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large family, Living Humanae Vitae, Marriage, motherhood, NFP, pregnancy, Pro Life

The wonder of the last baby

August 28, 2020

I hold my breath, waiting for another cry to pierce the midnight air. Ten, twenty seconds pass. Maybe I imagined it. Then a wail goes up like a fire engine and I push myself up and swing my legs over the side, toes groping the floor beside the bed for the shoes I must wear at all times, even for quick walks across the room. The lingering scars and injuries from his increasingly distant pregnancy and birth are daily reminders of the price his entrance extracted.

His cries halt the moment I crack the door and are replaced with urgent grunts and snuffles; I lift him from his crib, 24 pounds of warm, wriggling baby pinching at strained back muscles, and I know I would pay it again, a hundredfold.

He wakes relatively infrequently now at nearly 9 months old, and I don’t begrudge him these occasional nocturnal intrusions. The earplugs I’ve forgotten how to sleep without mean that Daddy hears him first, most nights. I mix a quick bottle using tap water from the bathroom sink and the can of formula we stash below it, shaking my head at the younger version of myself whose every mothering instinct would recoil from all of the above: formula, tap water, bottle.

We settle into the battered glider I bought off of Craigslist for his big sister’s nursery years ago, and we rock as he sucks greedily at his midnight snack. He looks up at me laughing, hitting my chest and swiping for pieces of hair loosened from my bedraggled ponytail. I shift my weight in the rocker, hips pinching from the too-snug grip of the chair arms. In the aftermath of his difficult pregnancy and birth and a stretch of time in the hospital for RSV last winter, I found myself heavier than I had ever been in my life. The weight is coming off slowly, incrementally. I calculate the rate and realize he might be potty training by the time my body returns to a more recognizable state, but then, I’ll be 40, so is it even reasonable to expect a return to familiar territory? Is he really our last baby, NFP being what it is? I’ve felt sure of it before, but the months and years have a way of smoothing things over – or fogging the short term memory up.

He laughs and swats his bottle away, ready to make flirty eye contact and pinch my face with his fat baby hands. It’s 2 in the morning and he wants to chat, and I can’t find it in me to resent it, to worry over the lost hours of sleep and the specter of the next day. The hardest baby I ever met is snoring lightly in the room down the hall, all 8 and a half increasingly gangly years of him stretched out on a top bunk littered with nerf darts and lego creations. I pull this latest edition closer, understanding now that I’ll blink and he’ll be starting kindergarten. The days are long, so long. Some of them longer than others. The first years of motherhood stretched out eternally, a string of endless days of filling and wiping and washing and zipping. These middle years have begun to speed up, almost imperceptibly at first, almost as if I’d selected 1.5x speed on a podcast or voice message without realizing it, looking up in surprise when the episode, the month, the year is over.

The last month of his pregnancy was riddled with doctor’s appointments and ultrasounds and hours ticked by on the monitor strip, watching his heart rate dance up and down, wondering and worrying. His birth was peaceful and easy, until it wasn’t. My c-section scar healed “beautifully,” the doctor said, but the scarred fascia and muscle beneath is still bunched up painfully. My brute of a 5-year-old slams his head into my waist at precisely the right level to leave me breathless with pain at least once a day. My feet ache from plantar fasciitis and my forearms tingle with residual carpal tunnel.

I throw away all my old jeans, even the pairs I scorned in the months after the previous baby’s birth, vowing I’d “never get that big” again. I laugh and remind myself that this season, too, with all its physical discomfort and disarray, will one day be a wistful memory triggered by pictures of my younger self, and I will come across them stop and marvel that I was once so young, so unwrinkled, so beautiful.

It is morning now and the baby is on the floor, slapping the ground and giggling, now falling with a resounding thump as his 110% percentile head bounces on the carpet. He starts to cry but stops as soon as I scoop him up, shifting him to my left hip and fixing a second coffee with my free hand. He rests his slightly sticky cheek against mine for a moment and I squeeze him closer. I don’t love him more than I loved the first five babies, but I like him more. I know now how fleeting babyhood is, how soon I’ll be wrinkling my nose and collecting his wet swimsuits and dirty socks from the bathroom floor. By the time he is eating as much as his brothers do, my hips will probably fit in jeans again.

Another sibling sidles up to us, reaches for the him, pleading that he is needed for an important game they’ve concocted in the back yard with the neighbor kids. I surrender him with a cautionary admonition to “hold him with an arm around the waist and under his booty, not by the neck.” His underaged minder staggers off under the weight of him, carrying him away into the orbit of sibling love that only tangentially involves me, and mostly at meal times.

And I smile, glad we had one more.

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About Me, body image, motherhood, pregnancy

Some thoughts on body image during pregnancy and postpartum, and the ego-shattering expense of motherhood

December 29, 2019

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

Seriously, though, it was the worst of times for about the last 3 weeks of Benedict’s pregnancy, which seemed to stretch interminably out over major holidays and multiple trips to labor and delivery for additional monitoring. Dave can vouch for my extra special attitude during this season of anticipation and antacids.

At some point during the final week, the fortieth, much to my astonishment, I begged God specifically that I’d not have to face another Sunday Mass “still pregnant” because a. our church is being renovated and the basement is hot as hell and b. I wanted to crawl violently out of my own skin while doing the extreme walk of shame back and forth to the restrooms escorting yet another weak bladdered offspring and offering the entire parish an eyeful courtesy of the single remaining body con maternity dress that still “fit.”

Mostly I just wept, sat up at night timing contractions, and cycled through every heartburn medication on the market in a desperate bid to emancipate my esophagus from the fires of hell. And that’s pretty much how all of November went.

(N.B. He has lots of hair! Enough to braid, practically. Old wives tale confirmed.)

About 5 days before Ben was finally born, I finally hit the right combination of google terms and discovered a secret subculture of kindred spirits: other women, most of them multiparous, also plagued by unrelenting and utterly unproductive contractions night after night for days and weeks and even months of pregnancy.

Weeping with relief, I initiated myself honorarily into the sisterhood of the “irritable uterus,” devouring post after post of other women’s stories about contractions lasting 10, 12, 15 minutes at a time for hours on end, their uteri locked into rock solid basketballs of tension pretty much 24/7.

It’s not Braxton Hicks, it’s not prodromal labor, and it’s not actual, baby-bringing contractions. The answer is d., Alex, none of the above. And the reason for it is … elusive. Age? Fatigue? Number of prior pregnancies? Physical condition? Probably a little bit of everything. At any rate, it was a long November and there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last. If for no other reason then we’re definitely on a procreative hiatus and even the most broken night of newborn sleep beats the hell that was my uterus versus somnolence.

November 2019 was not my best work.

I would be remiss, however, to fail to share the silver lining of Ben’s pregnancy. Other than the sheer physical hell of that final 4 weeks, I honestly felt good. Maybe not physically so good (raises eyebrow at total spent on physical therapy copays and massage) but emotionally and spiritually, pretty great.

