Catholic Spirituality, large family, Marriage, motherhood, pregnancy, self care, Theology of the Body

“His body, your body”

April 17, 2018

About a month ago I was talking with a priest friend on the phone, sharing some difficulties about this present season of life with a whole lotta babies and a really wrecked body. Wrecked not only in the sense of “I don’t like the way I look” (though, sure, there is that) but in the sense of “everything hurts when I walk down the stairs, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to run comfortably across a parking lot again, let alone a mile.”

Getting old is hell. But it sure beats the alternative! And I’m not really that old yet, at 35. I remind myself of this when I see a haggard specter of my former self peering back at me in the mirror pre coffee most mornings, startling at the stranger with the same colored eyes. It’s more the mileage, not the manufacturing date, at least in my case.

One baby was hard work. Two babies was nuts! (Hardest transition by far, from one to two. If you can push past that point you’ll be golden; you’re never in the position of doubling your workload again. Unless, I guess, twins?) Three was like, nbd we got this down. Four gave me a little pause for the first couple months. And five? Wrecked. Beleaguered. Losing my keys in the car door, putting my phone in the fridge, and still carrying around a good 40 extra pounds at almost 4 months postpartum.

Worth it, though. Worth it, worth it, worth it.

And yet still really, really hard.

It’s hard to lose yourself for the sake someone(s) you love, no matter what that looks like for you. For some people it will take the form of caring for a sick or dying parent or spouse. For others it could be a more literal application, like sharing a kidney or physically shielding someone from a deadly blow. For parents it often looks like death by a thousand night wakings. A slow trickle of self denial and stress that can carve away at solid rock as surely – albeit more slowly – as a raging river.

I was telling my friend, Fr. J, that the most difficult time for me by far in terms of how I’m feeling about myself is the 30 minutes before Sunday Mass once I’ve gotten the kids dressed (with lots of help from Dave) and I’m frantically trying on option after too-tight option, the discard pile rising on my closet floor along with my blood pressure. One Sunday, probably 7 weeks or so after little Z was born, this phenomenon came to a vicious head as I stared bleakly into the bathroom mirror, rejected outfit combos strewn about my feet.

I hate you. I seethed silently at my reflection. And then I jumped, physically startled by the vitriol of my self talk. Out loud I had the wherewithal (grace is real, y’all) to say out loud, “Jesus, that wasn’t from you. Help me. Show me how you see me.” and immediately the image of His battered body hanging on the cross sprang to mind.

This is how I see your body, dear one. A sacrifice of love.

I was floored. And, I wish I could add, also completely and irrevocably healed of my subpar self image. But … work in progress.

But it sure did help to reframe things that morning.

I shared this little experience with Fr. and he was quiet for a moment. A longish moment, actually, during which time I suspected – correctly – that he was praying. When he did speak again, it was to share the following beautiful image with me.

“Jesus is showing me His body in the Eucharist, and then pointing to your body. He seems to be saying ‘His body, your body…they are connected. You cannot worship the one while despising the other.”‘

I have never heard that particular connection made between our bodies and His, no matter how much lip service I’ve given to the notion of being a “temple of the Holy Spirit.” I guess I’d always mentally categorized that one into the “do not defile with sin” category, neglecting to acknowledge that it’s not enough to just refrain from defiling the temple…one must also approach the temple itself with a rightly ordered sense of awe and reverence.

I don’t know about you, but I typically do not revere my body in any way, shape, or form; from the negative self talk I engage in to the poor food choices I make to the self deprecating humor I frequently employ to mask the shame of feeling not enough.

I was quiet as I mulled over Fr.’s image, recognizing for the first time that it must not only be displeasing to Jesus to hear my negative self talk, but it actually hurts Him.

Before we hung up, Fr. encouraged me to make it to Mass to receive Holy Communion as frequently as I could manage, kids and all. “The Lord has specific graces He wants to pour out for your healing and wholeness each time you receive the Eucharist. Go as often as you can.”

Guess how many times I’ve made it to daily Mass since that conversation?

Yeah, zero.

Sure, I have a super little baby still and a double shot of preschoolers at home, but helloooooo priorities. Clearly I have work to do in that area.

However, on the Sundays between now and then, I have meditated on Fr.’s words before and after Communion, asking the Lord to really double down on those healing graces in between swipes to keep a toddler off the baby’s carseat and pulling someone’s dress down over her underwear. Again.

I can’t say whether it’s “working” yet in the sense that I’m feeling like high-fiving myself when I look in the mirror now, but it is foremost in my mind now to at least try – for Jesus’ sake – to see myself and the sacrifices of motherhood through new eyes.

I think this is probably a lesson I’m going to be learning for the rest of my life, and while I’m not going to stop begging Him to remove the thorn, neither will I refuse any help He wants to offer in tending the wound.

It’s funny, because it was the obvious beauty and truth of this very concept that so attracted me to JPII’s Theology of the Body – that our bodies are good and holy and that they speak to us of God’s heart, of His plan for our eternal union with Him. And then I entered into my vocation and began the purgative process of actually living out the Theology of the Body and whoa, nelly, is it a little tougher to believe that a fluffy, saggy mom bod speaks a language of truth, goodness, and beauty nearly as well as the body of a single young twenty-something does.

His body, your body. Unbelievably difficult to accept. But if it’s true, it changes everything. Calls to mind this quote from St. Teresa of Avila:

“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

coffee clicks, current events, pregnancy

Coffee clicks: December 15th

December 15, 2017

Even though it’s the shortest possible Advent, liturgically speaking, I’m still kind of feeling like things are craaaaawling by. Christmas is 10 days away, which is so soon. But when I stop to think I might still be pregnant 10 days from now…. well, yeah.

At any rate, it’ll be a magical sort of progression of time between now and then for our family, baby or no. Today is Evie’s 4^th birthday, which she marked by coming downstairs at 3 am to snuggle while I was up being a pseudo-productive insomniac. We cuddled for a while before I convinced her that it was, in fact, still nighttime, as evidenced by the Christmas lights glowing merrily out the window.

Tonight we have the Christmas program at school, and then tomorrow, the absolute highlight of Advent 2017: STAR WARS. Also my birthday celebration with my parents, all my adult siblings + spouses. If I ever doubted God’s love for me, that silly notion was laid to rest when Disney bought Lucasfilm and started cranking out a brand spanking new iteration of everyone’s favorite space opera every December for the past 4 years. Hashtag very blessed.

Next week the kids have just a few days of school, culminating in a half day on the 21^st, my 35^th birthday and the official starting point of the “advanced maternal age” portion of this pregnancy. It’s also the day of my brother’s rehearsal dinner, with his wedding to follow on the 22^nd. Then it’s basically the best day of the year, Christmas Adam, a brief extra-liturgical pause solemnly observed in my family of origin by watching Home Alone and singing karaoke and maybe cigars (though not his year) and perhaps getting the tree totally decorated before a blur of long Masses and joyous celebration…

And so help me, if I am still pregnant come Boxing Day (which, despite the flurry of activity this week is still a distinct possibility) I don’t know what stamina or motivation I will have left.

So that’s what my Google calendar looks like for the rest of December. Whew.

I have some great links this week, starting with a story that is close to home and utterly heartwarming:

I temporarily scrapped another, lighter-hearted piece (forthcoming early next week) while pondering the occasion of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s feast day earlier this week. I remembered how much she had helped me through Genevieve’s delivery, now 4 years ago, and since then have been asking her intercession as this current resident’s exit date draws near:

Maybe you don’t know this about me (though after that disclosure towards the beginning, it’s a little more obvious) but I’m probably the biggest female Star Wars fan you’ve ever met who is simultaneously living a normal looking life (no cosplay or card games or weird conventions). But find yourself signed up for a Jedi trivia night at your local neighborhood pub and missing a 4^th teammmate? You’re gonna want to call me. Or maybe Bishop Conley, if I’m not available.

“But yea though ewok through the valley of the shadow of death, Bishop Conley feared no evil, and found a fisherman brave enough to take his group of friends to the island, because Han-YOLO.”

