Getting Clair Huxtable Out of My Head!

In chatting with my husband today, I realized most of my troubles with my first trimester pregnancy symptoms are in my head, not in my body. I'm counting myself as a "poor excuse for a Mother" right now, because I suffer from a complete lack of realistic expectations of motherhood in general, and "motherhood while pregnant with a fifth child" in particular.

My favorite job as a kid was "camp counselor" and I consider myself a "camp counselor" kind of Mom. I'm happiest when my kids and I are having a grand time designing some sort of fun project together. High energy, laughter, and loudly singing show tunes--those are not really a big part of my life motherhood right now that I'm feeling tired, quesy, and "green around the gills" for most of the day.





If the perfect "Mom" in my head is Clair Huxtable, a Mother of five who appears to be always witty with her husband, always engaged with her children, and with perfectly coiffed hair to boot-- no wonder I'm feeling like a failure at this stage in my life.

So Johnny and I talked about "reframing" my interior monologue to make it slightly more likely that I stay out of the crazy house during this fifth pregnancy. I therefore submit the following resolutions.

Number One: Resting counts as an activity while I'm pregnant!
I make the mistake of not really counting Baby Olive as a "real kid" until she (or he) appears outside the womb. This is false! As a pregnant Mom, resting counts as an activity equal to rocking Baby Tess to sleep. Taking naps while pregnant does not count as "shirking" my Stay-at-home duties. I need to stop mentally judging myself as harshly as if I were spending all the time holed up in my bedroom watching HGTV reruns and eating chocolate bon bons.

Number Two: Dinner is my primary domestic contribution right now.

I'm not going to get all pharisaical on this topic, and there is plenty of room for misses in this area. In general, however, I will try my best to get dinner on the table before my husband gets home from work. Cleaning can wait until the weekend. Laundry can wait. Home-schooling doesn't even need to happen each and every day. But my family always needs to eat! If I get something easy into the oven by 4:30 PM, then I make a smooth and happier night happen for everyone else. So in my mind, if I get dinner made each night I get to check off the "good Mom" box in my head, even if the floors are messy and no one has seen fresh sheets on their beds for more than a week!

Sometimes Religious Tolerance Is NOT Love, It's Laziness Instead!

When I was 25, I lived in an interesting housing situation. I was a member of "St. Francis House", an experience in "religious tolerance" at the University of Wisconsin. Twenty students lived in the basement of a beautiful old Episcopal Church in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. We received practically free room and board in exchange for doing tasks around the church and participating in Sunday Mass.

It was so much fun! Most of my roomies were international students from Africa, Asia or Europe. I think there were only three or four Americans in the bunch. It was a huge blend of different religions: Shinto, Buddhism, Muslim, Catholics and unfamiliar (at least to me) Protestants like "the Dutch Reform Church."

Every weeknight we took turns cooking massive dinners for the whole community. I will probably never eat so well again in my life. I developed a special fondness for "Blue Crab Soup" (from Japan) and "Pineapple Mashed Potatoes" (from Columbia).

After three months of living in this diverse religious community, I (a firm Christian) imagined that I was "Miss Tolerance Herself."

Every Faith had something valuable to contribute to world. Each of us were "equal" in dignity. No spiritual path had a "monopoly on truth." Yada Yada Yada.

Then I met Jon.

My tall, thin boyfriend was a Catholic. No surprises, there. He had some odd New Age/Buddhism influences in his Christian thought. No surprises. Jon never said anything odd about Jesus that I hadn't heard a thousand time before by other college students.

The surprising thing, was that I, Miss laid back Christian girl, suddenly cared deeply about he thought about this Jesus Guy. I wanted to correct my sweet boyfriend's mistakes.

So I started arguing with him. I mean, it was INTENSE. One time I remember fighting so intensely about this crazy issue of "if Jesus said no to dying on the cross could God have found a replacement." Jon said "yes." I started yelling at Jon in the car "God only had ONE son. No one could have taken over his place." We were arguing so passionately that neither recognized that we took a wrong turn on the high way. After one hour, we suddenly saw the Mackinaw Bridge in front of us--telling us that we had gone North on a central Michigan highway instead of South!

I didn't recognize this "formerly" laid back girl who was suddenly fighting so hard with her boyfriend--as if it matter what he personally thought about God. In fact, when we got engaged, I remembered our atypical fights over religion with shame. "What if this fighting spreads to other areas?" I worried.