This pregnancy was healing and transformative in a lot of ways. I was able to receive more of God’s grace for my vocation as a wife and mother, was able to see His version of myself more and more clearly, and most shockingly of all, for me, was able to let go of (or at least table, more on that in a future post) a lot of my deeply held and longstanding issues with food and weight and body image.

And guess what? I didn’t magically have a celebrity pregnancy because I stopped obsessing about food and how I looked. I still got huge, I still felt pretty awful by the end, and I am still struggling now, 4 weeks postpartum, with the fallout of crafting and carrying another human being under my heart for the better part of a year. My kids are simultaneously asking “so mom, when will you be skinny again?” and also “can we have another baby pretty soon?” so it’s pretty much every woman’s dream.

Here’s the thing though: for much of the past 10 months, I was at peace.

I was at peace with having a sixth baby (which felt – and still feels – shocking. Not the half dozen children so much as the being at peace part); I was (mostly) at peace with what was happening to and through my body, and I was at peace with how I looked.

None of that should have been possible. All of that is miraculous. I can only credit a well-timed introduction to the concept of intuitive eating, working with a wonderfully gifted RD, and God’s perfect timing.

Pregnancy has always been pretty terrible for me in the self image department. Blame the decades of disordered eating and the short stature, but I’m not a cute pregnant woman, and I don’t “wear it well.” The baby wears me. I am all baby and also the baby is all over, and we are both of us huge.

I was cradling Ben at his 2 week well child visit waiting for my turn to place him on the scale and the mom ahead of me looked back at us, eyes popping out of her head and cried out “another one? Again? So soon?!” I looked around and realized she was talking to me and politely asked “what?” knowing full well what was about to happen…

“How old is your baby?” She jabbed a finger towards Ben’s carseat, her eyes widening when I replied “12 days;”

“And you’re pregnant again???”

I stared at her with dead, sleep deprived eyes for a full count of 3 before calmly replying that no, I’d just had the baby 12 days ago. Her eyes goggled at my Kate Middleton-esque midsection and her cheeks had the decency to flush slightly as she stumbled over her words and I brushed past her to hoist my 10 pound baby onto the scale.

I wish I could say I was more incensed over the profound failure of our educational system to transmit the most basic fundamentals of human biology to a seemingly card carrying adult female, but alas, my pride was wounded deeper than my intellect. Though I do still wish I’d been able to slip her a little something to explain how ovulation works. Maybe just like 2 pages ripped from a high school biology textbook?

I’m not bitter.

I was talking with a friend earlier this week about how the newfound confidence I discovered during pregnancy is starting to wear thin as the hormones continue to come down and the baby weight…doesn’t. She pointed out I was less than a month postpartum, Christmas was only just happened, and perhaps I hadn’t been sleeping much? Not exactly a recipe for weight loss and wellness.

Here’s the thing, though. All that new peace and acceptance I found while Benny was on the inside? Now I get to fight to keep it. Now I get to experience the freedom and the terror of having the training wheels kicked off, of being at peace in my body just as it is, no baby on board to shield me from my own expectations or those of the world.

Because the acceptance and freedom I found during Ben’s pregnancy were a little bit conditional, it turns out, and dependent upon my “producing” something, having some sort of excuse for my body being less than perfect.

Now that I’m not growing a baby? Or nursing one? It is so, so tempting to get sucked back into the belief that my body is only as good as what it can do, as how it looks. As how well it performs.

I’m not actively “trying” to lose weight right now. I’m not doing a 30 day cleanse or a 4 week reset or trying a new diet of any kind. I’m not signing up for boot camp or pledging a certain number of trips to the gym per week for 2020. I’m not readily identifiable as an athlete of any kind, at the moment. And ironically, I’m not able to fit into any of my old clothes that don’t involve lots and lots of spandex, so living in running tights though I may be, no actual running is taking place.

For now, for the moment, in this uncomfortable in between season of sweet baby cuddles and scary parenting meltdowns and the whole-house post holiday hangover, I’m just me. I’m just a tired mom with a new baby and gross stains on most of her shirts and I don’t look or feel very cute, but I am happy.

And I’m starting to think I might be on track to find deeper, truer happiness than what I was hoping to find via the keto brick road or whatever other previous promises I’d clung to about finally being satisfied “when”.

As I sat down with my (dusty) laptop to write what this turned out to be, I happened to lock eyes with my bridal self in a wedding picture that hangs near my desk.

“I used to look like that. Look how beautiful I was.” I indulged the self pity for about 4 seconds and then shook myself with the rueful knowledge that however beautiful 26 year old Jenny had been, 37 year old Jenny would still look different. That there was no way I’d still be that girl in the picture, 6 kids or no.

And I recognize that I could easily, easily spend the rest of my 30s, my 40s, and beyond chasing that elusive image of who I used to be. Of trying to freeze time and keep her eternally present, if only from certain angles or through Instagram filters.

Or I could eat the pizza. Have the baby. Drink the beer.

This is less an “I give up” manifesto than an “I surrender” explanation. And in this season of lots and lots and lots of surrender (cough cough emergency c section + team no sleep) I’m figuring out that happiness lies less in what the mirror is reflecting back to me and more in what I’m able to reflect out to the world.

(And hey, lest we end this on an overly pious note, it must be said that I had the temerity to scream “what is wrong with you???” at a 7 year old child today for the heinous crime of crushing chocolate sprinkles into the dining room table with the back of a spoon, so please know that I am an all around ideal and uniformly excellent mother who is all done with spiritual growth and development, and I definitely did not get caught earlier in the day by the 9 year old muttering “good God I CANNOT WAIT for school to start” while bent over rehoming clean laundry found strewn across a closet floor.)

large family, motherhood, school

Kids at school, kids at home

March 28, 2019

I have had the distinct pleasure – spoken without too much irony – of having my big kids home for spring break this week. When I glanced at the school calendar late last week and realized that I’d misappropriated spring break to the first week of April, horror dawned in slow rolling waves over my psyche as I flipped through my Google calendar and beheld the 302334 doctor, dentist, professional, and personal appointments I’d unintentionally scheduled.

Now a few days into a rigorous schedule of dragging all five children on most of these errands, I’ve had time to appreciate how much they’ve matured in the past year or so. Or perhaps how much I’ve matured? It mostly boils down to, I think, having a couple kids who can buckle themselves in and out of the car. Game changer.

Still, I don’t mind that school starts up again on Monday. Not one little bit. And I have perhaps been busying myself clicking through listings of free and low cost summer activities, registering for swimming lessons, and generally spilling some ink onto the 12 weeks of summer stretching out ahead of us in the not too distant future. This week has been a brisk wake up call in a few categories:

How much they eat. It is truly shocking. I don’t fear college fees (because I think higher education is poised for a meltdown/restructuring that all of my kids will benefit from, and also hope to have a priest, a plumber, an electrician, a stylist, etc etc in the family) but I DO fear the line-item totalling I do each month as I scan through our checking account and note how much we spent at Trader Joe’s. IT IS SHOCKING. VV shocking. I’ll start out the week with $200 worth of groceries in the fridge feeling confident that meals are planned and lunches are ready to be packed with aplomb, but come Thursday the fridge looks like we’re all practicing intermittent fasting and we have plowed through 4 loaves of gluten free bread, and that cardboard IS NOT CHEAP. (GF bread, Kerrygold butter and Lavazza espresso beans are our big splurge items in this house.)