Great news out of Ohio for anyone who claims to care about the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed. It always puzzles me that, on the whole, culture warriors and social justice activists aren’t more impassioned about the rights of people with Down Syndrome. Seems the polar opposite of progressive.

This piece is a long but essential read. My parents have been calling abortion a “sacrament” of the secularist religion since I can first remember talking about it around the dinner table, and Eberstadt’s piece magnificently distills the tenants and dogmas of this brave new religion into non-academic sized bites. (But boy, when I read heavy hitting pieces that go past 2,000 words, I sure am aware of how much the internet and social media have weakened/destroyed my attention span…)

“All of the expressions of animosity now aimed against Christianity by this new secularist faith share a common denominator. They are rooted in secularist dogma about the sexual revolution”

Finally, did you catch this short (unaffiliated) video about harnassing the power of Amazon Prime Now for good? I was full on weeping by the end. Praying Amazon execs see it and take note.

Do you follow CNA on Instagram? You want to. Also, even Popes have that one school picture that will follow them around for ever.

Happy (belated) ordination anniversary, Papa!

Happiest last week plus a day of Advent! It’s not too late to jump back on the horse if you’ve fallen slack in your preparations and add in a little sacrifice or penence here or there as the Christmas countdown ticks down. I like to try to turn off the Christmas music between now and the 24^th to kind of reset my brain in preparation for celebration, and that will be especially necessary this year as I’ve been a little, ah, lax in my generally temperate pre-Christmas indulgence in James Taylor. Also planning to try to offer up the somewhat interminable nights of prodromal labor which seem temporarily here to stay, so please, if you have specific prayer intentions, please share them and I’ll remmber you while I’m not sleeping from 2-5 am for the next few weeks…

About Me, advent, birth story, Catholic Spirituality, pregnancy, Suffering

Am I not she who is your mother?

December 12, 2017

I will never forget my labor with Genevieve, thus far my only daughter (though that title may be ceded in mere weeks now.) Partly because it was drawn out over 3 agonizingly long days of prodromal labor – not hideously painful, but hugely exhausting – and partly because she was the only baby whose sex we found out ahead of time, so we knew “who” we were waiting on in a more personal way.

I remember feeling very connected to Our Lady being pregnant with Evie during the Advent season, and with an estimated due date of Christmas Day, I allowed my imagination to carry me along on the long journey towards Bethlehem, comforting myself with the notion that even if I were averaging 4 hours of sleep each night with contractions coming almost unrelentingly (but non-productively) around the clock for days on end, at least I wasn’t on a donkey.

The evening of December 12th, 2013, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, found me once again hunched over the bathroom counter in pain, timing contractions that both I and my iPhone app knew were not going to amount to a pattern worthy of hospital admission. Dave knocked on the bathroom door, having returned from a late night grocery run, and handed me a beautiful bouquet of roses.

They were wrapped in cellophane and still bearing the store logo, but there on the crinkly plastic was an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the very same image supernaturally imposed on St. Juan Diego’s tilma on the hill at Teypeyac more than 500 years ago.

The roses eventually found their way to water. As I was balling up the wrappings and clippings to toss out, I impulsively grabbed some kitchen scissors and cut the image of Our Lady out of the plastic, fashioning a little 8 inch high icon of crinkly plastic which I taped to the bathroom mirror.

I spent a lot of time looking to Mary over the next 72 hours, bracing my hands on either side of the sink and looking into her delicate brown face. I reminded myself in between the waves of seemingly inefficient and interminable contractions that she too was a mother, that she too had done this. I fixed my eyes on the black sash draped around her waist, whose imagery symbolizes pregnancy.

That’s right, Mary is actually pregnant in the image seared into the fibers of Juan Diego’s tilma.

It was, at turns, comforting and confounding to think of God putting His own Mother through this – though the jury is still out on what, precisely, Mary’s physical experience of childbirth entailed. Various Church Fathers have weighed in on the matter, one the Church allows to exist shrouded in no small amount of mystery. We know that Mary physically carried the Christ child in her womb and that she mysteriously and miraculously maintained even the physical aspects of her virginity upon His birth, but beyond that, God has not chosen to reveal specific details about what birth was “like” for she who was conceived without sin.

Still, as I hunched over that sink and raised my eyes to the filmy plastic icon of the Mother of God, I took comfort in the slight swelling apparent in her midsection, wondering if she had experienced round ligament pain or pubic symphysis dysfunction or sciatica – I doubted you could ride a donkey many miles at any stage of pregnancy and escape unscathed, ergonomically speaking.

I wondered over Mary’s experience of Jesus’ tiny – and then not so tiny – kicks under her ribcage. The in-utero hiccups that rattle the whole belly, the improbable acrobatics that accompany those final few weeks of stretched-outness and can’t do this another day-ness.

When it was finally – finally – time to go to the hospital and stay at the hospital, I ducked into the bathroom and grabbed the piece of plastic off the mirror. I wanted her with me still, epidural or no.

It turns out she wanted to be with me, too. The nurse who checked me upon arrival announced a triumphant “5 cm, you’re staying!” and escorted us from triage to the delivery room, where I could have and might have wept in relief. 3 days of little sleep and contractions 15 minutes apart around the clock; I sank exhausted into the hospital bed, nodding enthusiastically that yes, I did want them to call anesthesia right away.

As I settled into a blissful and exhausted sleep, I remember the nurse commenting that she thought it would be 3 hours, maybe less. She was right, because after a brief and glorious nap, I was complete and ready to push.

Our doctor arrived a little after I’d woken from augmented reality nap time and started setting up his equipment. He paused before he gowned up, reaching into his bag and sliding out a wooden icon, which he propped against the wall opposite the foot of my bed.

I gasped in delight because it was her – a beautiful image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, larger and far more saturated than my grocery store wrapper.

I laughed and told him she’d been following me throughout labor, and he cocked his head and told me “it’s strange, but I lost my usual icon of Our Lady of Lourdes somehow at my last birth, so this is her replacement. And it’s actually the first time I’ve brought this new one along.”

And so mine was to be the first birth attended by this particular image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

I’ve since delivered one more child under her watchful maternal gaze, and I look forward to her presence in my hospital room this go round, too.

It is comforting to have a God who is not unfamiliar with our human condition. And it reflects such careful attention to detail and such compassion that He would entrust us with a mother who is herself intimately acquainted with the seasons and stages of our lives as women.

There is a beautiful quote from Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego, her “smallest son,” which resonates deeply with me as being applicable to any hardship or physical suffering we might endure in this life, but perhaps most particularly, in facing birth:

“Listen, and let it penetrate your heart … do not fear any illness or vexation, any anxiety or pain. Am I not here who am your Mother?”

Because I am afraid.

I do fear the pain, and the anxiety of past memories and experiences of delivery can wash over me and overwhelm me at a moment’s notice if I allow them to take hold.

In these final few weeks as I prepare mentally, physically and spiritually to bring a tiny new life into the outside world, I find myself wanting to be folded more deeply into Her mantle, begging for the comfort that only a mother can offer to a small, anxious child.

Because it is coming, and it will hurt. And I will not be alone.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the unborn, pray for us.

motherhood, pregnancy

A gentler pregnancy + some thoughts on body image

October 16, 2017

When I was pregnant for the first time, nearly 8 years ago, I was a pretty stereotypical first-time mom: couldn’t wait for maternity clothes (um, why?), took ridiculous “bump update” progress shots in the full length mirror for Facebook (remember when people put pictures of themselves on Facebook?), took a 14 week long class on the Bradley Method and pushed my heroically patient husband to the breaking point with the recommended natural birth videos (the scars linger), and sat at a desk for 40 hours a week, mainlining White Cheddar Cheezits and wondering why on earth the recommended pregnancy weight gain was capped at 35 pounds while I easily summited 55.

Fast forward about a year and baby number two was on the way. I’d learned firsthand that breastfeeding did not, in my case, yield “remarkable” weight loss results, and that taking Cheezit pounds off was substantially more difficult than shoveling them on.