Now that dear husband and I are both Carmelites, I laugh.

I think my deep interest in my boyfriend's personal thoughts about Jesus and God because I loved him! His religious viewpoints directly mattered to me! Jon was about to become my husband. My fellow Carmelite. The Father of my children. In our joint vocation- matrimony-- it is intensely important that BOTH of us are pointing in the right direction in matters of faith.

Sometimes fighting over Faith is a sign of True LOVE and "Tolerance" is simply lazy, self-interest.

(inspired by thoughts from He Adopted Me First and Little Catholic Bubble).

AHHHHH BABY BOOMERS!!!

This past weekend was the one year anniversary of my grandfather's death. My grandfather died after a hard battle with cancer while Baby Tess was in her first hospital, being treated for simple jaundice. Everyone was scared to add to my stress by telling me that my grandfather died, so I found out the news from Facebook.

On September 4, my Dad left his dying father's bedside to race to Maryland. He (and my Mom) where there the infamous day of September 5, when Baby Tess went from "fine" to needing an emergency baptism and a transfer to Children's Hospital. My parents were there to witness the baptism and drive home their completely exhausted daughter from downtown D.C. They even got a hotel room across the street from my apartment, so they could watch over Jon and I.

Then in the morning, before we even left to see Miss Tess, my father organized my life for the next month. He rented me a car so we could get to the hospital easily (we were poor Carmelites who relied on the bus at the time). He took my three older children to his house for two weeks, so we could live in the NICU. He even handed me cash so that Jon and I could easily get meals in the hospital cafeteria.

All that happened and it was a gift. My Mom was her normal self during Tessy's home-coming. But my father "got it." There are expressions in his face when he held his totally held granddaughter that I'd never seen before.

All that is so precious to me.

Somehow slathered on top are these maddening photos I received in my in-box this morning. My aunt and my uncle celebrated the anniversary of my Grandfather's passing by going to a lake on Sunday and throwing pine cones into the water.

Throwing pine cones into the water???????

There is this piece of me that is screaming--who are you baby boomers??? GO TO CHURCH! It's Sunday. Say a prayer. Sing a hymn. Remember your father in a place that makes sense both to Him and to God!

Grandpa would have gone to church!!!

Pine cones in the water? The guy didn't even fish!

The whole world needs prayer. Most American Baby Boomers seem to need it double! I'm off to go make my contribution to the improvement of society by enduring my morning sickness bravely today. Hope everyone had a happy and restful Labor Day.

Having Peace While I'm Screwing Up

This officially marks the first time that I've been awake past 8 PM for several weeks. Gosh, what a humdinger of a time I've had over here. A move. Early Pregnancy. My rock of a husband suddenly leaving his inept and fragile wife Home Alone for 13 to 14 hours each day.

On Tuesday, I didn't get ANY Carmelite prayers done for the first time in several months.

I was completely CRUSHED by the various demands of my life by 10:15 AM.

Today was better, of course.

I'm trying to find meaning in all of this struggle. I feel like I'm very much a black/white thinker in terms of self-esteem. When I bake cupcakes with my daughter, or clean up a messy paperwork mistake over the phone, or I find the elusive size 2 soccer cleats for my son, then I feel like a "good Mom." However, when our home-schooling sessions go horribly wrong, or I'm so sick I can't leave the living room couch for an entire afternoon, then I feel like a "bad Mom."

I thought I left most of that perpetual race of "I have to be productive and competent all the time or I'll be fired" back at the workplace.

But it seems like I dragged much of it home with me as a stay-at-home mom.

And now whether its failing behind in home-schooling, or falling behind in housework, or my failure to even get the frozen shrimp thawed before my husband comes home at 7 PM at night, all of those "mess ups" have my irrationally afraid of screwing up my dear children for life.

I have no idea what a "normal" home-life is supposed to look like when your newly pregnant with baby number five. In God's eyes, its probably perfectly okay for my husband to do all the work, make dinner, put all the kids to bed, and dig out dirty pajamas from the laundry pile, all while a newly pregnant Mommy slinks off to bed at 7:45 PM.

Here's to hoping the cross will help break me of my "irrational Mommy perfectionism" soon!

K-LOVE - Steven Curtis Chapman "Do Everything" LIVE

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"The Christian Faith was never meant to be a private matter. It was meant to be shared?"

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Laundry ---Ideas? Tips? Commiseration?