Horrified, I begin the cycle of checking fridge, freezer, pantry, repeat, wondering how we went through 5 containers of deli ham (Luke) 4 loaves of bread (also Luke) and 3 pints of cherry tomatoes (ONCE AGAIN LUKE). The pantry is roughly bare, save for 3 boxes of bean-based breakfast cereals which my snobbish offspring will not eat, even though breakfast puffs made of brown rice and lentils are both gluten free AND penitential.

How much energy they have, (and how many hours there are in a day without naps.)

Having little kids home with you 24/7 is exhausting. Full stop. I’ll never be as tired as I was when my oldest three were little. However, there is something precious about the sacred stretch of 1-3 pm when you have all little kids (or big kids in school) and the world is your freaking oyster. Got laundry to do? Not anymore, you don’t. A book chapter or six to read? Treat yo self. Want to each lunch in silent, introverted bliss? Nobody will stop you.

I miss those nap times, I truly do. Next year Luke will be in school with the big kids on Mondays and Tuesdays, leaving Zelie and I home by ourselves twice a week, and I’m already salivating over those 4-5 uninterrupted hours of bliss.

In the meantime, I’m making meals, sweeping floors, driving people to appointments and applying bandaids and stern lectures (okay, screaming) all around, giving helpful reminders about not putting your fingers in certain places and also public urination.

I look forward to 9 pm every night when all are asleep, feigning or otherwise, so that I can, um, also go to sleep. I was chronically exhausted when the kids were little, but also dying for some alone time so I tended to burn the midnight oil. Now I’m dog tired from physical and emotional labor and old enough (smart enough?) to know that most nights another hour of sleep will refresh me far more than an hour with my Kindle.

Screentime is best used as a carrot and not a stick. My kids are less likely to respond to my vague threats of “no more episodes” if they’ve already binged half a season of Rescue Bots in a morning. Since giving up shows for Lent, we’ve seen a 400% increase in good attitudes, destructive but endearing creativity, and time spent outside. No comment on sibling relations having either improved or deteriorated.

When screentime is a non-option, my kids tend to be more compliant and creative. When I shock them by offering an episode of something on Formed or throw a Hail Mary and put on an entire Disney movie while trying to do something on a professional level, they respond with eager joy instead of jaded eye rolls.

I also find it serves as a powerful motivator to finishing chores, behaving like a human being, etc, and therefore I’m wise to reserve it for end of day purposes.

They all have really strong feelings about each other, good and bad. Our neighbors probably think we are lunatics based on the screaming + pictures of Jesus all over the walls.

It’s a confusing playlist, I’ll admit. One moment everyone is bouncing idyllically on the trampoline, the next minute the hose is on and there is mayhem and not infrequently, blood.

Having everyone home and playing outside (read: not at school or staring at a screen) is a level of volume that I was not prepared for. Was Luke mute last summer? Was I still in a postpartum stupor? I do not know. But I cringe constantly throughout the day as someone screams in a truly blood curdling scream that someone did something to someone, wondering if today is the day the fire department is going to come.

Our neighborhood is mostly retired folks whose hearing is, I pray, sub optimal. The few kids on our block either live at my house during daylight hours or sit inside like vampires, shying away in fright when they are greeted by a fellow human. In other words, all the noise is coming from us, and it is a lot of noise. A lot.

As much as I enjoy this time together, in other words, I will not mind one bit when that school bell rings again on Monday morning. Until then I’ll be chugging all the LaCroix (another budget busting indulgence to get me through spring break) and thanking God for not giving me the grace to home school.

mental health, motherhood, prayer

The space between

February 20, 2019

Lately I’ve been making use of a previously overlooked and formerly unavailable slot of time in my life: the very early morning. I was lamenting to my best friend at the beginning of January my very slow progress towards accomplishing anything outside my ordinary stream of productivity: laundry, the blog posts I compose for CNA every week, the meals I cook, the uniforms I wash, the floors I mop, any freelance work I take on, etc.

I can get more done than the bare minimum across all fields, but everything else seems to suffer when I do. I do know it’s only a season, and a brief one at that. My oldest is 8, next fall everyone but the baby will be in school all day, at least on Mondays and Tuesdays.

It’s wild to think in the span of 4 years I’ll have gone from 4 kids under 5 needing me every second of every day to, well, whatever the fall will look like. I remember acutely the bittersweet passage out of the season of all-together-all-the-time, and wondering if I would be able to withstand the heartache of separation from my oldest, and then his brother, and so on.

Spoiler alert: we withstood. And we flourished. And I have come to deeply love the rhythm of school year life. It has afforded me an occasion for intimacy with my younger kids that I would not otherwise have enjoyed, something approximating the life their older brothers led, but with a slightly older and wiser mom who is really much more relaxed and, I’d wager, more pleasant to be around. I’m not quite as bouncy on the playground as I once was, but I’m much more likely to let you keep eating that sucker you dropped on the ground.

Anyway, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: God blessed us with a miraculously good baby. All babies are good babies, but this baby is an especially good baby, and sleep is her top performing skill.

So I can get up early. And the time I have always marked out as sacred and necessary for sleep (and will do so again as future babies come, no doubt) is suddenly available.

For more than a month now I’ve been creeping downstairs in the still dark hours before 6 am, hopping in a weird pattern from across the painted linoleum kitchen floor because the squeaky subfloor is sufficient to wake early birds (ask me how I know). I flip the espresso machine on and make my way to the couch or the kitchen table, depending on the temperature. The couch is warmer, but it’s hard to type there, sitting hunched over my laptop with an overstuffed pleather pillow cranking my neck forward in what I can only assume is a definite ergo-no-no position.

It’s hard to focus on prayer early in the morning. It’s hard to focus on prayer any time, honestly, when you’re human. When you’ve been lax about it or you’ve got a bunch of urgent tasks – however mundane – jockeying for your attention. I love my little people but they are nothing if not urgent. And I know God wants to grow in intimacy with me now, not 20 years in the future when I have uninterrupted time for Adoration and meditation and daily Mass.

Anyway, back to this morning. It was almost 6 now and the kids were starting to trickle downstairs one by one. I pulled the baby off the cat for the second time in as many minutes, (wondered briefly about feline brain damage caused by lack of oxygen from toddler Evie’s having smothered her as a kitten, because the cat, she does not move. She has no survival instincts.) and moved into the productivity portion of my pray + produce hour of power.

I didn’t get a ton of writing done, but I was satisfied to have another page, at least, Five paragraphs in need of polish but there on the screen, and better than the five I hadn’t written before this morning.

Later in the shower I lathered my hair with real shampoo, scrubbing away at the vestiges of a week’s worth of the dry kind. I’d set my phone down on the counter reluctantly to finally step into the steamy spray only reluctantly, wanting to keep…what?

It occured to me that on some level, I’ve become uncomfortable being alone with my thoughts, uncomfortable being in a “non-producing” state.

