About Me, budgeting, self care, social media

Habits, virtue, and making it easy to be good

April 12, 2018

I almost worked “self discipline” into this title, but to be perfectly frank, habit is getting me much further than self discipline during this particular season of life.

I’m at the point in fluffy not-quite-middle-age where if something is going to happen that is good for me, be it spiritual or physical in nature, I nearly always have to trick myself into doing it.

I could fib and say this is only because my domestic obligations are at an all-time high or that I’m suffering from that familiar fourth-trimester sleep deprivation, but the more accurate explanation is that I’m lazy.

How can a mom with five kids and a job be lazy? Oh, it’s pretty easy, actually. It looks like sending my older kids to fetch diapers while I sit plopped on the couch scrolling through my phone. It looks like falling asleep in bed while reading because I am “too tired” to pray. It looks like making a bad food choice at lunch and then mentally shrugging at 4 p.m. when confronted with leftover chocolate chip granola bars from the carnage of after school snack time and telling myself “I’ll start over with good food choices tomorrow” before popping the detritus in my mouth.

Since I lack sorely in self discipline and rightly-ordered passions, I’ve noticed that if I make the good things I’m trying to accomplish sort of idiot-proof, I’ve a much higher incidence of success.

So, for example, during Lent I got into the habit of putting a cute decorative tote basket in front of my place at the dining room table each night which contained my prayer materials: Bible, copy of the catechism, Blessed is She planner, and the Take Up and Read Lenten journal. Because it was there in my face as soon as I came downstairs to sit with my coffee, I dug in and had a little prayer time most mornings, however sparse it might end up being per my darlings’ demands. On the mornings when I’d forgotten to move the basket from it’s daytime perch in the bay window? Nada. I would sit 5 feet away sipping my morning cappuccino and stare at that sucker and prayer time would.not.happen.

Another example. I’m dehydrated more often than not from a strict regimen of breastfeeding, coffee guzzling, kid wrangling, and a strange aversion to filling simple glasses of water to drink from. Some days I would get to dinner time with a pounding headache and realize that I had maybe – maybe – consumed 12 ounces of water all day in the form of a single can of LaCroix. As POTUS would tweet, SAD! Very Disappointing!

I picked up a $4 glass water bottle with a sippy top at Marshall’s last month and started carrying it around the house with me and, what do you know, I’m drinking close to 100 ounces of H2O these days. Sad, right? But also really effective.

I’ve started to do the same thing with exercise. Feeling a little burnt out on my walking routine without Starbucks dangling at the end of the route like a luxurious carrot (more on that later) I was finding my strolls around the neighborhood a little less enticing. I did the math on what I was saving in burnt cups of coffee in a month and reckoned that I could probably afford a basic gym membership to the club down the street if I were completely coffee-shop abstinent. (My entire “fun” category every month is spent on takeout coffee. Speaking of sad…)

So I dug out an old black speedo from a few summers back, tossed a swim cap and a pair of goggles into my purse, and took the plunge, literally. I logged close to 200 laps last week, all because I’ve arranged the necessary materials and started forcing myself to leave the house precisely at 7 p.m. on the nights when it works for our schedule, promising Dave and myself to be back in 60 minutes. It gives me enough time to get the babies to bed and leaves him with some quality time with the older set at the end of the day.

Habit builds on habit. And I’d venture further, saying that virtue builds on habit. When I’m already being good, it’s easier to continue being good.

When I have that big glass of wine on a school night (biiiiig mistake at age 35) I know that the next morning it’s going to be harder to get up to pray. And that if I don’t get up to pray, I’ll probably yell at my kids at some point during the day. And that we’ll be so burnt out on each other’s company from all that yelling that by 4 p.m. that I’ll succumb to the Netflix sirens and surrender my laptop while I cook dinner, feeling hassled and defeated.

I remember hearing Fr. Michael Scanlan, the spiritual powerhouse behind the revitalization of Franciscan University, tell parents during an orientation video that Steubenville was intended to be a place where it was “easy to be good.” By that he meant not that we would be so constrained by rules and regulations that we would have no choice but to behave, but that there would be so many options for choosing the good – and so much positive peer pressure to do so – that it would become a real hotbed of virtue and excellence simply because the true, good, and beautiful was readily available. 24 hour adoration? Check. Three or four daily Mass options a day? Check. Intramural and community building activities through Households and dozens of ministry opportunities? Check.