The only bad part out of moving out of a tiny apartment, is that I'm suddenly finding it overwhelming to do laundry in a house with three floor and an unsteady toddler who likes to always be in eye sight of her Mama.

How do you guys survive?

My old laundry routine was a) have a family closet in our room three steps away from the dryer (I put all the dresser drawers in our room. My young kids tend to throw clean clothes on the floor and that way I could quickly clean up the mess without resorting to tons of unnecessary loads.)
b) fold clean clothes on my bed
c) make it a rule that we always had to fold up any extra clean clothes before the parents went to bed

The new house doesn't have a system yet!

Now I've got my kids on the second floor, our bedroom on the first floor, and our washer/dryer unit on the first floor. Our dryer is old and on the fritz, so we're talking about having to run each load through multiple times. Also, my only safe place to put Baby Tess while I'm doing laundry in our dangerous basement is leave her in her crib, and she hates that! Her crying sort of add this added pressure to get all laundry tasks done within 2 to 4 minute spurts. All that post-moving chaos combined with my fatigue, have just made me feel so hopeless about the situation.

Just today, I'm trying to figure out a big-picture solution to this task.

First, I thinned out the kids clothes to things that they actually wear. I'm putting everything that is not currently a summer-time favorite, on a hanger in their bedroom closet. Then I moved down their dressers to the basement. I've got a place for "hanging items" and now places for clean laundry. Now it should be easier to fold things straight out of the dryer, or hang up wet delicate to air dry.

I also found these two interesting articles on green laundry methods and practical laundry collection ideas.

Does anyone have some wisdom to share? I'm open to trying almost anything but FlyLady.

St. Clare, patron Saint of Laundress, pray for us!

How to Host A Kid's Birthday Party While Pregnant

Some day I will have a chance to write my stylish "how to host parties in the real world". Throwing a Birthday bash for a special birthday girl with no time, no money, and no energy was a challenge. Yet I ended up having some cool ideas that I wanted to share.

We picked a party time of 10:30 AM on Saturday. (I like having parties first thing in the morning because I think that it doesn't interfere with other peoples precious "family time" on the weekend as much. Plus, my kids are extremely hyper with excitement before a big party. If I pick at 1:00 PM start time, I've already driven myself crazy trying to keep them from eating the cake for five hours AND I still have not had time alone to get additionally prepared from the night before.)

For this early morning party, we had simple breakfast hors d'oeuvres. I picked up frozen mini-bagels from Target and arranged an elaborate "bagel bar" with different type of toppings like mini oranges and smoked salmon. We had sausage on toothpicks.

For the fruit salad, I picked up mini cookie cutters at Michaels ($5).
I cut up cantaloupe into 1/4 inch planks. Then I used the small cookie cutters, instead of a knife, to remove good parts from the rind and seeds. (Don't remove the seeds first). Then I tossed them into a fruit salad. (Imagine fruit salad with little yellow hearts and butterflies.) The result was so cute that its going to be my new "go to dish" for Church Socials.

Happy Birthday Baby Tess

 

You are a gem of a girl! So glad you are still here with us!

We're Celebrating Tessy's First Birthday Tomorrow!

She was a pretty special kid right from the start!

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Pray for me! The house is not clean. The laundry pile is ridiculous. I've got low energy from morning sickness. But it's fine. Kate and Tharen are willing to look over a few dust balls, right? The important thing is that we're all grateful for an incredible year with Miss Tess.

Instead of my whiny rebuttal to the "don't have your kids too close together" argument

I'm re-posting this "oldie but goodie" about the joys of having new babies while home-schooling.

Honestly, I don't know how long its going to take me to learn how to be Silent and let the things of my life speak for themselves!

Oh Holy Virgin, please come and kill off the incessant debater in me!

Alan Jackson - Small Town Southern Man

Because my Jon is exactly like the lyrics in this song!


And he bowed his head to Jesus
And he stood for Uncle Sam
And he only loved one woman
He was always proud of what he had
He said his greatest contribution
Is the ones you leave behind
Raised on the ways and gentle kindness
Of a small town Southern man

What Really Counts As Meaningful Work?

I'm very thankful for all the interesting thoughts posted as comments to my recent post.

I wanted to put a deeper Carmelite question to you thoughtful readers.

What really counts as meaningful work?