For little John Paul’s pregnancy, I was determined to do things better. For starters, a gym membership to the local 24 Hour Fitness, whose facilities (and childcare) I availed myself of no fewer than 5 times a week. Through week 40. As I huffed and puffed on the stairclimber and counted carbs, I watched in fascinated horror as my belly stretched to the same pronounced proportions, and the scale crept upward to 50 pounds. Fifty pounds. I remember shaking my head, despairing that an entire 9 months of going easy on the sugar and hitting the gym like a college sophomore only saved me 5 pounds of trouble. The low point for that pregnancy experience probably came the day after delivery, when a sweet and severe nurse caught me on a hospital scale in the L&D hallway (why? why???) trying to calculate how much weight I’d dropped from giving birth and shooed me back into my room with strict instructions “not to look at that thing for a good 6 weeks.”

She wasn’t wrong, incidentally.

By the time pregnancy number three rolled around, I found myself morning sick for the first time and living in a foreign country far from the usual suspects in American junk food options, without a car and so hoofing it around the city with 2 toddlers for 4+ miles a day, and very, very sickened by the smell of diesel and cigarettes. We moved home from Italy when I was 2o weeks along with Evie, and guess how much I’d gained at that point? 4.freaking.pounds.

Eureka! I recall thinking as I stepped on the scale in my American doctor’s office. I had found the secret, and it was not owning a car or living near a supermarket that sold Ben and Jerry’s or Doritos. Except, you probably know how this story ends, and it ends with an 18 week nosedive back into mostly-sedentary American living and the occasional flirtation with Domino’s pizza.

Still, I strapped that stupid FitBit on every day and made sure I hit my 10,000 steps. I rejoined a gym and made up the difference there during inclement weather. I ate Paleo 90% of the time. And the end result? 44 pounds. Which means I gained 40 pounds in approximately 4 months, and it was exactly as comfortable as you’re imagining it to be.

Perhaps at this point you’re seeing a pattern, and perhaps as someone living outside of my body, it’s easier for you to accept: there seems to be a predetermined weight – or at least a range – most of us hit during pregnancy. For some women it may indeed be 20-30 sweet, fluffy pounds. Bully for them. For me, it’s a pair of preschoolers.

By the time baby number 4 came into existence, I was still hitting the gym, but more for sanity’s sake (hellooooo, kid’s club) than from any real desire to sweat. But sweat I did, still remaining faithful to my 10,000 + steps and managing to separate my pelvic joint prematurely, necessitating much hobbling and many, many trips to the chiropractor from week 28 on.

What I’ve finally figured out this time, 5th time around, dense as I am, is that my body is going to pack on the pregnancy pounds like the potato famine is beginning anew and the only thing it can about it do is convert every calorie consumed directly into a carbohydrate (Irish genes are smiling). I can go to the gym, but nothing is going to move that needle southward (or slow it’s northern ascent) other than delivery and, for me, for the final 15-20 stubborn pounds, weaning.

I have no gym membership this time around. Lacking both the time and money, I’ve contented myself with neighborhood strolls with the preschool set and lots of trips down to the basement laundry. The other day while moving outgrown maternity clothes into storage (the indignity!) I came across my abandoned FitBit and strapped in on just for fun.

The result for an “average” day, puttering around the house, grocery shopping, car pooling and kid wrangling? You guessed it: 10,000 steps.

You better believe lol’d at 10 pm when I peeled that sucker off, because I distinctly recall doing laps around our rental house, 2 pregnancies ago, desperately trying to hit that 10k mark before bedtime but only at like, 7k or something for the day. (I guess my advice to people looking to be less sedentary would be to have a kid or four, because hoo boy, will that get you up and movin’)

I’ve noticed a funny little correlation this time around, too, between not obsessively hitting the treadmill for 60 minutes a day and my hips not splitting apart prematurely like a Trader Joe’s shopping bag. I feel better, overall, even despite the usual litany of heartburn, an achy back, and the stress of carrying around a couple dozen extra pounds.

When I feel particularly worn out, I’ve started implementing this bold new strategy where stop what I’m doing and …sit down. Revolutionary, I tell you.

I’ve also given up (almost completely) on monitoring what I’m eating. Perhaps this one is a terrible idea that will haunt me come January, but as long as I’m not bringing terrible junk into the house or hitting the Chicfila drive through too hard, I’m basically eating a well-balanced diet. Is it THM-compliant? Ha. The first trimester put a swift end to that fantasy. Is it Paleo? Well, that depends if ever a caveman were to be found eating peanut butter toast at 1o pm. (For the record, I think he’d have eaten it, if he could have located it.)

Hand in glove with the novel approach of not policing my own plate like a caloric parole officer has been the compete absence of any scales during this gestational go-round. We don’t have one at home to begin with, but I’ve taken the extra step (ba dum ching) of climbing up on the doctor’s scale and turning around to stare blankly at the wall over the nurses’ shoulder while she adjusts the slidey thingy. Wisely, she caught on pretty quick, and so I have no idea what I weigh at this moment, nor am I obsessively calculating “how many pounds per week to stay under x number by December 31st?”

Which is nice.

I’ve noticed that it’s making me a little nicer to myself, too. I catch a glimpse of the belly bulk in the mirror and instead of recoiling in horror I only give a mild startle before telling myself (sometimes audibly) “this is worth it. You are worth doing this for, baby.”

And I feel like I’m kind of starting to mean it.

Obviously I’ve felt it was “worth it” with each of my previous children, but pregnancy has always been, for this recovered bulimic, a battle in self loathing and no small amount of panic over the process of gaining weight. For 10 years I worked diligently, obsessively, to the point of illness, in an attempt to control my appearance and, when failing, in an effort to punish my body for perceived misbehavior. Some women find the experience of pregnancy and motherhood healing for their poor body image and disordered thought processes. I found it exacerbating and, if you’ll forgive the use of the word, “triggering.”

I’m still battling those demons, but they are far more effectively tamed by words of truth – “you are fearfully and wonderfully made,” “you are the light of the world” – than by act of self punishment and caustic self criticism.

I’m hoping I can hang onto this slightly rosier self image after delivery, because as anyone who’s ever made that first trek from the hospital bed to the bathroom knows, getting the baby out is only half (or in my case, usually about a quarter) of the battle.

So, arriving in a long-winded fashion at the summary, here is what’s working for me this time around:

No weighing in. Not at home, and not at the prenatal visits

Positive self talk, both in the mirror and randomly throughout the day. Especially effective when responding to negative cognitions like “I feel fat. I’m so huge. I’m so gross. I can’t do this.” It sounds silly, but sometimes literally just reversing the statements “I don’t feel fat. I’m not that big. I’m carrying new life. I am great at being pregnant!” does the trick.

Positive self talk out loud, in front of my kids e.g. “You guys are worth it. Yes, isn’t mommy’s belly getting big? It’s full of the baby, isn’t it exciting? This happened with each of you” etc. etc. I really, really don’t want to saddle my kids with the guilt of feeling in any way responsible for my own dissatisfaction with my body and/or the effects of motherhood. (I would say for Evie in particular, but honestly, I want my boys to have a healthy appreciation for what is normal and beautiful about motherhood, so they can affirm and appreciate their wives and their sisters and their female friends as adults.)

Not policing my plate. I’m trying to not like, go crazy, but I’m being a lot more lenient than usual, and I’m finding that while I’m probably eating more junk food from time to time in terms of frequency, I’m not doing the death spiral of “oh crap I ate 2 cookies, better finish off the bag because NOW ALL IS RUINED.” So I ate a couple cookies and also had a handful of Luke’s french fries at lunch. Oh well. Now I’ll eat a handful of mini cucumbers. (<— is this how normal people interact with food, btw?)

Just buying (or borrowing) maternity clothes that fit. (and not wearing the ones that make me feel gross) I’m not recoiling in horror if the tag has a “L” on it, nor am I settling for something just because “I have it” or “someone lent it to me.” Rather, my litmus has become, is it a. comfortable and does it b. makes me feel reasonably good? If so, winner.

I’ve found (thanks, Eliz!) the magic equation this go-round to be tight-fitted black top + flowy cardigan/vest/jacket + skinny jeans to be foolproof. The belly is clearly and flatteringly defined, the problem areas (read: arms and back) are nicely camouflaged, and the jeans stay up. I basically wear the same outfit 6 days a week, switching out top layers and jewelry as needed.