A state like, well, the shower. Which explains why I’d briefly considered launching a podcast episode to play in the background for those 8 otherwise fallow minutes, ultimately deciding no, it might drown out my ability to hear Luke wreaking havoc in the kitchen downstairs.

Dressing with a firefighter’s speed, eager to check in on Luke the destructor lest too much time pass without adult supervision, I flung piles of clean clothes from the floor up to the bed, mentally composing yet another task list for the day ahead. And in my restless, striving stream of though, the Lord bumped His way in, lobbing a football towards me that I reflexively stopped to catch. What He said was this:

“Remember to fill the space between your ribs before you fill the space between your ears.”  

I think He meant this, that in my mad rush for productivity and achievement and results, it’s very easy to operate under my own power. I used to go hours and days without really stopping to pray. Still do, sometimes. I forget what the system runs on, so to speak. Until I come up against something that is bigger than I can handle, that is. Then I’m right back on my knees, yessir, pleading for help I didn’t think I needed when I was “competent.”

I have a bad habit of filling up on head stuff, to the detriment of heart stuff. I’ll read some spiritual writings or theological content, maybe recite a rosary while driving to school. And I should do those things! But I can easily forget that thinking about God isn’t the same as communing with Him in my heart. Isn’t the kind of intimacy human beings were made to run on. Not solely, anyway.

Yesterday we had a confusing doctor’s appointment for one of the kids. Afterwards, my head whirling, I spent hours messaging with friends, talking with my mom, Googling things, reading reviews of different providers. When night came and I was still wrestling with some anxiety about the situation, I realized I hadn’t once prayed about it. And look, I know God knows and sees everything we’re up against, is with us in every moment, but gosh do I spend a lot of time filling up that space between my ears, believing on some level that I can research or call my mom or crowd-source my way out of most any problem.

I also spend an awful lot of time filling my day to the brimful, overflowing with information and sensory input. A book in my car, my Kindle in my purse, my laptop on the counter, my phone in my hand…there is almost no need for me to ever sit idle, alone with my thoughts, or in conversation with God. And it shows. And I don’t think I’m unique in living in this manner that is almost a fleeing from silence.

Fill up the essential space first.

Fill the space between your ribs before you fill the space between your ears.

decluttering, marie kondo, minimalism, motherhood

The life changing magic of bagging it up (even if it was a gift)

January 31, 2019

I’m going to hone straight in on sentimental objects in this next installment on minimalism and decluttering, because without a doubt it is the area that trips more people up than perhaps all other categories combined, and also because it turns out a lot of the people who read Mama Needs Coffee are moms (hi, moms!) and moms get a lot of stuff given to them for their precious ones, everything from Christmas gifts to hand me downs from the neighbor kids.

Moms, lean in close today, because I’m going to unload some heavy artillery in the form of what I hope will prove, ultimately, to be self love: you don’t have to keep anything in your house that you don’t like/ doesn’t serve your family.

(insert disclaimer about toddler underwear and your husband’s whatever collection here)

A toy that is super annoying and makes your kids fight like animals: get rid of it.

A dress your best friend in college gifted you in your early twenties (and which fit in your early twenties): bye!

A decorative engraved flask with your husband’s college nickname on it he got as a groomsman gift … in 2007: see ya. (Obviously ask him first. But it couldn’t hurt to gently inquire when the last time he sipped from said flask was.)

A hulking, dark wood bookshelf that doesn’t match your home, is totally not your style, and is mostly just a clutter magnet …but your now-deceased grandmother left it to you when she died? Oy. Tough one, right? But still, goodbye. Before I delve into my explanation for being so hard hearted, I want to take a minute to unpack the meaning of gift giving.

When somebody gives you a gift, there are a couple mechanisms at work. At a fundamental level, a person gives a gift in order to express some kind of affection, appreciation, or commitment.

We give wedding rings on our wedding day to symbolize the covenant we make with our spouse. We give a beautiful necklace or a bouquet of flowers to our moms once a year to commemorate their motherhood. We slip Starbucks gift cards into our teacher’s hands at Christmas time to express our gratitude.

These are all good, beautiful reasons to give gifts.

We give smaller, less significant gifts too, all the time. A scarf for a birthday present. A rosary from a meaningful pilgrimage somewhere, a book you think someone will love, etc. What is really highlighted in these more common gifting occurrences is the intention: you’re essentially saying to someone, “hey, I was thinking of you!” or “I missed you while I was on this trip” or maybe “I hope this helps you take your mind off the difficulty you’re enduring right now.”

Gifts are transactional in nature, at least for human beings.

We give to express some kind of emotion, and in return, we’re usually hoping for joy, a smile during the unwrapping, a warm hug or, at the least, a heartfelt thank you. Even if the gift is given with no strings attached, rare is the giver who isn’t hoping to elicit pleasure from the receiver.

When my mom, for example, gives a gift to one of my children, she is giving them a tangible expression of her love. And that’s what makes it so hard to part with grandma toys, right?

Wrong! Hear me out. That tangible expression of love? It actually happens the moment she hands the gift over. It helps to think of a gift the way you might think of a hug or a kiss: offered, accepted, received, over.

What happens to the item itself after we’ve gone home and assessed whether we have room for it in our life is actually kind of beside the point; my mom was able to communicate her love to her grandchild, and her grandchild, hopefully, acted appropriately grateful in return.

This is an especially important realization to come to when you have someone in your life whose love language is gift giving. I’ve found far more success with graciously accepting the gift and then deciding after the fact whether or not it fits in my life than in trying to reprogram the giver to switch to giving ballet lessons or zoo passes.

You can definitely make those suggestion! Don’t get me wrong. But know that they may not stick, especially if the person you’re dealing with is an avid and enthusiastic shopper.

One of the most frequent criticisms I hear about minimalism is that it’s impossible to maintain with the constant influx of gifts. My first thought is wow, how loved are we to have gifts coming in constantly?! My second thought is (and this is NOT a critique of someone who genuinely expresses love through gift giving) what an incredibly materialistic and consumer-driven society we live in, that people are constantly giving and receiving gifts year round.

Graduation? There’s a gift for that. Wedding season? Off to Bed, Bath and Beyond. New baby? New blanket. Moving houses? I’ve got a vase for you. Made up holiday? Here’s an appropriately themed trinket. And so on.

One super easy way to break the cycle in your family or circle of friends is to start giving only consumable gifts, with rare exception. You’d be hard pressed to name an occasion that can’t be improved upon with a bottle of wine or a bouquet of flowers.

Think of it this way: we’ve all got probably too many coffee mugs in our cupboards and scarves in our closets. Many of us are struggling to find balance and peace in a cluttered house, as evidenced by the massive market for all things minimalist.

And then there’s this: lots of people are struggling to balance their finances, especially around Christmas time, and may actually find it pretty taxing to buy gifts not only for their immediate family, but also for a widening circle of friends and acquaintances.

Giving begets giving, and that’s not always a good thing. Make a pact with like minded friends or family members that you’re letting each other off the hook next year, and make plans to go see a movie or go out for drinks together instead.