There are many dramatic examples of 'important' work, that I witnessed first-hand during my daughter's stay at Children's National Hospital. The most amazing thing was that there was literally one guy, Dr. Kanter, who had the ability to fish an 18 inch plastic tube OUT of my daughter's heart without open heart surgery.

(For those who missed the initial story last year, Baby Tess had a type of IV called a PICC line that broke off in her foot during her hospital stay. An 18 inch plastic piece immediately got sucked up into each of the four ventricles of her heart. The x-ray of what appeared to be a large tangled ball of yarn inside her tiny newborn heart is an image I'd like to forget!)

There was my three week old baby who needed emergency open-heart surgery UNLESS this one guy on the entire hospital staff could fish it out using some tiny heart angioplasty tools.

At first we heard hopeful rumors. Then late at night, we meet the man himself.
Dr. Kanter stood by the NICU crib-side of the baby with the scary chest x-ray. Dr. Kanter promised he could fix it. Dr. Kanter did!

After one hour under a live streaming x-ray, Dr. Kanter used a tiny tool called a "lasso" to fish out that nasty PICC tubing through a tiny slit in her thigh. My beautiful girl was returned to me, with a tiny band-aid on her leg, instead of a giant nasty post-open heart surgery gash up her chest. (Not that Dr. Kanter doesn't do lovely sutures from open-heart surgery, because my buddy Joey T. looks awesome post surgery.) I'm just saying, that this Mama so is grateful for the wonders worked inside the Heart Cath Lab.

So it's kind of weird to have your baby saved by someone with an extremely rare talent. I remember going home and wishing I could match Dr. Kanter's socks. I just wanted to do something to make is life easier, something to help him keep focused on that amazing gift of rescuing other needy babies with walnut size hearts from horrible PICC entanglements.

The odd contrast is that as a Carmelite, I'm starting to understand that all work is "nothing." I mean really, it kind of is. God has all things in his hand. He lets us "help". We can be "co-workers" with God, but it's a loving, invited role only. God doesn't truly need us to do anything. He lets us help Him because He loves us! Sort of like, how I invite my little girls to help me in the kitchen (even though its a far easier and cleaner process without their inept 'help') because I find it to be so much more fun to make cupcakes with friends!

Add to this line of thinking my buddy St. Therese of Lisieux's little way; "picking up a pin for love." If I understand her correctly, she is saying that "that picking up the smallest pin, for the pure Love of God, is more important that all the amazing heart surgeries in the world." Not that heart surgery is "bad", per se. Just that LOVE is what makes an action beautiful for God. "Love of neighbor" is the praise of glory to God.

What my addled Carmelite brain is trying to focus on, is that if I pour my children's cereal into a bowl in the morning with pure, holy Love THAT is meaningful work that is EQUAL to Dr. Kanter's angioplasty skills for little Tess.

I think that is right.

Work isn't "meaningful" or "not-meaningful" based on some outside objective criteria--work is meaningful when it is done as a prayer.

That's a really wild concept to me.

To close, I wanted to share two more vivid examples of love from my NICU stay. (My one year anniversary of Tessy's illness begins on September 5th, so indulge me!)

The second surgery for Tess was so much more awful for me than the first. (Tess had a birth defect called duodenal atresia and she needed emergency abdominal surgery at eight days old to correct her blocked small intestine.) For the first surgery, it was clearly an emergency. My kid looked awful. We were handing her over to a caring surgeon with the hope that she could be cured.

For the second surgery, it was a result of a medical equipment failure, which was some how so much harder to accept. A scary foreign object was lodged inside my kid's HEART! One of the hardest things was that Tessy looked fine. She was pink. She was alert. And my kid was FURIOUS! They yanked Tessy's food for more than a 24 hour period to prepare her for this procedure. Tess hated that!

To transport her to the Heart Cath Lab, they put Tess inside this special movable tube called an isolette.



Tess hated it. She knew something was up, and that something was NOT good.

Needless to say, I was a mess. In the prep room for the first surgery, I have sweet memories of holding my little girl's precious head and singing "Be Thou My Vision". In the second surgery waiting area, I was a blubbering mess. I couldn't believe my little girl was crying. I couldn't believe that her skin was so red from pure rage. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to be away.

In the middle of this, her anesthesiologist came. He checked with us to confirm that last time she ate. He asked if she was breastmilk or formula. He looked at the pacifier in Tessy's mouth and teased tenderly "What is a breast fed baby like you doing with a binky?" Of course his kind statement made me burst into loud tears. I didn't want my newborn sucking on a pacifier before we had firmly established a breast-feeding routine. However, NOTHING had gone normal with Tess and eating ever since we entered the hospital four weeks ago.