Not killing myself on the treadmill. It’s counterintuitive to everything I (thought I) knew about health and fitness, but getting my activity from daily living this time around instead of clocking in 5 days a week at the gym is so much easier on the not-so-young-any-more pregnant bod. If you can work out all through your pregnancy, you are a rockstar, and I salute you. And I no longer feel the need to compete with you. Liberation, thy name is sitting down.

Finally, I’ve been more cognizant this time that this could be the last baby. (Future me is LOLing and rolling her eyes into the back of her skull) but really, it could be. We’ve definitely come to regard our fertility as an unwieldy and unpredictable gift, and there’s really no guarantee we’ll get to do this again. So even though I’m counting the days till delivery, I’m trying to savor the 29-weekness of things too, you know? Like, what if I never feel a little person rolling around under my skin again? What if I never experience the sweet dynamic of a two-year-old whispering proclamations of love to my stretched out belly? What if I never develop heartburn again simply by smelling the food that I’m cooking? (Okay, I could go without that last one.)

Whew, that was a novella. Not sorry enough to edit it down, though. And to be perfectly transparent, I still have moments of texting my best friend (oh, like, earlier today, for example) “I can’t do this for another 10 weeks, how can I keep doing this?” slash whining to my sister about how bad I look in all my clothes. But. It’s a work in progress. And as the proverb says, “better to make progress than to curse Cheetos in the darkness.”

Or something like that.

throwback to 35 weeks with my first little Cheezit. (Or full term with twins, in someone else’s genes)

And now, at 29 weeks with current occupant (Photo cred: my awesome brother in law at Mast Media)

Family Life, Marriage, motherhood, NFP, Parenting, pregnancy, Pro Life

In defense of “another” baby

October 10, 2017

(Note: this is not a post claiming “there’s never a bad time to have a baby.” Hopefully if you’ve read more than one thing I’ve written over the years, you’ll know that’s not where I stand. End painfully necessary disclaimer.)

I have fielded a lot of comments about the timing of this latest little bean. I guess for good reason. For anyone who’s just tuning in, I’m 7 months pregnant with baby number 5. My oldest turned 7 last month, we just bought a house in a crazy expensive real estate market, and my husband is not a doctor.

Neither my husband nor I necessarily dreamt of a humongous family when we got married, though if pressed, Dave will say he anticipated probably having “five or six” which is rather on the largish side, if you ask me, while I anticipated “having kids” in the same way I anticipated that I would one day finish college and get a mortgage. So it’s not that I had a specific number I was hoping/dreaming for, or even that I was particularly looking forward to motherhood with any kind of instinctive longing, just that it’s something I assumed would happen if I got married.

(Please don’t get me wrong, I see my beautiful sisters who are struggling to have a baby, and I am achingly aware that our fertility is a gift and I for sure love my kids and am thrilled to be their mom. I’m just trying to set the stage for where younger Jenny came from, and it wasn’t from a place of dreaming about being a mommy, naming my future children, or even discussing how many of them I hoped to end up with one day.)

We got married in the Catholic Church, and so we took our vows to heart when we promised to accept children lovingly from God and raise them according to the law of Christ and His Church. Growing up in families of 6 and 7 kids, respectively, we had a preeeetty good idea that if things worked as intended, barring any unforeseen medical circumstances, marriage = babies. And we were on board.

(Sometimes when people cock their head at me in utter disbelief that I’m having number 5, the knowledge that I am myself the oldest of 7 puts them at ease. “Ohhhh, that makes sense; you’re from a big family yourself.” I mean, I guess it does? Anyway, if my kids ask one day why they have so many siblings, I’ll just pat them on the head and tell them I wanted to make their trips to the grocery store less socially awkward, should they themselves decide to raise a small army.)

Still, all this to say: I did not set out to have a big family. I love each of my sweet children with a love I wouldn’t have believed possible, but they were very much received as gifts – sometimes surprising ones – and have not necessarily come about as the result of meticulous and strategic planning.

Our approach to NFP has its seasons of meticulosity, for sure (postpartum period, I’m looking at you) but we also have plenty of months where we’re having the vv stereotypical (at least according to marriage prep classes) “where we at?” conversations about avoiding vs. being ready to conceive. I want to tell you it’s marriage building and exhilarating and totally! fulfilling! on an existential level, but to be honest, it can feel a bit more like crunching the numbers during our monthly financial summits when we’re plugging numbers into Every Dollar.

An imperfect analogy, because sex is a little more meaningful than budgetary allocations, but it can still feel very much like a process of drilling into the “numbers,” so to speak, and weighing resources versus expenditures.

For example, is my mental health in a place where pregnancy would be safe and prudent? Is his? Are we trying to hit some serious financial goals that would best serve our entire family if we focused on them for another 6 months? (Note: I don’t think finances are a great yardstick by which to plan one’s family size. But temporary, short-term goals like getting out from under a large debt or saving for a down payment on a house might make postponing pregnancy a wise decision for a season.)

Usually though? I don’t find ordinary financial matters to be sufficiently compelling to merit identification as “grave reason,” at least not in our marriage. We’re not talking “can’t keep the heat and lights on” finances here; more along the lines of “would like to go on a decent vacation and pay private school tuition” circumstances.

Obviously every couple has to discern this for their particular family, but I think overall, as a culture, we tend to veer much, much too conservatively in the “I can’t afford a(nother) child” direction.

Are babies expensive? Sure. They can be. But everything in life is about making choices and having to leave other options behind.

And I can’t think of anything I’d rather have – including a smaller mortgage and a more reasonable grocery bill – that is more valuable than the 5 little souls in our care.

I don’t say this to downplay grave financial stress by any means. (Should I write that in all caps? Because I know someone is going to come at me with that very accusation. Hashtag you can’t please ’em all.) But many of us who identify as middle class Americans are, in fact, wealthy beyond most of the world’s (and much of human history’s) wildest imagination.

The thought of having another child is often depicted as being fraught with hair-pulling stress over calculating the rising cost of higher education and travel soccer fees, making adjustments, of course, for 18 years of inflation (at least, to read much of what the media and popular mom blogs on Pinterest have to say about things), but in fact it’s hardly possible to plot out exactly where you’ll be as a couple that far down the road.

(Anecdotally, we’ve found that as our expenses have increased, so has our income. Sometimes miraculously so, as in a pair of reimbursement checks showing up the second to last day of the month. Or an unexpected bag of like-new clothes in all the right sizes. God does like to show off, when the occasion arises. And giving is good for both the receiver and the giver. We tend to forget that.)

Secondary to the financial objection, I hear from plenty of parents who “don’t know how we do it” and “could ever handle more than _ number.” My answer is always, honestly, yeah, I didn’t know either, until I started doing it, and yes, you probably could. Parenting gets both more intense and, like with any well-practiced skill, more do-able, the more you do it.

Plus, they do tend to entertain each other. I’ve noticed a horrifying uptick in sibling violence when my two eldest are in school and the 2 and 3 year old start scrapping like feral hyenas. You can bet there are some afternoons I’m counting down the hours until school lets out and my kid count doubles, because in some backwards, heavenly arithmetic, very often 4 is easier than 2.

And finally, there’s this: I’ve yet to meet a parent who has told me they wish they’d had fewer children.

I’ve never seen anyone’s eyes glaze over in that dreamy, far-off gaze into the distance and heard them whisper “if only we’d never had Tommy, we’d have that Disney timeshare by now.”

But I’ve met lots (and lots) of middle-aged and older moms (mostly moms) at Costco and beyond who confide to me how much they wished they’d had more kids. And 90% of the time, they follow that admission up with “but I couldn’t have more because of my cancer diagnosis/I had to have a hysterectomy/my husband said 2 was enough/I didn’t think we could afford it.” And my heart breaks a little each time, because their longing is still fresh, the grief is still real, and more often than not I find myself embarrassed by my cart that is overflowing (sometimes literally) with blessings who share my last name.