Finally, it might be helpful to think like this: the perfect gift is a unicorn. Rarely, if ever, will someone’s vision for what you’d love/appreciate/need/wear/etc line up with the reality of what you actually love/appreciate/need/wear. I have a friend who is uncannily good at picking out earrings for me. I own maybe a dozen pair of earrings total. 3 of the 12 were gifts from her.

My husband, on the other hand, whom I deeply love, has given me exactly zero pairs of earrings which I both love and wear. And that’s not to say he hasn’t tried to give me earrings (love you honey), but just that his taste and mine are imperfectly matched.

I think that’s probably more typical than nailing it, every time. You’re not going to give – or receive – the perfect gift more often than not. Rare are the opportunities when your tastes, budget, and selection match perfectly with the recipient’s interests and style. Don’t expect to find a unicorn every time! And don’t feel bad when you don’t. They’re rare for a reason.

Where I’m going with this is, you only have room in your house for unicorns. If something in your house, a gift or not, is not a unicorn, set it free! No guilt. (And hey, it might be someone else’s unicorn, and how thrilled are they going to be to find it for half price at the Arc?)

So accept gifts graciously, donate or repurpose gifts thoughtfully, and give gifts mindfully.

With this knowledge in mind, remember that a perfect gift that ticks all the boxes is exceedingly rare, and feel new freedom in being able to assess the things you have been given as gifts with clear eyes. Because they have already performed their fundamental purpose, whether or not you actually like or use them. What a relief.

If you do end up giving away something that was a gift, say a little prayer for the person who gave it to you as you bag it up. Think fondly of a memory you have with them, something that you can hang onto long after the gift itself is faded or useless, and release yourself from the unnecessary burden of hanging onto it – or to any guilt.

About Me, Family Life, motherhood

What my 5 kids taught me in 2018 {part 2}

January 3, 2019

Continued from yesterday. Read part 1 here.

3. Accept people for who they actually are

One of our kids has struggled heroically this year with emotional regulation. I can say heroic now because I recognize the delicate wiring that comprises his arousal system and the unique qualities of his personality. Another child may sail effortlessly through the school day, hopping into the car afterwards brimming with energy and good nature; his tank is full, he spent a full day interacting with his favorite thing in the entire world: other people! He will happily (usually) do his chores and skip outside to play for hours until dinner. Homework, however, is another matter.

This other child though? I see him visibly sagging from the weight of the school day as I pull up to car line, his small shoulders telegraphing a message to me from the curb: I’m done. I’ve handled pretty much everything I’m able to handle today, and I need you to recognize that.

For months I ignored that message, or couldn’t translate it properly. Tantrums erupted daily after school, sometimes stretching for hours past dinnertime and ending only with sleep. We consulted with teachers and saw a counselor and modeled play therapy techniques at home and made plodding progress (again, not linear) and finally, what hit me after months of hard was something his therapist scribbled on a sheet of notes: “remember, this is not something he is doing, this is who he is.”

That single sentence reframed a year of difficulty and in all frankness, resentment on my part.

It wasn’t something he was doing. It was simply who he was. Not adaptable like his brother or fiercely independent like his sister. Sensitive and intelligent and utterly and profoundly exhausted by a day out in the world. My expectations had to rest in the reality of him. He needed little more in the afternoon beyond a snack and to melt into my arms for some quiet time on the couch. And he needed me to simply offer it and not dwell on the disappointment – my disappointment – that asking for anything more, like chores or activities, was asking for the moon. At least for now.

Another child has demonstrated a seemingly infinite capacity for mischief this year, and our house bears visible witness to it.

I can continue to live in willful ignorance of this and leave all the Sharpies in unlocked drawers because none of my other kids would have drawn on the kitchen cabinets with permanent marker, refusing to become one of “those” houses who childproof to the point of ugliness, or I can save myself the heartache of more broken treasures and destroyed tubes of mascara and put everything out of his destructive reach.

Every human person is a mystery. They have a particular mission they’ve been given to share with the world, and they are comprised of a surprisingly disparate collection of parts and pieces that don’t necessarily add up by human standards.

I’m not sure I would have gone with that particular trait and that specific weakness, I can muse critically, mentally scoring God’s craftsmanship in one of my children while wiping something unmentionable off a surface that should be out of reach, a masterpiece which must have taken long, careful minutes of intelligent strategy and persistent effort to achieve. This one’s going to end up on one side of the law or the other, as they say.

Or I can keep my eyes and ears open and maintain a sense of curiosity and even sometimes in rare moments of benevolence on my part, wonder.

It really would be a dull, efficient world had I designed it. But there would never, ever be poop in a place you weren’t expecting poop.

4. Self-acceptance is a beautiful, instinctive thing*

I hope this memory of my preschool daughter sears itself into the depths of my long term memory: looking down at her suddenly too-tight jeans and her adorably bulging belly preventing the buttoning of what buttoned yesterday, and exclaiming with joy “Wow mommy, I’m growing! This is great, I need new clothes!”

I look at her dumbstruck. Impressed. Wishing I could frame things that way. Granted, a child’s growing body is healthy and normal and expected. But shouldn’t an adult body also be released from the shackles of a static self image?

Every time I glance in the mirror and excoriate my reflection for not reflecting high school Jenny’s youthful visage back at me, I burn the miserable neural pathway of wistful nostalgia in a little deeper. What if I could expect – and therefore accept – a changing body?

I don’t mean an acceptance that tosses the eye cream and hangs up the gym shoes; that’s resignation by another name. It would be for me, anyway.

I mean an acceptance that bravely expects change. An acceptance that is untethered from the frantic message of marketers and advertisers and the tiresome echo chambers of social media and is deeply rooted in this gospel truth instead: you are fearfully and wonderfully make, and it is good that you are here.

I watched my little daughter bloom from a miniature preschooler this year to a sturdy little kid, arms and legs lengthening even as her torso blew past those size 4 skinny jeans (also, skinny jeans for toddlers? I judge myself. But also, that’s all you can find in most stores.) She was delighted to embrace her new body, knowing instinctively that it is good to grow and stretch and change. No playground bully or Instagram filter has told her differently, yet. I pray that when one does, she will be able to see the lie for what it is and turn back to reality.

*(Mental illness notwithstanding, of course. Depression, anxiety, and other pre existing conditions in our brains that precede self awareness can certainly interfere with an intrinsic self acceptance. Original sin is a real buzz kill.)

Finally, and most importantly of all of these, I look back over these past 12 months and see a distinct theme woven through all the smaller parts of the story, and it is this: that I am not in control.

I am not in control. You are not in control. None of us can hope to execute the perfect list of New Year’s resolutions because none of us can say for certain what the coming year holds.

I can fill a whole bullet journal with goals, set a dozen intentions for the coming year, fill a spreadsheet with data tracking my progress, but I don’t have all the necessary information at hand.

I can’t see the illnesses and heartaches, the financial stressors, the windfalls, the knock down drag out fights or the quiet moments of sorrow in the middle of the night.

All I can control, in the end, is me. Me, and how well I love the people around me.