While I'm in the middle of this wrenching tears, a beautiful thing happen. The nurses started to wheel Tessy's isolette into the surgery room when Dr. Rich stopped them. "She doesn't need this!" he said. He opened the isolette and picked up my baby. He carefully cradled Tess in his arms, mindful of her thousands of IV poles. Dr. Rich carried Tess into the surgery room himself, in his arms.

I can't tell you what that meant to me. A doctor holding my sick little Tess like she was a normal newborn baby. I felt his love. I felt like I could trust everyone on that team now to look after my Tess. That unexpected gesture of reassuring "normalcy" was the only way my husband was able to drag his mess of a wife from the spot where she last saw her baby girl disappear from sight.

The second example of "meaningful work" happened while I was waiting for Tessy's heart surgery to finish. A very kind blog reader wrote to me "have a rosary, will travel" and showed up at Children's National Hospital. She had a very cheerful conversation with myself and my husband. At one point in the conversation, however, I needed to take a break. I wanted to purely focus on Tess and pray for her little heart.

I went all by myself on this lonely hospital corridor and curled up in a big window. I held my crucifix in my hands and prayed. I prayed and I prayed and I prayed. It was such a weird feeling to have something be so "thumbs up or thumbs down." Dr. Kanter could either fish that thing out, or he couldn't.

In the middle of my prayer, a janitor came by with a mop and a pail. "It's going to be okay," he called out. I shook my head. I couldn't explain that this wasn't a routine heart angioplasty. Instead, some freak accident had happened to lodge a gigantic foreign object inside my daughter's heart.

"He doesn't really understand how bad things are for Tess," I thought. I couldn't even meet his eyes. I looked down at the cross in my hands and started to cry.

"It's going to be okay," he firmly said again.

I didn't believe him. I didn't look at him. I started praying again instead. After a while, the man moved on down the hall. When I left the windowsill after a long while, I didn't see any trace of him.

Many minutes later, Dr. Kanter emerged from the surgery room flush with success. One of the first things that I thought after (oh my does that PICC tube look super scary close-up!) was "The janitor was right! How did he know for certain that my Tess would be okay?"

I never saw the janitor again. Who was he? But I give you this closing thought, who had the more meaningful work that day in the Heart Cath Lab of Children's Hospital? The amazingly talented Dr. Kanter who fished a PICC line out of a newborn's heart without causing any soft tissue damage? Or the janitor who encouraged a mother to have Hope?

More Reasons for My Smith College Diploma to be Revoked for My Failure to Toe the Feminist Party Line

I took my kids to Staples yesterday to load up on home-school supplies. They are so cute right now and so independent! Hannah (age 8), Alex (age 6) and Maria (age 4) each grabbed their own individual carts and had a blast browsing the sale racks for great finds. Afterwards, I was reviewing their selections to make sure that each item was truly in the $1 to $3 price range.

Each kid had gone with a color theme. Maria had chosen all pink: pink scissors, pink pens, a pink pencil case and a pink notebook. Alex had chosen all blue--except for one glaring exception. His notebook was a deep purple.

I struggled inside. "Do I say something, or let it go?"

I was raised with the firm social truth that "Gender is a construction in the mind, and a child's freedom of expression should trump 'outdated' social norms." Yet deep in my gut, I didn't like it. I decided "Well, I might be just a socially phobic jerk, but the truth is that I'm going to be totally embarrassed if my son's main notebook for school has a deep purple cover."

So I said something. "Er.....Alex, this notebook is purple. That's usually considered a girly color. Wouldn't you rather have a notebook in blue or red?"

My son looked deep into my eyes and said something that rocked my whole world.

"Mom, I thought it was deep blue. I wanted it to be blue. Sometimes I can't tell the difference between blue and purple."



This was light a lightening moment for me and the Holy Spirit, right there in the middle of the Staples aisle!

A ton of thoughts hit me at once.

First, my kid is color blind! Which I sort of suspected was happening between the colors red and green, but I never expected it to also be a confusion between purple and deep blue.

Second, there were all of these moments in the past where my son had chosen the purple candy, or the purple pencil--all these times when I assumed he was just a boy heavily influenced by having three sisters clustered in close proximity around him. But that wasn't the truth at all. My son couldn't see! Each time, he thought he was choosing the blue lollipop!