All this to say, in a world where so many people want babies and can’t have them, and where there are so many who suffer from a lack of love, isn’t it a grand thing to bring another little bearer of light into the universe, a human candle crafted in the very image of the Creator, shining in defiance of the darkness? (And yes, fostering and adoption are also beautiful, holy vocations. And this post is not about those vehicles of parenthood.)

You can’t tell me I’m not rich. I know we’re wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. It just doesn’t look like zeros in my checking account. More like noisy, sticky upturned faces around the dinner table. Costly, yes. And worth every penny.

About Me, Family Life, Parenting, pregnancy

Life lately: the state of the crew

October 5, 2017

I don’t share a ton of pictures of the kids on the blog anymore, both because they’ve gotten older and the internet has gotten weirder, but it can feel a little heavy around here sometimes, like I’m only sharing a small sliver of my life, when it reality it’s mostly toasting frozen waffles for these goobers and buying a hundred dollars worth of diapers/pullups/wipes a month. (Don’t @ me about cloth diapers. There isn’t enough tequila and Tide in the whole world. You’ll get nothing but a maniacal cackle.)

Joey, the intrepid eldest child, consummate sanguine, and dyed-in-the-wool extrovert (translation: where the beep did he come from?) turned 7 at the end of last month, and about 6 weeks out from the big day something super crazy happened: he started acting sort of reasonable. Like, obeying right away, showing true contrition for his transgressions, and just generally being awesome, funny, and helpful. He’s always been the first two but rarely the latter, so it’s been a nice surprise coming into the home stretch with bebe number 5. Like maybe I can holler for diapers and ask him to empty the dishwasher while I’m baby-bound on the couch come January.

He asked for – and received – an entire coterie of Nerf guns for his birthday, which he is almost as delighted with as two-year-old Luke is. Joey prefers to fire the darts while Luke enjoys biting off the suction-cup tops and spitting them into the carpet. Joey has taken to sleeping with his entire stockpile in his top bunk, so traumatized is he from the 40% loss of his brand new darts. (Luke is part puppy, btw.)

Now in first grade, Joey’s interests include kickball, football, basketball, soccer, comic books and, oddly enough, poetry. #oneofthesethingsisnotliketheother. Classical education for the win. His teacher this year is like a prettier and more spiritually balanced real life Miss Frizzle from the Magic Schoolbus, so he actually loves going to school in the morning, which is a small-m miracle for our pint sized party animal.

Next up in the line up is John Paul. At just 19 months younger but completely opposite on the personality inventory spectrum, JP is deeply melancholic, thoughtful, smart as hell and in possession of un uncannily deadpan delivery for a 5-year-old. He asks really weird and fascinating questions about the origin of time, recalls memories from his first and second year of life, and just generally cracks us up with being a consummate old man with a zest for art and the written word. In his spare time he enjoys full-contact wrestling, reciting poetry (again, winning with the classical schooling), riding his two wheeler (self taught and proud) and building Legos for hours. He is our snuggliest kid and demands a hearty dose of physical touch each day to keep his universe in balance. He’s also my only introvert (as yet identified) and so while I totally “get” him in a way I don’t always get the other three, he also has a knack for making me nuts. I frequently escort him into a quiet room with a stack of books and invite him to take a mental health break, and he’s catching on that it’s actually really effective. Takes one to know one, buddy.

He says he’s maybe going to be a priest when he grows up, and while he certainly has a natural piety to his nature, we’re careful not to put too much stock in it since his daddy is of a similar temperament and had loads of well-meaning adults over the years tell him what his vocation was. They were incorrect, as I can personally attest to. A religious vocation is a beautiful thing, and we pray for all our children to be open to that if God calls them (and make a point to expose them to the tons of awesome priests and religious in our social circle), but we’re careful not to push it or make any kind of prediction based on natural tendencies and personalities alone. Because super sporty sanguines make great priests, too. And the world also needs thoughtful, prayerful husbands.

Evie. Where do I even begin? All throughout this current pregnancy people have asked, upon finding out that we haven’t found out the sex, “have you ever found out?” to which I answer: once. And it was with her. And boy, was I glad to have the 5 month’s heads up on the extra estrogen joining our crew. She is a spicy meatball, this little pseudo-Italian. She can scream and gesticulate wildly with the best of the little signoras in the marketplace, and putting her to bed is a nuclear exercise in patience and precision. Don’t miss a single step or she’ll be at your bedside at 1 am, having been awakened by her searing sense of justice confirming that yes, you did in fact skimp her on 3 minutes of “tickles” and additionally, you poorly swaddled her stuffed calico cat and will now be forced to re-roll her in the dead of night by the bleary light of your alarm clock.

She is passionate, wildly imaginative, LOUD, and very, very cute. She runs this town, and I guess it couldn’t be any other way, because with 3 brothers she has to assert herself from the pack. She is intensely physical, whip smart, and really great at putting on a dramatic waterworks show at preschool drop off (and then turning on a dime, batting her still-wet lashes at her teacher, and happily asking what’s up first on the agenda for the day. As I have observed from creeping around the corner of the hallway and listening in. Dangerous little minx, that one.) She has what the big boys call her “Irish accent” which makes zero sense because it sounds nothing like a brogue, but she does have a really unique pronunciation pattern and a hilariously high pitched voice. Especially entertaining when she’s mad as hell, which is often. #shehashermamastemper

Her current passions include riding her “Plasmer cawr” (there’s the accent) weaving elaborate spoken-word stories about the adventures of her “babies” (a menagerie of stuffed cats in varying hues and sizes), watching Moana, singing Moana, demanding Moana undies from the laundry pile (and none else will do) and fighting me like a wet cat when it’s time for a shampoo. She has turned suddenly and adorably maternal as of about 2 months ago, and can be found dragging around her litter of 6 and tucking them into her shirt (her “Ergo”), swaddling them in muslin blankets, changing their diapers, perching them on fake potties, and building them elaborate “cwibs” to sleep in. She saw me carrying our loaned-out Rock N Play into the house the other night after a friend had returned it and she intercepted me en route to the basement and pointed, announcing loudly “I want that.” It’s now set up at her bedside and filled with her babies, which she tucks in beside her with exacting precision and rocks intermittently throughout the night. (I may be recruiting her in about 13 weeks if she’s all that gung-ho about it.)

Last but not least, there’s Luke. Luke the duke. Luke the loud. He turned two at the end of August, but he talks at a rapid-fire clip like a 6-year-old. His vocabulary is out of this world, I guess because he’s never had a day of silence – either in the womb or outside of it – in his short life. He doesn’t like wearing pants but he does like “spicy water” (Mommy’s precious La Croix collection) and he will steal and consume an unattended can quicker than you can sneak away for a bathroom break. He is very, very physical and enjoys “flying” off any piece of furniture he can scale. Fingers crossed, but no ER visits to date.

His interests include food (33 whopping pounds, which is 2 more than nearly-four-year-old Genevieve), hugging, screaming in outrage if a sibling dares cross him, yelling in Mass, yelling in the car, peeing on the potty, fruit snacks, and Wild Kratts. He’s a real Renaissance Man. He’s also wicked fast on a plasma car and super coordinated athletically. He shocks strangers in Costco by chatting them up and then revealing his tender age after the fact. He is terrible to take to church and absolutely delightful to parent. Luke can translate to “light bearer” or “light bringer” and that is exactly what this little man is.

He is built like a penguin, so part of his disdain for clothing on his lower half might be because nothing but sweatpants fits him. When he’s not busy emulating Regina George he spends a lot of his day biting off the tops of those aforementioned Nerf darts, seeking and destroying Lego creations, raiding the fridge, and ripping my shirt up to “kiss my baby, mommy.” He’s going to be a great big brother.

And that leaves just leaves…Pia. Our petite little calico, adopted a year ago this month from a family in our parish. She’s the most dog-like cat who has ever lived and is utterly adapted to life in a big family. Last night one of the kids was pushing her around in a toy shopping car and she acquiesced. We joke that she’s either the most good-natured feline on earth or lacks any sense of a survival instinct. We let her keep her claws to give her a fighting chance against the kids, but really they’re all very sweet with her and she is very sweet back. She sneaks food from under the table, uses her little box fastidiously, and snuggles in onto the top bunk for a nice long nap at night.