Motherhood is searing this into my soul one stomach virus and night waking and parent teacher conference at a time, and I’m a very slow learner. As my cramped soul expands to consider the possibility that maybe this thing, too, can be good, I’m learning my lesson. Maybe this thing I didn’t expect and this situation I certainly didn’t ask for can be meaningful on some level, can be redeemed somehow, was what God intended for me all along.

I can imagine my heavenly audience of intercessors gathered around whatever God’s version of Facebook Portal is, waiting to see how I’ll respond to the situation at hand: Will she scream? Rant to her husband? Pull the soiled sheets off the mattress a little too violently? Write a scathing review online?

Sometimes the redemption exists only in my own heroic (ha) effort to resist throwing an adult temper tantrum when someone, say, stabs a hole in the couch. Because someone is going to stab a hole in the couch, okay? And then they’re probably going to cram it full of orange slices or snotty Kleenex. The only real variable here is time. Time, and whether or not mommy is going to add a new word to the family vernacular when she finds it.

But that variable is huge. And as I reflect on the gift of another year given, fully aware that I’m promised nothing beyond today, I hope to make better use of my time. Not simply becoming more efficient and productive, but accepting reality for what it is: a gift from a good Father Who is watching and waiting to see what I’ll make of it.

Not all my kids, but an approximation of what the checkout guy at Trader Joe’s sees when he sees all my kids.
About Me, Family Life, large family, motherhood, Parenting

What my 5 kids taught me in 2018 (I should have taken better notes)

January 2, 2019

Another retrospective New Year’s post, just what the internet needs! For your enjoyment I think I’ll break it into two installments since said internet has destroyed our collective attention span. You’re welcome.

I sighed this morning, as I leaned over the kitchen counter this morning waiting for my espresso to drizzle out another shot of “sorry you’re not sleeping these days,” and scrolled through my blogfeed reader – remember those? I still use one! (And sometimes I read paper books. Subversive, I know!)

I was reading through another “goals I nailed in 2018” post, mentally congratulating the author but also wondering if maybe I’m doing something wrong.

Gone – for now, at least – are my days of setting lofty S.M.A.R.T. goals in January and having a list of successes to look back over at the year’s end. I can point to a few small things that I’m doing better, to patterns of healing and growth in the emotional and spiritual realm that are no small matter, but not really to things that I’ve accomplished, per se.

Any growth this year has happened to me rather than through me. It has consisted more of accepting and embracing circumstances as they come to pass, and less of setting out to conquer x and actually, well, conquering x.

And it’s not linear. It’s a hot, embarrassing mess. Cut to scene one of me angrily scrubbing kitchen counters with a diaper wipe on one of the interminable days between Christmas and New Year’s Day this year, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand and feeling such irrational anger at the hand we’d been dealt for what felt like the umpteenth year in a row: barfing, fevers, night wakings and not a single family event attended.

Crumpled in the wake of sickness was the calendar of holiday festivities I’d eagerly consulted in my mind’s eye as November melted into December, the anticipation buoying me along through one more school lunch packed, one more pickup, one more last minute costume assembled, one more late night of work.

Soon, the cursor was all but hovering over January 1 and we’d accomplished seemingly nothing over our Christmas “break,” instead trading night shifts and shampooing vomit out of carpets and picking up yes another prescription. (We’re not re-selling these online, we promise.)

I was feeling sorry for myself as I scrubbed that counter, despite having just read a stirring essay by a father of 9 with cancer, whose piece contained a hyperlink to the blog of a mother of 7 with cancer who had died of said cancer. “We can all take a lesson in contentment from the pages of her book; what she would have given for one more day, week, month of ‘ordinary time,’” he wrote.

I paraphrase. All that to say, I’m a sh*t and I know it.

Thank God He is training me via a thousand paper cuts and not a severe and mortal blow. At least not yet.

1. Flexibility

I cheerily responded to an email from my spiritual director in late December (but pre-Christmas, notably) that Advent had been “surprisingly joyful, actually! We’d had some illnesses and some difficulties but it was going to be smooth sailing from here on out and we were so looking forward to Christmas.”

You can probably see where this is going.

The lesson here for me was one I’m always exasperatedly trying to impart to my children. Guys, be flexible! That’s just life in a big family.

“Flexibility!” I apologized to my crew, dipping a washcloth in cool water and laying it on the 3-year-old’s inferno of a forehead and texting our regrets to a long-awaited Christmas party with my other hand.

“Flexibility,” I shrugged, sending Dave solo to 4 pm Mass on Christmas Eve while I sat couch duty with 3 fevers burning and what sounded like an entire infirmary of coughing. The newly Tamiflu’d preschooler lay across my legs like an electric blanket, eyes dull and pitiful.

“Flexibility,” I reminded myself with jaw clenching, running another load of laundry on Christmas Day. And another. And then another.

By the time December 31st rolled around, I was stiff and aching from the effort. Both parents were. My own flexibility exhausted, I emotionally assumed the fetal position, snapping at simple requests and drinking more coffee than was wise or helpful.

I had learned the lesson, or so I thought. I could be flexible. Fun, even! Okay, plan B, we’ll stay home and light all the candles and order pizza!

But flexibility on my terms, that’s what I wanted.

God wanted to equip me, I think, with the superpower of inconvenient flexibility.

That was not on my Amazon wishlist.

And as readily as I can admit that, gosh, that kind of adaptability would sure come in handy leading this big ‘ol family as the mom, my human nature shies away in horror from the work required to acquire it. And so He keeps assigning the reading, sending home the assignments, so to speak. Not because He is an awful taskmaster who wants me to suffer, but because learning this thing will be a profound help to my long term happiness and holiness, not to mention my family’s.

2. Be open to unexpected gifts

Having as many babies as I’ve had has demonstrated to me that every baby is ground zero, every person a new starting line. I’ve gleaned some some time-tested lessons from baby to baby, but each new person who joins the family has necessitated a sort of amnesia of expectations. I have loosely affixed goal posts in my mind, but the new addition is welcome to blow past them in his or her own way. Number one needed a paci attached almost surgically to his person at all times and slept on a tight schedule I could set a watch by; number two was almost physically attached to my person at all times and slept almost never, as far as I can remember.

By the time number five started babbling mama and baba and taking mincing steps all over the house and dropping her second nap all before the age of one, I trimmed my sails of expectation and resigned myself to a child who was determinedly mobile months before any of her siblings were. It wasn’t remarkable in any sense other than this: it was her.

This was simply who she was, and she was revealing herself to me in a way that none of the books or blogs I’d read or even her own siblings could have. I’d mentally steeled myself for the horrifying spectacle that is newborn sleep with four other children in the house. She showed up and slept through the night by week 6. Right now she is contentedly eating mini marshmallows at her high chair beside me and I’m congratulating myself because I did the responsible thing and pre-shredded them for her.

I’m a much better mom for her than I was for her older siblings, simply because I’ve studied more. Learned what hills to die on (sleep, always) and what hills to forfeit to the battering winds of what actually works (this time, bottles). I begged God to make breastfeeding easy for me this time around, and in the reality of Zelie’s circumstances He answered me big time by simply removing it from the picture altogether.