So yeah, you could show up there a hardened party girl and stay that way, no problem, (Lee’s Place or Jaggin’ Around, anyone?) but you could also throw yourself headlong into the transformative atmosphere of excellence that permeated the campus, and ease into a routine of virtue that was considerably less challenging than the previous four years I’d spent stumbling drunkenly through the more typical college experience at a major public school.

So I’m trying to create a vice-proof, virtue and habit supportive environment in my own home where I am the boss, after all, making it more foolproof for me to misbehave, and less likely to fall headlong into a bag of Doritos* and a late-night Instagram binge session. (Note: Doritos are on the ever-expanding list of things I’ve come to realize that I just can’t have in the house.)

A couple other hacks I’m employing as training wheels right now as we transition from newborn survival mode to new normal:

  • No alcohol on weeknights (unless it’s a major feast day or a date night)
  • 3 non-negotiable exercise sessions a week. Doesn’t matter how long they take or what I do, just that I do them.
  • Instagram only on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings. (I uninstall the app from my phone and reinstall it on those days. Sad? You betcha. Effective? Indeed.)
  • No Facebook or Twitter at all. Just posting content there as I create it and then walking away, so to speak.
  • No shopping at Target or Costco, for the moment. (Diapers and wipes from Amazon, because I am not tempted to overspend when I shop online, whereas walking into brick and mortar is like entering the lion’s den for my budget.)
  • Grocery shopping only on Fridays. Y’all, this one has been HARD. But it’s helping our budget so much. I think I probably saved almost $200 last month from cutting out all the “just one quick thing” trips that always, always result in at least $40 of “oh, yeahs!”

I feel like my thirties have seen me get super into self-knowledge and understanding temperament and personality type (INTJ and choleric/melancholic, for what it’s worth) in an attempt to reprogram the direction of my own life. I guess I’ve been waiting for years and years to just magically “change” or grow out of ___, when actually I’m pretty much the same person I was at 18. I haven’t become more naturally disciplined to go to bed earlier, or less interested in french fries, or more eager to make phone calls I’m dreading. So instead of waiting for me to change, I guess I’m focusing more on “acting as if,” hoping that my tired old self will come plodding along down the path of least resistance I’m working to create. Hey, it works with my kids and a 4 p.m. veggie platter deployed against the whining “I’m huuuuungries” that interrupt dinner prep!

What habit-building hacks have you employed that have made noticeable improvements in your life? Is there an area you thought you’d never see improvement where you’ve been surprised by growth – and grace?

About Me, ditching my smartphone, motherhood, Parenting, social media, technology

Some thoughts on social media

April 5, 2018

We are in a semi-survival season here, with a newish-born babe and 4 other kiddos – first grade down to the 2-year-old who is crazy like a fox and did, in fact, climb on top of the fridge and rain down contraband Peeps on his brethren before 7 o’clock this fair morn.

But it’s not as intense of a survival season as, say, 2 months ago when the baby was still truly a newborn, and it was also bitterly cold, and nobody would ever just go to bed on the first or even second attempt.

So things have improved. My motherhood muscles have been broken down and pulled taut by a grueling new pace of life, and the routine is starting to feel, well, routine. But this week has been a little rougher.

Because, man, 4 days out from Easter and I am burnt from spending so many hours on Instagram. I actually had to make up some new ground rules for myself of only checking T/Th between 9-10 am (or something, still working on that) because after a Lent-long social media abstinence, I spent the first 48 hours of the Easter season in a blurry haze of scrolling and liking and storytelling. And I haven’t even logged back into Facebook or Twitter, yet.

I consider myself an addictive personality, whatever that means. For me, it means that abstinence is always far easier than moderation, and that when I do fall off the bandwagon, it’s with a flying leap that tends to do serious damage both to me and to the ground below.

So I didn’t have a smartphone for the better part of a year and it was magical and freeing and I was such a great mom! And then… I got another smartphone. Because all my research and attempts to find a texting-capable and still reliable dumb phone proved futile. So now I have this crummy, bottom-of-the-line prepaid Samsung situation with a screen so cracked that I have to squint to see my contacts, lest I errantly dial my boss’s phone number instead of my mom’s (tile floor, meet glass screen) and yet I’m still so lured by the siren song of digital dopamine that I will spend 4 (4! I know, because I have an app that tracks usage #irony) hours straining my eyes at, among other things, pictures of other people’s kids dressed in their Easter best and great vignettes composed of little else but fiddle leaf figs and white walls.