We’ve recently started letting her explore outdoors in our new, very sleepy neighborhood and she is thrilled to have her run of the yards. My neighbor texted me a picture of her kids playing with her last week, happily they don’t mind having an occasional visitor. I was a little mortified when she let herself into their house last Saturday morning, however, which further confirms my suspicion of a limited survival instinct. And don’t worry, we bring her in before dusk to avoid coyotes, and her shots are up to date. I know she’d live longer as an indoor cat, but she’s depressed as hell when we keep her indoors, so it’s a quality over quantity situation. Plus, there are a few feline friends who prowl the hood alongside her, so it seems a relatively cat safe area.

And then there’s this little peep. I’m 27 weeks and some change, so conceivably (lol) he/she could come as soon as ten weeks from now. I tend to go early, anywhere from 37 to 38.5 weeks, but watch this bebe hang stubbornly out until January. I’m starting to slow down a bit but still sleeping great, I have no idea how much weight I’ve gained because I haven’t looked at the scale since week 7 (moral victory here), and I’m doing my best to build a cold weather maternity wardrobe out of 3 pairs of jeans and a handful of tops, vests, and cardigans. I hate maternity dresses/skirts, and they hate me back, whether because of my short torso or 5 foot 4 frame. I look like a tootsie pop if I don’t wear pretty much all black, form-fitting tops and skinny pants with an elongating layer up top, so old navy $15 vests are my bff rn.

So there you have it folks, in a long-winded nutshell: our life at the moment. I can’t wait to see who this newest little person is, and how they’ll impact the dynamic upon their arrival. For now I’m relying on a whole lotta PBS kids, pb&j’s, and thanking the Lord for the still-temperate afternoons that mean we (they) can play outside until dinner.

Family Life, motherhood, Parenting, pregnancy

The fast-forward years

September 20, 2017

I feel like we’ve officially entered that phase of parenthood that all those well-meaning checkout line commenters have been warming about for the past 8 years or so. It did not, up to this point, “go so fast,” but I’m officially ready to punch that time-clock because yesterday I started to write a date that was at least a week in the rearview, and was genuinely shocked that an additional 7 days of life have transpired since I last looked up.

It’s the end of September. My oldest baby will reach the age of reason on Saturday (and, shockingly, has begun to act sort of … reasonable at times. Makes me clutch my chest in shock and awe).

I just clicked over to Baby Center to look at how big Cinque Bing is at 24 weeks only to find that we’re actually at 26 weeks, which is fairly reassuring since I’m starting to make third-trimesteresque huffs and puffs when I get up off the floor and was getting a little concerned for my stamina.

Now that I know I’m a fortnight out from the dawn of the final countdown, the aggressive and sudden pop of the belly and the insatiable appetite make more sense.

I got my first “any day now!” comment from a friendly barista the other week, to which I smiled vaguely and replied with a sing-songy “not as soon as you might think.” The end of pregnancy is when my 10-inch torso really shines, making strangers and friends alike very, very nervous in workout settings and in crowded public spaces. Why look 9 months pregnant for only a month when you can startle passers-by for an entire trimester? I’m sure that’s what God was thinking when He selected “walking, ticking time bomb of gestation” as my pregnancy model.

Our house is coming together too, more slowly than it might have in the past, but also more carefully and with greater attention to detail. I finished chalk painting my kitchen cabinets last night at about 9 pm (future post forthcoming) and, stepping back to admire my handiwork after I’d hung the last door, I mentally calculated that the entire project had taken some 40-odd hours from prep to finish. Yesterday at around noon, when things were looking grim indeed after a sudden and surprising suburban sandstorm swept along the freshly-lacquered door faces, I was lamenting to a friend that I was actually going to die with this paintbrush in my hand. But fast forward a couple hours and a lot of sweat and choice language later, and the thing was done.

It already feels like we’ve lived in this house forever. The past year of multiple moves and endless showings is fading into the hazy, unreliable annuls of “oh, that’s wasn’t so bad” memory, and I can already picture the bedrooms which are currently kitted out with cribs and bunkbeds strewn with stinky sports jerseys and curling irons.

Even the long days of mothering lots of little people are easing up. I hardly ever have that stiffling feeling of 4 o’clock doom these days, because by the time I look at the clock after school, Dave is only 15 minutes away and I haven’t actually started dinner yet.

It’s getting blurrier. The edges are getting softer and rounder, kind of like me.

Stuff that seemed make-it-or-break-it 6 years ago barely registers as a blip on the radar now. I have less time to fret about vaccine schedules and whether or not milestones are being met, because I’m kind of treading water keeping everyone in clean socks and lunches. The moments that I stop and play a quick game of pickup soccer in the backyard with the first grader or pull the giant baby into my lap for a little quality time with Sandra Boynton are unscripted and unrecorded and, as such, far more enjoyable.

I have to put down my to-do list and a million other nagging tasks in order to acquiesce the preschooler when she comes to me dragging her entire “family” of bedraggled, stuffed cats, begging for them to be carefully swaddled in the muslin blankets I should probably be washing and then rationing for the imminent newborn, but most of the time I laugh and put down my planner or the basket of clothes and wrap the cats.

(If you think you’ve seen something cuter than a 3-year-old pretending to nurse a swaddled Beanie Baby, you’re wrong.)

So, newer moms reading along, wondering if you’re slowly losing your minds (spoiler alert: you are), if the baby is ever going to sleep through the night, if you’re ever going to fit back into your jeans, and whether you’ll someday have more than an hour to yourself in the evenings, I’m standing about a mile down the road from where you are now, waving back at you and cupping my hands around my mouth shouting “the future is now, and it’s pretty awesome.”

And you more seasoned moms? I know I’m kind of in the eye of the storm right now, that this is simply the lull before the oncoming collision of evening activities + hormones + peer relationships + technology woes.

So I’m savoring it, falling dead with exhaustion into bed at 9 pm from the physical pursuits of mothering a 2, 3, 5 and 7-year-old plus baby on board, but relishing the evening shift where they all stay quietly and sweetly in bed for 12 solid hours.

I know these days are numbered, too. So I sit up too late with my Kindle, sipping hot tea or a cocktail and unwinding with a good book and thanking God that they’re all tucked safely under my roof, that my greatest present concerns are heartburn and ear infections and whether or not I remembered to pack everyone’s lunch.

The days are long, but the years are short – and getting shorter. And as time starts to warp into hyper speed, I’m trying to slow down and look into little, quickly-changing faces and memorize button noses and rosebud lips, peering ahead into the not-so-distant future to a time when nobody needs a peanut butter delousing after lunchtime or to be “held like a baby, mommy” after suffering a punishing blow in the playroom.

And I kind of already miss it.

(Must be the hormones.)

mental health, motherhood, PPD, pregnancy, self care, Suffering

Motherhood + mental illness

September 13, 2017

This is a tough subject to write on, but it’s probably in my top 5 most-emailed about questions/comments, so I know it’s one people are hungry to read about.

There is a frustrating level of stigma and shame which still surrounds mental illness: the way we talk about it on a cultural level, the image of ourselves we present to the world, the words we choose to use when discussing things like medication and therapy, and a whole host of other factors.

Last month a story surfaced about Pope Francis having seen a psychoanalyst for six months during his early priesthood, and the chatter online was pretty evenly split between “good for him for being so open and modeling good mental health” and “was it okay for him to have admitted that?” (with a dash of “aha, I knew he was nuts!” thrown in just because it wouldn’t be the internet without trolls.)

I’ve been really open online about my own struggle with depression and anxiety – especially the postpartum variety – because I think one of the most important things we can do for people with mental illness is invite them into polite society, so to speak, and jettison the antiquated notion that mental illness is somehow shameful, scandalous, and necessarily furtive.

Having now been on and off (but mostly on) antidepressants for more than half my life, I can honestly say I don’t care whether someone thinks less of me for needing them, or whether they believe that depression and anxiety are even real conditions.