Never rule out the possibility that God wants to answer a prayer, perhaps did answer a prayer in a way you never expected.

(to be continued in part 2)

Just imagine I lysol wiped the entire cart first and there’s an invisible brightly patterned stretchy cart cover lovingly positioned beneath her. And that she’s not barefoot. Voila, firstborn status achieved!
About Me, deliverance, feast days, keto, mental health, mindfulness, motherhood, PPD

Consolations and Desolations of 2018

December 21, 2018

The other night we did something pretty remarkable with a group of friends at a Christmas party. Wedged in right between the overconsumption of some terrible red wine and a white elephant gift exchange, one of the guys invited us to share “desolations and consolations” from the previous year.

Between laughter and sober tears, couples went around the room and told their stories. I was struck by the humility and honesty the activity required, and also by the willingness to be vulnerable. It would have been easy to keep it light and surface level and I wouldn’t have blamed anyone for doing it, but no one did. Every person who shared did so from the depths, and it was pretty moving. Some couples shared stories that were already familiar. Others reached for stories that hadn’t seen much daylight, surprising the group with the weight of the load they’d been carrying.

It reminded me of something that is too easy to forget; that everybody has a story. And few of us know the details of each other’s stories. And any time you are entrusted with those details, good or bad, it is an honor.

I was proud of the men in the room for being willing to open up. There’s a range of different masculine personalities in our circle of friends, from frat boys to intellectual giants and everything in between, and it is so refreshing to see their willingness to be humble and real.

I was proud of the women in the room for being transparent and pulling off the masks most of us wear in real life, whether in the carline at school or on social media. Real women can reveal weaknesses as readily as they can reveal strength.

Something about the Christmas season – and yes, we are in Advent still – invites a kind of reflection that is so necessary and so cathartic for the human soul. I think that’s part of what can make this season hard for people who are grieving – reflection and recollection go hand in mitten with the yuletide.

I’m 36 years old today, and far from despising my doorstep-of-Christmas birthday as I did when I was younger, I absolutely love having my personal calendar turn a new page right around the time that the Church’s calendar and the calendar year do the same.

It’s like a trifecta of reflection on the past year, if I lean into it. And so I will, sharing just a few – not 36, don’t worry – of my own consolations and desolations from 2018.

-1-

My dad’s cancer diagnosis. From the moment I got the call from my mom, I had peace. I was concerned but not hysterical, and I had a deep consoling conviction that he was going to be fine. This was a complete consolation in what could have been an utterly desolating time. I am naturally anxious and prone to health anxiety, especially about my parents, being a dutifully neurotic firstborn. Also, I was 3 days postpartum when they told me the news. I was in the most fragile of mental states given my past history with PPD, but I felt enveloped in tranquility. I asked for prayers and I prayed a lot myself, and I truly don’t remember a time over this past year when I was terribly worried. Even while sitting for hours with my mom in the waiting room during his surgery, I felt sure he was going to make a full recovery.

And he has. He is approaching 6 months cancer free, and had a clean report on his last scan. He also miraculously escaped without nerve damage from the procedure, an unexpected and wonderful gift.

His presence at my sister’s wedding a few weeks ago, the fifth child he has given away in marriage now, underscored for all of us how tremendous this year has been, and how differently it could have gone.

I won’t take my parents’ and inlaws’ robust good health for granted. I pray for many more good years, grateful, in a way, for the conviction of that terrible diagnosis. The big takeaway for me was this: the only thing I can actually control is how I react to the circumstances and events that God permits in my life.

Easy for me to say when he’s healthy now, right? But this realization and the profound gift of an increasing capacity for emotional self mastery has been an unbelievable gift to me, a girl who has always defaulted to chronic anxiety and occasional panic attacks. It’s like this: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ― Viktor. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

-2-

On a related note, another huge consolation this year has been the gift of a good counselor, an effective counseling technique, a good antidepressant, targeted hormone supplementation, and some profoundly efficacious healing prayers. I wish I could point to any one of those things and say definitively: this was the thing. The thing that changed everything! But I can’t. I’m a poor candidate for a double blind study because I am notorious for Trying All The Things until I find something that works. Chalk it up to being very results oriented. I’ve never felt better in my adult life. I have very little anxiety and a fuse that is about a mile longer (though Luke my verb still manages to extract a decent amount of maternal, um, energy).

-3-

Along with that longer fuse, I have realized, truly by the grace of God, this truth: you get to decide whose voice you’re going to listen to. For months after Zelie was born, I was working doggedly and without any evidence of results to lose the baby weight. I swam for miles and miles each week, counted calories, tracked my meals, got sugdar out of my diet, etc, etc, etc. And nothing happened. I mean, I’m sure it was good for my heart to do all that swimming, but no weight was lost.

My frustration would always, always peak while getting ready for Mass on Sunday mornings. I would whip myself into a frenzy of self hatred, glowering at my reflection in the bathroom mirror with piles of rejected items of clothing around my feet. The kids were dressed and ready, Dave was dressed and ready, and I would be resorting to tearfully stuffing myself into my stretchiest pair of jeans and caking makeup on my face to disguise my puffy eyes.

I have a vivid memory of almost growling to myself in the mirror during one of these pre Mass abuse sessions: “I hate you.”  And it dawned on me like a clap of thunder: that is not my voice.

Using my impressive powers of deduction, I figured out that it wasn’t God’s voice, either.

I prayed, in that moment, for God to show me how He sees me. And He immediately pointed me to the Cross. He didn’t pat my head and tell me how pretty I was. He didn’t give me visual amnesia and cause me to suddenly see a supermodel looking back at me in the mirror. But He did correct my vision. “Love,” He seemed to be saying, “looks like this. This is love. This is what love does to a body.”

Once I put two and two together, that God sees the self immolation of motherhood with the same eyes of love that look upon His Beloved Son on the Cross, I correctly deduced that Satan hates me, personally. He hates God, and he hates whatever images God. He has a vested interest in making sure I hear that hatred coming through, loud and clear. And he’s not stupid. Women want to be beautiful. Women are drawn to beauty. Beauty speaks our soul language. And in my woundedness and sadness, he had gotten really good at leaning in close and whispering all the things I thought were true about myself: that I was fat, worthless, ugly, hopeless, ruined, repulsive, past my prime, never going to recover, never going to be an athlete again, etc.

The clever part is this: I’ve always struggled with self image, I have no memory of ever not struggling, and so I was pretty sure that the voice whispering all those terrible things, that constant refrain in my mental soundtrack, was mine.

I cannot possibly overstate how transformative this realization has been. Are the negative thoughts all gone? Nope. But knowing that they aren’t mine? Stunning, extraordinary freedom.

I can deflect those little slings and arrows as enemy fire now, no longer locked in a prison of self harm. The bad tapes I’ve been playing over and over again in my mind for decades are broken now, their tracks becoming more distorted and scratched with every effort on my part to resist and rewire and redirect them.