It’s a problem.

It’s a problem and I know it’s a problem.

It’s a bigger problem that although I recognize and acknowledge the problem, I come crawling back again and again “as a dog returns to its vomit” (Dave claims this is my favorite Scripture quote, but he is wrong) panting with desire for the thing that I have repeatedly identified as a problem: ‘social’ media.

‘Social’ media is distinct and separate from social media (texting, Voxer, Whatapp, etc) whereby I am communicating with people who are actually my friends and with the intention of sharing specific nuggets of information. And it’s not that I don’t have real friends on Instagram! I do! I love you, Instagram friends! But there is a marked difference, for me, in social media as the evolved flow of conversation and information between friends and family (letter meet telegraph meet telephone meet email) and the ‘social’ media that captivates our attention spans and fills our minds and hearts with unrest.

This is my litmus:

Social media: me reaching out to or being summoned by a specific person for the express purpose of communicating specific information “I was thinking of you/I have a question/Have you seen this article?”

‘Social’ media: essentially, it’s group-curated entertainment, heavily subsidized by advertisers and controlled by algorithms to maximize time and attention spent consuming and participating in an unending feedback loop marked less by communication and more by consumption of publically-directed content.

Social media is pleasant and useful and makes life more interesting.

‘Social’ media makes me a crappy wife and mother, and causes me to shriek in annoyance at my children when they trespass on my “me time,” in which I mindlessly consume content about other people’s beautiful lives while my own brood tries futility to get my attention from the swing set.

I’m impressing nobody with my grim self assessment of motherhood here, but truly, I spent much of Monday and Tuesday of this week in a bleary eyed haze of catch up after a six week hiatus from this stuff, and it was not pretty. I felt not unlike a Whole 30 finisher walking shakily out of Coldstone Creamery on day 31 with a sugar headache and a belly full of regrets.

I hate that this is such a struggle for me. I hate that I’m modeling poor boundaries for my kids, who aren’t even allowed to play video games or use screens without mommy or daddy present. It’s hypocritical as hell, and I know it, and yet I wave them off with a guilty internal resolve to do better “tomorrow,” because gosh darn it, today is hard and I need a little distraction fix.

And sometimes you do need a little distraction fix. But I think there are edifying distractions (articles on First Things or cat memes, for example) and then there are pure junk food distractions. The former leave you feeling mentally refreshed and lighter in spirit. The latter cause you to look up with a crick in your neck at 10:39 pm and realize with a wave of guilt that you just lost nearly forty minutes of your life to catching up on someone else’s life without actually spending time with them, and at the direct expense of your own, since 5 am will come swiftly and with the vengeance of a preschooler.

My quality of life is inversely proportional with my overindulgence in ‘social’ media, I’m convinced of it. And funnily enough, it’s those times where my life feels the most overwhelming/uninspiring/frustrating that I am most tempted to “get away from it all” and tap open a little app to escape for a quick hit.

But it’s never a quick hit, and it’s never enough. I don’t feel better afterwards. I don’t dust off my pants and smile cheerfully in the direction of my obligations and responsibilities when it’s over, refreshed by a new perspective or a little mental solitude. Quite the contrary, I am, generally, more ill at ease, less content, and much more snappish after I’ve been mindlessly observing other people’s’ lives to escape momentarily from my own.

It doesn’t help me escape. It makes me feel even more trapped.

And woe to the child who stops me in my scroll with a pressing irl “need” like a wiped butt or a filled cup or a question about something they saw in the backyard.

“mmmhmmm,” I’ll often mumble, not looking up. “That’s super interesting. Here, let me help you with that,” eyes still glued to screen, not even bothering to use two hands to gather someone’s tangled hair into the world’s most pathetic little ponytail.

My children should not have to compete with a screen.

And I should not prefer a screen to their little faces! So what is wrong with me? What is wrong with us, that this seems to be a struggle of such epidemic proportions? And what are the realistic solutions, given the profoundly ironic reality that I’m going to share this blog on Facebook after I finish writing it? The Internet and digital communication are here to stay, and so, like electricity and food and pinot noir, they are something we have to learn to enjoy in moderation.