You might have great success using an essential oil before bed to calm your anxious nerves, and that’s fantastic! I also like a drop of lavender on my wrist and pillowcase at night, but it doesn’t stop me from popping an SSRI before bed, and nope, I don’t believe that I could easily handle things “naturally” if I just took the time to read up on it. (Because I’ve tried all the things and dabbled in all the naturopathy. Not opposed! But also not sufficient, at least in my case.)

The truth is, mental illness, much like physical illness, is both unique to the individual and also excruciatingly uniform. How depression feels in my brain might be worlds apart from how it feels in someone else’s, but the outward effects are drearily similar: dark thoughts, exhaustion, flashes of inappropriate anger and bouts of crippling sadness and despair.

I frequently hear from women with questions about NFP, and about safely combining pregnancy + drugs. The answer to many of the NFP questions is heartbreakingly obvious: “Is avoiding pregnancy because of mental illness a grave reason?”

YES. Yes. I want to shout from the rooftops “YES! And I am so, so sorry if there is nobody in your life who understands that or is willing to validate that for you.”

Nobody blinks an eye if a woman staring down chemo decides to step off the baby train for 18-24 months. But a mom struggling with a crippling mood disorder gets a raised eyebrow for wondering, in the depths of her suffering and with symptoms raging out of control, if maybe she’s actually “done” having children.

It’s okay to not be okay.

It’s okay to be suffering and searching for answers and not totally sure when – or if – you’re going to come up for air.

Now, this is the part of this essay that gets (more) intensely personal, so bear with me. (My virtual living room, my prerogative.)

I am currently 6 months pregnant with baby number 5. I have had crippling postpartum depression and/or anxiety with all but one of my children, and have been on antidepressants for either all or part of each of those pregnancies, including the current internal resident.

I have fielded many, many questions over the years about the safety and wisdom of using medication while pregnant and breastfeeding, and will preface this with the same answer I give to everyone who has ever asked: it is an intensely personal decision, and one that only you can make for yourself, your baby, and your family.

(And before someone @’s me with the “aha, your body your choice!” zinger of a gotcha, let’s be clear that making a decision to treat un underlying medical condition is worlds apart from killing your baby for any reason. For further nuance pls google “intention and moral objective.”)

Now, if your husband, parents, spiritual director, etc, think you should be treating your mental illness with medication and/or professional counseling, take that advice seriously as you make a decision. And when you decide, consider that the common good of your family is the criteria–if you don’t like being on anti-depressants or hate the thought of being vulnerable with a stranger, but your kids need a mom who is able to make dinner, the just thing to do might be to suck it up for their sake.

Mental illness is at once intensely personal and painfully corporate. And for whatever reason, it can often present a bigger target for speculation and strong opinions than most physical illnesses do. This is helpful to keep in mind when someone is confiding in you about their condition, because it can be more tempting with mental illness to offer advice and recommendations perhaps not rooted in good science and best medical practices, but in internet-derived research and personal anecdotes.

For example “I cut out gluten and now I don’t need Prozac anymore so you probably don’t either” or “Using essential oils completely cleared up my anxiety and you really should try something natural before you put toxic drugs into your body!”

True though those two statements may be for the person making them, that does not grant them a blanket status of efficacy when applied to other people’s conditions.

One person might well be able to get their blood sugar under control through diet alone, and another may need an insulin pump for life.

Every body – and brain – is different, and I personally thank God that we have multiple choice options when it comes to mental health. My life would have been very, very different 100 years ago, and not a day goes by that I am not grateful for the privilege of living in a first world country with access to life-changing medication.

A large part of that gratitude stems from the fact that because these medications do exist, and because I have found different options that my body responds well to, I am able to continue to be open to life.

I would not have been able to continue having children without SSRIs. I say that without a hint of hyperbole or a smidgeon of exaggeration. The ability of my brain to apply this class of drug to my particular chemical makeup and smooth out the rough edges is nothing short of miraculous, and life on these meds versus life off of them is very, very different.

I’ve found at the tender age of 34 the perfect combination of diet, medication, therapy, prayer, and supplements that makes things pretty darn good. For now.

It’s a tricky thing when hormones are involved (and, increasingly, as science is demonstrating, inflammation) because they’re designed to fluctuate. So what works one month (or maybe even one part of the month) might not work as well 2 weeks later.

Pregnancy is generally a time of smoothed-outness for me, emotionally speaking. I can get by with a low dose of an SSRI (Zoloft is my doctor’s preferred pregnancy prescription and is working well for me this time) a low dose of LDN (low dose naltrexone, addresses inflammation and my autoimmune thyroid disease), a desiccated thyroid medication, progesterone supplementation, and a strictly (and I do mean strictly) gluten free diet.

I’ve also found – not that this is a biggie during pregnancy, but other times, womp womp – that I can no longer tolerate most kinds of alcohol. Single tear. Beer’s off the table for obvious reasons, but sadly, in my advancing middle age, so is wine of every color and variety. Cider is similarly catastrophic.

Over the years I’ve engaged in a fair amount of cognitive behavioral therapy, healing prayer and deliverance, naturopathic supplementation, regular exercise, and chiropractic care. All of these things have helped tremendously. But for me, at least while I’m in my childbearing years, they haven’t been sufficient.

And that’s okay.

I’m okay with being “not okay,” and with needing a little extra help to get through these demanding investment years of building a family.

Of course I worry about possible adverse side effects from the medicine, just like I worry about the 5 weeks I was too nauseous to choke down my prenatal vitamins, the hormones and chemicals in my tap water, the other drivers on the road with me, the bacteria in the swimming pool, and any potential unknown genetic time bombs lurking within my DNA.

But ultimately, this baby’s health and his or her safety – as is also the case for my other children – is beyond my control. When I send them off to school each morning, it’s a trust exercise in best decisions made weighed against possible adverse outcomes.

I could breastfeed each little angel for 2 full years, avoid every vaccine or vaccinate to a full schedule, feed them an exclusively organic diet, avoid all inflammatory food groups, restrict all devices emitting harmful electromagnetic pulses, and still end up with a 4-year-old with a brain tumor one day.

But the essence of parenting is making the best possible decisions possible for all parties involved, using the information at hand, a well-formed conscience, and a dash of common sense.

And the essence of motherhood is making a sincere gift of self without annihilating one’s self in the process. A shattered, broken down mother is not nearly so beneficial to her children as a sane, whole one. And to the extent that we can take care of ourselves in order to give the most to our families, we should.

I am a better mom when I’m on medication. And I feel no shame over that. What I do feel shame for are the months and months I’ve stubbornly tried to go it alone, gritting my teeth and yelling (so much yelling), refusing to do the thing that could help because it wasn’t natural, it wasn’t ideal, and it wasn’t what I wanted.

But sometimes it’s not about what I want. Most of the time, turns out, according to this motherhood gig.

I hope if you’re reading this and are struggling with mental illness yourself, you find a little respite here. I hope you’ll find that after reading this you feel more able to bring your fears to someone and ask for help shouldering the burden.

Because you are not alone in your illness, and you needn’t suffer alone. And a psychological cross needn’t also be a death sentence for one’s fertility.

Other women are out there making similarly brave and difficult choices: they’re called mothers. And I want to invite them into the conversation to share their stories.

(I invite you over to the blog’s Facebook page to join the discussion and share your own experience there.)

Culture of Death, Evangelization, motherhood, pregnancy, Pro Life

An open letter to the Duchess of Cambridge on the announcement of her third pregnancy

September 5, 2017

Dear Kate,

(Can I call you that? I feel like I know you since I follow your fashion account on Twitter. Or, rather, the person who stalks the fashion rags and reposts effortlessly elegant shots of you in that stunning, understated classic signature style of yours, whether you’re caught in 3 inch heels standing on a tarmac in South Africa or kneeling to reprimand an errant 3 year old in a perfectly chic blazer. But, I digress, the point of this tangent being: I admire you to the point of familiarity.)

Maybe it’s because you’re an everygirl’s princess, a lot like your late mother in law. (And while I know you’re not technically a princess yet, it’s tempting to project my childhood Disney dreams onto your gorgeous, growing family.)