Neuroplasticity is real. What a gift! God loves me personally, and His and my enemy, the devil, hates me personally. What a revelation! The desolation of the first 8 months of this year was in my inability to accept my 5th-time postpartum body. The consolation has been not in the miracle of a little weight loss, but in this new ability to correctly identify different voices.

I feel like I’ve happened upon the secret of happiness. Discovered the fountain of contentment, the wellspring of peace. It makes me stupid happy, this new superpower. And it’s such a relief. I could cry right now thinking about the way I used to talk to myself, and I could cry in gratitude for no longer being enslaved to that way of thinking.

2018, you’ve been a year of real surprises. I never expected to look back on 35 and definitively put my finger on it as the year that God rescued me from myself.

But He did. And He has.

And He wants to rescue each one of us, personally. I’m sure of it. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. Here’s to another trip around the sun.

P.s.

I’ve been praying these prayers daily for a couple weeks now, and I’m noticing that when I am faithful to the practice, it is much easier to remain in this place of peace. The negative thoughts are laughably easy to identify as enemy missives, and there is an overall lightness to life. I can’t recommend the practice – or the app – enthusiastically enough.

Catholic Spirituality, christmas, Family Life, liturgical living, motherhood

Motherhood + Holiday Magic

December 10, 2018

I love this time of year more than any other. I look forward to this particular stretch for months, such that when it does finally arrive most years, I’ve perhaps overplayed my enthusiastic hand just a tad.

This year, being that I am neither nursing, pregnant, nor newly postpartum, I’ve had the chance to look around and take an honest inventory of where we’re at as a family and come to the conclusion: I can try adding in some little extras this year.

We were talking customs and family traditions as an office the other week and I maintain that mine was the weirdest and least liturgically sound: my siblings and I would gather in the family room on Christmas Eve after the littlest kids had been put to bed, and we would crowd around the newest non-believer in Santa and let them in on the secret. Wrapped in an unfortunate poinsettia apron and knighted with a roll of wrapping paper, we would solemnly induct him or her into “the Christmas club,” making them promise to protect the secret of Santa for the little ones who still believed, and just generally making a big fuss over their entry into adulthood. There was a real oath we made them swear and everything.

Were my parents even aware of our antics? Did they model the Christmas Club for us in any way? No. No, I really don’t think so. If memory serves, they were probably crashed out upstairs with a newborn, my mom exhausted by the previous month of effort to find, buy, and wrap presents for everyone.

In fact, a significant focus of the Christmas club in future years would come to be our procurement of trinkets and the stuffing of all the stockings, the last-minute late night wrapping of some – and eventually, most – of the family’s presents, and of course the careful gnawing of reindeer carrots and the splashing and nibbling of Santa’s milk and cookies.

So my expectations for holiday season 2018 are … modest.

I can plan and execute the perfectly curated holiday scenario, but I can’t select which memories will make their way down into their little hearts.

That’s part of the beauty of childhood, I’m coming to find as a mother of slightly older kids. There are so many sensory experiences to choose from, especially as a Catholic, and different things will stick with different kids. And the things they’ll stubbornly choose to hold onto? Totally not my call.

One might remember the sticky wax dripping from the Advent candles we’ll light every night at dinner, singing a verse of “O Come O Come Emmanuel (yes, again, put your fork down and stop eating until we’re done) Another will just remember that mom didn’t really seem to cook for the entire month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and gosh, we ate a lot of crock pot chili that time of year.

Like, a lot.

Which I’ll totally present to them as a our small effort to scale back and simplify and make the little sacrifice, and not solely due to maternal holiday fatigue.

Some of the tried and failed activities of years gone by: making personalized Christmas ornaments, and homemade Jesse tree + ornaments crafted lovingly each morning as the corresponding Scripture passage was read aloud. We got 17 days in before everybody’s enthusiasm evaporated, mine first. Now we have a ziplock bag of tattered yarn and construction paper creations that has spent 4 years in Advent decor exile, and this year I’m giving myself permission to toss the thing and admit Jesse tree defeat.

My sister and I were recalling our childhood advent calendar – a quilted fabric banner which hung on the fridge with numbered pockets for each date, a traveling star moving from space to space until finally arriving at the top – baby Jesus! – on Christmas eve.

I can’t believe mom made that, my sister recalled with awe, shaking her head in wonder.

“Mom didn’t make that, she bought it at that weird craft fair held at the high school every year.”

We regarded each other solemnly and laughed. Our memories, too, are tinted rose by the beautifying and forgiving mists of time.

Absent are the Christmas mornings filled with wailing and gnashing of teeth over awful presents or unfairly distributed loot; the indignity of being prodded and brushed and stuffed into itchy tights to suffer through a long, cold Dan Schuette-fied liturgy in the gym, exiled to the overflow crowd of which we always seemed to be a part, shifting our feet miserably in puddles of dirty melting snow as we stood on the edge of the basketball court.

I dreamily recount my own fond memories of “the Christmas club” which, at the time, was almost certainly born of necessity, my mother tossing up her hands in exhaustion and flinging rolls of scotch tape and dollar store wrapping paper at her adolescent children at 9 pm on Christmas eve. Which, if you’re reading, mom, is deeply comforting to your now thirtysomething daughter who is exhausted by the prospect of providing your grandchildren with all the comfort and joy this holiday season.

When I say I can do more this year, what I mean is that I can be somewhat intentional in my direction for our family celebration. But I can’t guarantee that the highlight of the season won’t be yogurt tubes for breakfast, lunch, and every snack between.

“Remember when mom used to give us Go-gurts to help us enter into the penitential season of Advent? So we’d always be a little bit hungry and think of the Holy Family journeying to Bethlehem, unable to find shelter?”

I can imagine my extremely literal 6-year-old pointing out to his brother one December night in the future, perhaps over beers, that “mom was probably just really tired and all she bought was yogurt that year.”

Touche, future John Paul. You found me out.

Some plans for executing said intention?

More family time doing spent nothing more than snuggling on the couch with candles lit. Maybe we’ll pray a decade of the rosary. Maybe we’ll just stream the James Taylor holiday station each evening.

More nights where I surprise them with thermoses of hot chocolate and we jump in the car for an impromptu drive through the fancy neighborhood for light peeping.

More focus on little details like candles always lit, Christmas jammies worn for a month straight, the occasional daily Mass as a family, and tiny fake Ikea Christmas trees in bedrooms.

I want to sit back and enjoy this season, in order that they get to really enjoy the season. Less planning, yelling, and scrubbing, and more saying yes to marshmallows and requests for movies and my participation in coloring time. Letting them touch the nativity scene figures if they want to, the real ones from Italy, and smudge up my perfect holiday decor.

They’ll still probably choose to remember fondly, during Christmases to come, the butt joke we weren’t quick enough to bleep out from the beginning of Home Alone instead of a charming homemade craft their loving mother slaved over, and that’s okay. This time of year was never about me, after all.

Motherhood is nothing if not a slow suffocation of the ego, the self annihilating and oddly liberating realization that you are not, after all, the center of your own universe.

No better time to put that knowledge into practice than the most wonderful time of the year.

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.