What are your thoughts? How do you protect your kids from your own online consumption habits? Do you have rules and behaviors that help you draw the line? Do you struggle with feeling addicted to digital content/social media/connectivity? Do you have any lasting solutions for moderation you’d be willing to share in the combox?

I’d love to continue this as an ongoing conversation we can have about best practices and how to use social media rather than being used by the social media. I’m also eager for any book suggestions – two that I’ve read that have really helped shape my vision, idealistic though it may be, for my own use of social media are Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” and Sherry Turkle’s “Reclaiming Conversation in a Digital World.” A third title I haven’t read yet but plan to is Jean Twenge’s “IGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood — and What That Means for the Rest of Us.” (How’s that for a subtitle?)

About Me, birth story, Family Life

The birth of Zelie Grace, part deux

March 22, 2018

(Part 1 here)

Where were we? Oh yes, induction by house cat.

After an animated 20 minute drive to the hospital, we arrived around 1 am and were swiftly checked in to the natural delivery suite.

Apparently I was so calm the nursing staff assumed I must be in want of the Cadillac of birthing tubs, and was offered that luxury upgrade frequently during my stay in hotel hospital. To which I replied calmly, between contractions: LOLOLOL.

I was so sure when we sidled up to the nurses’ station that I’d be sent home, with my advanced-maternal-age tail tucked between my legs, but lo and behold, I was escorted directly to a delivery room, and the midnight cat calisthenics I’d performed in the street had progressed me to “7, maybe 8 centimeters.”

What the whaaaaat?

Anyone who is familiar with the entrances of the older 4 of the Uebbing crew knows that this is not a normal pattern of labor for me, and since I had thus far only cursed at the cat and was not attempting to strangle anyone with my IV line, I couldn’t imagine that this was “real” labor. I just could not.

In fact, here’s how sure I was that I wasn’t really anywhere near baby time: I SENT THE ANESTHESIOLOGIST AWAY (never never do this) because I wasn’t “sure” what I wanted to do in terms of pain relief. In retrospect this seems foolhardy at best and…I won’t say what, at worst. But I really did need a little time to process what was happening: namely, that I was in active labor (apparently late in the game, too) and I wasn’t in excruciating, universe-ending pain.

That, my dear readers, turns out to be the difference between posterior and “normal” or anterior presentation of le babe. Because, unlike her siblings, this little piggy was facing the right way, mommy wasn’t teetering on the precipice of a psychotic break.

It was a really wonderful and peaceful departure from my previous 4 childbirth experiences, and I am profoundly grateful to have had this particular aspect of my motherhood redeemed.

That alone makes going for an unwieldy number of children “worth it,” on some level.

Once I’d sent away the magic doctor, I spent a few minutes alternating between prayer and repeatedly asking Dave “What is happening? Why is this happening? Is this really happening?” and received a very clear invitation from the Lord to go ahead and get the epidural if I wanted to. I was struggling a bit with feeling like this was a test I was somehow failing: as if by resorting to meds I was forgoing the opportunity to have a beautiful, unmedicated birth experience. And maybe I was. But I spent a few minutes in conversation with Him and here is what He said to me:

“I just wanted you to know it could be like this. I love you. You’re free to choose.”

That’s all.

He wanted to tell me a different story about bringing new life into the world. And I was convicted in these precious moments of labor/prayer that this more peaceful birthing process, cat corralling notwithstanding, was His gift to me. No strings attached. Meaning, I didn’t have to be a hero and try to go au natural.

I am forever mistaking my own efforts and willpower for God’s grace. Imagine my surprise when they give out again and again, and I realize that without Him I am nothing.

He was offering me a beautiful gift: a labor experience saturated with peace and the supernatural grace to remain present, in the moment. It was honestly the best thing I could have asked for, and the last thing I would have thought to ask for. Because I knew how labor “went.” I knew my story: fear, pain, suffering, and trauma. That’s all I believed giving birth could be, and I would have taken that knowledge to my grave before sweet Zelie’s birth.

Now I think of the gift I can give to my younger sisters and, one day, my own daughters, whispering to them an alternative narrative, and I am so overwhelmed by the beauty of it.