I know you face a lot of scrutiny in the press, whether it’s for looking “too perfect” or for being adorably “just like the rest of us” for daring to bare an hours-fresh postpartum bump in each of your previous hospital-step photo ops. It takes guts to face a global press corp at a mere 6 hours postpartum, let alone 6 weeks. And girl, if you want to get your hair blown out before appearing on the cover of every rag and tabloid in Great Britain, power to you.

The reality is, you’ve married onto the world stage by marrying into the royal family, and you seem to shoulder the mantel of responsibility with grace. That you’ve chosen to make mental health one of the most public focuses of your personal advocacy work speaks volumes about your character; it’s not always easy or even civil to discuss mental health and the lack of care for those who suffer mental illness, especially in the public arena. But you seem no stranger to criticism.

I know that pregnancy is an enormous sacrifice, and that each of your pregnancies have been complicated by the presence of Hyperemesis Gravidarum, a serious and debilitating complication that can result in hospitalization and real trauma to the mother’s body, mind, and spirit. I know there are those who have scoffed at you for subjecting yourself to another nine months of “torture” (because I’ve read the comments online) just for the sake of another little bundle of royal needs. One intrepid Twitter genius quipped “there goes the rainforest” in reaction to your joyous news, as if 3 children were some hideous burden to lay upon the shoulders of the environment. As if a human person could possibly be reduced to the sum of their projected carbon footprint. As if a family of 5 were a ghastly vestige of the past, best swept into the annuls of history as we move boldly forward in our “enlightened” view of the human person as nothing more than a collection of electrical impulses, nerves, and appetites for consumption.

But you seem to know better. While chasing around two little toddlers, you’ve probably recognized the infinite value and capacity for love and innovation contained within the spirit of a single human person. The truth that no matter how many times you open your heart up to another little soul, it is not only your body that expands to accommodate them.

It is no small thing to bring forth new life in a culture that seems to be deteriorating all around us, to whisper that humble and magnificent fiat with your very body. In a world of increasing strife and violence, it’s easy enough to give in to fear and uncertainty, perhaps choosing to play it safe or decrying the sensibility of bringing forth innocent children into a place that, frankly, we’ve made a mess of.

But you’re a mom. So you’ve had a peek behind the curtain. You know that these children of ours are worth it, and that the future belongs not to those of us who rule from on high with money, power, and prestige (though you surely posses all three) but that it actually rests securely in the hands of our little ones. Perhaps you’ve come to the same conclusion that I have: that the only real, lasting impact we stand to make on the world lies in the intellectual and moral formation of our sons and daughters, in instilling in them a love and appreciation for truth, goodness, and beauty. That all the strife and suffering that exists in this weary world of ours cannot possibly be eradicated in our lifetimes, but could perhaps be in theirs.

Isn’t that always the hope? And isn’t bringing another child into the world, not in spite of but precisely because of the grim circumstances of it all, the most profoundly hope-filled thing we can do?

I know you’re going to be under the microscope for the next 9 months, even more intensely than you normally are. And I know there will be discussions on your hairstyle, on how big or small or perfectly round or disappointingly flat your belly is. I know whether you choose to convalesce for 24 hours before stepping out for photos or appear bright eyed and blown-out a mere hours after delivery, you will be scrutinized and judged by a sometimes unfeeling public.

But let mine be one small voice among many offering you congratulations, prayers for health and comfort in the face of hardship, and sincere gratitude for the courageous – yep, courageous – act of bringing forth new life in a culture that despises the light, and in a world that prefers comfort to courage.

It is no small thing to bring a new source of light into a world that loves darkness.

(And P.s. idk where you do most of your maternity shopping, but Target’s got a killer new maternity jean that you might want to check out if you ever feel like slumming it, sartorially speaking.)

Yours sincerely,

An American mum

About Me, Family Life, motherhood, NFP, Parenting, pregnancy

Anticipating baby number whaaaat?

August 1, 2017

Oddly, or perhaps not, as veteran moms to many would likely tell me, I am actually more excited about this pregnancy than about any previous pregnancy save perhaps for number one. (And let’s be honest, number one was marked with periods of stark terror, lots of late night googling, and overpriced and precocious maternity purchases.)

I don’t mean that numbers 2, 3, and 4 weren’t all delightful and filled with moments of sweet anticipation, but there’s something about this pregnancy, coming during a year of intense transition and turmoil for our family, that has been so grounding and so sweet. After the first 24 hours of shock wore off, I shifted almost immediately from “well, that wasn’t in the 6-month plan” to “I can’t wait to meet this little person,” which, for me, a woman for not given to acute fits of maternal emotion, seemed unusual.

This little baby is softening my heart already. (Along with the rest of me, but that’s the price of admission to the mother club.)

I’m sure it’s due in part to my other children’s excitement for a new sibling. At 6 going on 7, Joey is old enough to understand that a baby is really growing inside me, and in fact, spent the first trimester taunting me that I was having twins because “mommy you’re soooooo sick, there must be two babies!”

(He got deep enough into my psyche that I did actually request a 14 week ultrasound and, sorry, kid, only one bebe on board. Whew.)

I’m just starting to show now at 19 weeks, though if I’m out in public with all 4 kids I can still kind of suck in and feign midsection thickness if I’d rather not cop to it. The kids have started talking to my belly, putting their hands on the entirely wrong part of my abdomen and whispering sweet nothings to fat rolls that are just sort of being rearranged. (I need to order that Blanqi asap, because Luke blew my last one out beyond all elastic recognition.) It’s charming, if not humbling, to have one’s fluffy midsection lovingly stroked by adoring sibling hands eager to suggest names (The big boys favor Leo and Nicholas, Evie prefers “Boobie Trap”) and to narrate the day to day action in our house to their little brother or sister in utero. Even Luke, not quite 2 years old yet, has taken to kissing and patting the belly before bedtime, insisting on being tucked in with a naked babydoll some nights who he solemnly tells me is “my baby, mama.”

It’s hard not to catch their enthusiasm. And it’s hard not to look at each of them and wonder whose eyes, whose nose, what shape head (size XL: guarantee). I was watching them ride plasma cars in a death defying swoop down the driveway into the street last night and realizing that for as numerous as they are, as they grow and mature, I’m seeing them more as a collection of individuals – starkly and startlingly unique – and less as a pack of toddler wolves. Improving bathroom manners go a long way toward alleviating that perception, to be sure. It’s fascinating to watch their personalities come online, seeing different interests and abilities bubble to the surface, along with specific character flaws and even tendencies to sin. I thought I had one of each four temperaments, officially, but the older and louder Luke gets, the more chagrined I find myself that I ever fancied him a phlegmatic. Homeboy be choleric, loud and proud.

I’ve been trying to not rush ahead in anticipation of the process this time, and instead accepting each week for what it brings. I usually psyche myself up for an early delivery (and I usually do deliver early) but I end up mentally and emotionally “done” at 38 weeks. I don’t want to do that this time. I don’t know if this will be our last baby (and given our track record, I rather doubt it) but you never know. And if it is my last pregnancy, I want to enjoy it, to the extent that it’s possible. I want my kids to have at least one memory of mommy being joyful while expecting a sibling and not laid out on the couch destroyed by fatigue, and having these two most recent additions 28 months rather than 18 months apart has done worlds of difference for my mental and physical health. #thanksMarquette

I hope that I can hang onto this rosier vision of gestation as the weeks and months (and pounds) tick by, but I know that by month 8 I might be crying uncle and googling “earliest safe induction by massage” and all that. For now though, this baby is the best thing going in the hectic and slightly overwhelming life of our family, and it has never felt more accurate or more sincere to speak of another sibling being the greatest gift I can give to my children. I’m so glad this baby is here, and so unworthy of the beautiful children I’ve been tasked with. I can only hope they’ll go easier on me at assessment time since I’m parenting them in zone defense rather than one on one. Kids, if you’re reading this on your hologram pads in 2032 in some ancient internet archive: mommy loves you and is doing her best, even though she keeps feeding you hot dogs and trying to fall asleep at 7 pm.

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