Third, it is clearly OKAY for me to be more bossy as a parent when it comes to color selection choices. Pink and purple are for girls. My son wants (and medically needs!) those type of leadership decisions from me.

I treasure that precious interaction with my son inside of Staples. Unless I tell the microscopic truth about myself, even embarrassing things like "I'm NOT cool with my son choosing a purple notebook", I miss out on so many things going on around me.

My Beef With Women Doctors

Six years ago, I walked out of a wildly successful legal career to take care of my babies. I never looked back. I rocked newborn babies. I struggled with infertility. I learned how to swaddle, cook and home-school. I never paid attention to the debate that raged around me about "retaining female talent" in the workplace. I was convinced that making my baby laugh far outweighed any theoritical legal victory I might have won in the Appellate Court.

Then came the dramatic day of September 5, 2010, when my baby girl Tess started dive-bombing towards death.

I found myself dramatically thrust into a room at Children's National Hospital surrounded by women. There were three female pediatricians, and female respiratory therapists. Female residents and female nurse. Thirty medical personnel surrounded my newborn's crib. The most striking fact to me at the time was that not one of them was male.

In that helpless moment, I felt chastised. "I was wrong," I admitted to myself. I was so profoundly grateful that some women dedicated their lives to specializing in one field. They sacrificed many things in their personal life to learn medicine, years of medical school and residency and extra long hours in on the job training. In that frightening search for the exact cause of Baby Tessy's distress, I was grateful for every single hour they spent learning how to save newborn babies.

I gave birth to my baby girl.

I loved her.

But I couldn't save her.

And in that moment, I was so profoundly grateful that a place like Children's Hospital even existed. A place where extreme specialists gave hope for the "almost goners."


For two weeks, I admitted defeat. This "Mommyhood" vocation was simply a path that I had chosen. It wasn't naturally superior. It was very important that other women chose to stay in their careers. The world clearly needed female NICU doctors.

I tiptoed around the exalted NICU doctors, especially the residents who visited my daughter's crib side often. I learned their names and their family histories. I learned who was newly married and who was divorced.

And then something happened which changed my opinion again.

First, a surgeon complained that her surgery schedule was double that week because another colleague was ordered on immediate bed-rest after her premature labor pains put her unborn twins at risk. I remember overhearing the conversation and thinking "This is not good!" and "What an irony!" Here is hospital that is dedicated itself to saving premature babies, yet it's own 10 to 14 hour a day surgery schedule put one of it's own female surgeons at risk for premature labor. The apparent lack of concern expressed by these two consulting doctors for the babies at risk really shook me up both as a mother and as the mother of a hospital patient.

Then there was my buddy Sachika. (I'm nicknaming her this because I can't clearly remember her Indian name and Sachika supposedly means kindness in Indian). Sachika was my angel in the NICU ward. She was a resident assigned to my daughter--super tiny, super petite, a newlywed with an extra large wedding ring, who gushed with kindness and knowledge. Sachika was the one who explained my daughter's frightening diagnosis in plain English. She would give us the heads up about what to expect in the NICU room before we got there in the morning. She would see us out when we left late at night. One of the most precious conversations we had was when she warned me that a cardiologist was currently conducting an "echo" on my little girl's heart "purely as a precautionary measure." It was if she knew beforehand that for a Mother to walk into a NICU room and see a doctor from an entirely unknown department working on her kid, that was enough to start a chain reaction of new panic attacks.

At the end of her hospital stay, Tess had recovered from her emergency surgery on her small intestine and we were just waiting for her special feeding schedule to end. Jon went back to work and I spent nine hours a day rocking my baby girl alone in her NICU room. I positioned the special NICU rocking chair towards the hallway door. Tess and I sat and rocked and rocked.

One morning, I kissed Tessy's little forehead. I looked up and meet the gaze of Sachika.

She had this look.

Her look was one of such intense longing.

Overcome with emotion, she dropped her gaze and stumbled into the women's bathroom across the Hall.

I sat there, holding my almost perfectly healed Baby Tess, and I realized what a profound gift I had in being her Mother. We brought her to that hospital dying, and many, many people rushed around dedicating their lives to fixing her broken body.

But now the drama was done.

And I was the one who was getting to take her home.

All around me were these wonderful amazing professional women, who dramatically saved the lives of newborns every day, while meanwhile almost none of them had little babies of their own to rock to sleep every night.