At one point during my moderate travail, Dave leaned over and whispered to me: “If it’s a girl, we should use Grace in her name, because there is so much of it here.”

And there was. There was so much grace.

And there was a profound feeling of freedom, too. I really felt invited by the Lord to choose the path of least resistance and to let Him write a new story with this delivery, and so I did.

I took the drugs, no regrets. And in God’s providential design, that anesthesiologist I sent away in a moment of uncertainty was only able to come back once I was teetering on the brink of 9 centimeters, barely before I passed the deadline of the point of no return. Once the drugs were locked and loaded, I rested for a bit and resisted a couple offers of “if you let us break your water, baby will be here in 10 minutes.” Thinking back, the first few offers were made pre-epidural, and the entire nursing staff was very eager to help me achieve a natural birth, which I give them major props for.

Those gals wanted to see a natural birth, gosh darn it, and they’d given me the primo natural birthing suite to prove it – and I was sorry to disappoint those lovely ladies, but having personally experienced the last few centimeters of labor a time or two, I was certainly not about to attempt round 5 in a hot tub.

Anywhoo, the drugs kicked in, my doctor came in with his icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe and propped it opposite the end of my bed, and then we chilled out for a somewhat uneventful 45 minutes, at which point I consented to AROM and felt some serious “pressure” which confirmed me in my drug-seeking decision because either that epidural was on the lighter side, or this baby was huge.

(Spoiler alert: baby was not huge, and I walked from the delivery room to recovery, so epi-lite it was)

Finally it was show time. And after 8(!) excruciating minutes (sure beats 4 hours!), during which I may or may not have vocalized glory to God for pharmaceuticals, little Elizabeth Grace Uebbing was born.

As happens not infrequently in high-altitude deliveries, our beautiful little 7 lb, 11 oz princess was pretty blue and needed some blow-by oxygen assistance to get things rolling. Less typical was her being whisked fairly quickly off my chest and carried over for inspection by the neonatal team. I watched in mounting anxiety as the room filled up with doctors and nurses, a small crowd forming around her bassinet across the room.

I was yelling out to her from my hospital bed “Elizabeth, mommy loves you,” because I’m pretty sure I read in the scary chapter of What to Expect When You’re Expecting that you should do that, and at some point in so doing, I looked over at Dave and said “that’s not her name. I don’t think that’s her name.” He nodded in agreement from his post at her crib side, trying his best to look unconcerned for my sake. As the minutes ticked by and more doctors filled the room – now the respiratory team had been called in, I heard the announcement – I grew more and more concerned.

I began praying aloud while my doctor stitched me up, asking the Holy Spirit to fill her lungs, pleading with her to breathe, breathe, baby girl.

At one point I started praying fervently for the intercession of St. Zelie Martin. “Zelie” was on our short list of names, but I wasn’t sure Dave was fully convinced, and I didn’t want to force a name he didn’t love. I began asking St. Zelie to plead my girl’s case in heaven, begging that her oxygen levels would come up and that she wouldn’t be headed to the NICU. 

Looking back, I don’t recall thinking she was actually going to die, but I was very worried that she was going to be intubated, and that something might be wrong with her lungs, because 20 minutes in, she hadn’t made a sound other than gasping a couple times. I remember specifically choosing to petition St. Zelie because she had lost so many of her own babies, and because she could sympathize with my aching mama heart to have my girl whole and in my arms. I also recall being unbelievably at peace despite the circumstances, which is a miracle in itself considering my temperament.

Finally just before the 30-minute mark we head the most beautiful sound in the world: our baby girl’s cry. Soft and undemanding (as it is still, for the most part) but very much alive and well. I shed a few tears of relief as they wheeled her, not to the NICU, but back to my arms, and we re-named her Zelie Grace Uebbing.

And she has brought nothing but grace to our family since the moment she arrived.

She is the fruition of my motherhood in a powerful way that I wouldn’t have expected from a fifth baby. So few people go this far, as I am reminded on a daily basis when we’re out and about, and honestly, were it not for the Church’s teachings on contraception and openness to life, neither would we have done so. 

Zelie was not in our plan.

But she was in His.

And we are so thankful.

Exhausted, overwhelmed, and occasionally weepy. But so very grateful.

St. Zelie Martin and holy Mother Mary, full of grace, pray for us.

(P.s. a great read for pregnant mamas/birth professionals of every stripe)