Almost a year later, I'm still mixed up about all of this. I know in my bones that staying home is the right thing for my life.

Yet if one of my three girls announced that she wanted to become a pediatric surgeon at Children's National Hospital, I burst my buttons with joy. Heck, if one of my kids wanted to wash dirty hospital linens at Children's National Hospital I'd be overjoyed. That hospital is simply amazing.

At the same time, however, I'd be praying hard to Mommy Mary that if someone I loved chose the obsessive careers of medicine, law or police work, that it didn't ever stop them from raising up their own children for the Lord. Not even the most important job in the world can beat that joy.

A First For Us

So I took my four sandal clad kids to Daily Mass this morning. I ran into a long, green and yellow SNAKE on the church side walk. The snake flecked it's forked tongue at us for several seconds and then finally slunk away into a nearby stone wall.

I've never seen a wild snake's head up that close. I've never seen something like that coming out of a City parking lot.

I didn't say anything at all. Yet my kids were filled with various opinions about our encounter. My favorite was from my six year old son who said "They need to get that Mommy Mary statue fixed at our Church pronto! Snakes don't scare kids like that when she's around."

Loving My Little Olive

I'm in the ninth week of pregnancy. My baby is the size of an olive.

Man, do I suck at this!

Tuesday, I spent 3 1/2 hours in the ER waiting room for Alex. (Poor guy found out rather dramatically that our front screen door window pane was made of glass and not plexiglass when he pounded hard on the door and then had glass smash all over him. He's fine! Surface scratches only, no need for stitches).

So I'm in the ER waiting room, feeling nauseous. I'm trying to intellectually compare the two events. "This is the same thing. Waiting here with an injured son Alex. Feeling nauseous from new baby Olive. Both acts of a love for a beloved kid...."

But of course my ever active intellect is saying "I don't want to have massive stomach flu systems anymore! What is this "olive" thing in me and WHY do I have to feel so tired, crabby, and miserable just because I want to add a new person to my family? Come on, God! Don't I get a "pass" on morning sickness just for doing a sixth pregnancy for you?"

Of course I read St. Augustine yesterday in the Divine Office who said "in every affliction we suffer, count it as both a punishment and a correction."

Honestly, sometimes I hate doing my Carmelite reading because it's a constant reminder that I have VERY FAR TO GO in the Spiritual Life!

I'm pretty far from rejoicing in suffering, but I am trying to more affirmatively love "little olive" this week. I take my pregnancy vitamin every day (even though it makes me want to throw-up). I do it as a prayer for my little olive. I try to pray. And I try to just be happy that my little flock has grown from six to seven.

I'll be hanging out on the couch today, thinking of all of you. Have a blessed week!

Happy Feast of the Assumption!

Seeing Mommy Mary At Work, Part 4

(Part One, Part Two, Part Three)

I found an old post from 2008 that describes my conversion of heart on "the Mary issue."

In my post I said: "I became a Catholic in 2002, yet I've always had a "block" when it came to Marian devotion. I remember clearly my first Holy Day Celebration in 2001. As a new RICA member I slid into a pew at the evening service of the Immaculate Conception. "This feels pretty weird, what am I getting myself into?" as I struggled to understand why I needed to be in church at night to celebrate an "invented" doctrine from 1950 which I'd never heard before in my 25 years of being a Christian.

This year, I formally consecrated myself to Mary, through the method of St. Louis de Montfort on the Feast of the Annunciation.* It's been a slow-a pathetically slow- process. I stumble along in darkness, groping through the nightly rosary, staring a devotional pictures, trying on unfamiliar concepts like "Mediatrix" and "Assumption."

This year [ 2008] is the 150 anniversary of Our Lady of Lourdes. I feel a special kinship with Saint Bernadette. Her "dullness" at the her catechism consoles me. Just as her trust and faithfulness in suffering inspires me. I've gradually gone from viewing Mary as this strange, fearful BVM, to my Blessed Virgin Mother too.


"Through this journey, I've always felt this "Mary block" must be mine alone. "I must have some weird mother issues" I thought. I could figure out why so many other Catholics leaped confidentially into the lap of Mary, why I always felt shy and uneasy."

My parish had a program where a Statue of Our Lady of Fatima "visits" individual households. Having a visiting statue of Our Lady in my living room was a real turning point for me. I talked about learning more about the "Five Saturday" devotion.

"First Saturday's making reparations to our Blessed Mother's Heart." The premise behind this devotion is beautiful. The faithful devote the first Saturday of five consecutive months to going to Confession, Daily Mass, saying the rosary and my favorite "keeping our Mother company for fifteen minutes."

The reason for choosing the number five, has to do with the five major ways the world hurts our Blessed Mother's heart. First, we deny the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Second, we deny the perpetual virginity of Mary. Third, we deny Mary the title of "Mother of God." Fourth, we desecrate the holy images and statutes of Mary. Fifth, we "uprooted the devotion of Mary, particularly among the young."

The priests on the video carefully explained how each of these "hurts" harm our relationship with God. The Immaculate Conception was God's first gift of redemptive grace. Mary is "the dawn of Christ's perfect day." Her quiet, hidden sanctification was God's signal to the world that we will able be saved through Christ.The perpetual virginity of Mary, was Mary's gift back to God. He accepted that gift and insured that she remained forever a virgin, even through the birth of Jesus.

At this point, I gasped openly. I felt this sting in my heart. My Methodist faith, which I'd always seen as sort of sweet and harmless, was actively promoting four of the five harms to Mary. The Methodists (and most other Protestants) recognized Mary as "the Mother of God" and trotted her out in nativity scenes at Christmas. Otherwise, my religion was actively seeking to destroy devotion to Mary as "incompatible with the true worship of Jesus Christ alone."

We denied that Mary remained a virgin and taught that she had other children beside Jesus. We denied that she was special or above us, through the special circumstances of her conception. We tore down her "idolatrous" shrines and built crisp white churches with plain walls. We "uprooted" Marian devotion, particularly among the young, particularly among ME.

You can read my entire post here.

* I have to give a special shout out to fellow Catholic Blogger, Conversion Diary Jen, for encouraging me to first finish this challenging month long devotion. I fell completely off the daily prayer schedule during a week long Florida vacation trip. In a fit of perfectionism, I was about to give up finishing this devotion completely. Jen encouraged me with the memorable quote "I think Mary understands that we're not going to be perfect the first time we try this. She's a Saint after-all!" The very day I dedicated myself to Mary, I "mysteriously" won 4 tickets to the Papal Mass from my parish lottery draw.

Going to the Papal Mass in April 2008, helped my husband and I realize that we called to become Carmelites. I was about to completely drop the idea of contacting my local Carmelite group before making an initial phone-call because I felt so unworthy. Jen said to me "I don't think people are exactly beating down the doors to become Carmelites. Why don't you just call them and see if they'll take you?" The funniest thing was my reaction: "Oh no, Jen. The Carmelites! The Carmelites! Everyone wants to become one of them!" She's a good friend to have in your corner, that Jen!

Seeing Mommy Mary At Work, Part 3

(Read Part One and Part Two).

Telling this beautiful story always makes me cry!

 

Last year, our seemingly healthy six day old newborn suddenly ended at Children's National Hospital in downtown Washington, D.C. As soon as we found out that Baby Tess needed to be transferred, my husband drove our car to the new hospital. (Because I had just had a c-section and still couldn't drive, I ended up being the parent who rode in the ambulance with our baby). My husband arrived at the new hospital least an hour before me and had lots of time to talk to the new doctors.

 

When I got into Tessy's hospital room, my husband told me some very grave news. Tessy's birth defect was commonly linked to other serious problems in the heart and the brain. The doctors at Children's Hospital would be screening for all sorts of really awful complications.

 

In a gesture completely opposite to the pattern of our ten year marriage, I put my hand on my husband's shoulder with an attitude of complete trust. "We are NOT going to cross those bridges until we come to them. Right now, we just have one diagnosis. That's enough. We're not going to worry about anything else until the doctors tell us that we have reason to worry."

As soon as I said those words, I looked out the NICU window--

 

there was my Mom's house! The Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. It felt like Mary was right there in person, putting her hand on top of mine and saying "that's right Abby! That's the right attitude to take!"

 

Because my kid's body was nutty, we ended up moving NICU rooms like 10 times. Yet we could ALWAYS see the shrine from Tessy's new hospital room. (We never ended up in one of the many, many rooms without this specific view). That visual connection to the Shrine during Tessy's three week NICU stay was so comforting!

I promised that when we got Tess out of the Children's Hospital, our first stop would be to the Shrine. Here's a picture of me saying "thank you!".

 

 

Thank you, Mommy Mary!