When Life Imitates Art, Part II

Turns out Miss Chili Pepper isn't even the hardest thing my life. While my husband was still at home on paternity leave our neighbors called the police on Maria, my four year old daughter, for riding her trike in the street by their house. The side walk ends 10 feet from the corner on our block, so it's a problem. Yet we live on a quiet street with little traffic in West Virginia, so its not like our Maria faces an "instant risk of death" due to her negligence.

My solution was to call my kid out of the street, make her do three push-ups as punishment, and then demonstrate how she's supposed to pull her trike safely across the grass.

Our neighbor didn't come out of her house to tell us directly that she disagreed with my parenting approach. Instead, she called the local police to complain about Maria--for a third time!

 After the third call, a policeman came to my house and asked to interview "the girl with the curly hair and the jean skirt". He gave Maria a bicycle safety lecture. Then the officer kindly admitted to my husband that this whole exercise was fruitless because "four year olds don't listen to anything!"

I tried to talk to the neighbors directly after this incident but they wouldn't answer the door bell. So now they just scowl every time they drive by our house. Meanwhile, I lock all the doors before I take an afternoon nap and try to keep better count of all five of my children. (I also mentally sing Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive" every time Maria asks to ride her tricycle.)

Long story short, when there was a loud knock on the front door at 11 AM on Saturday morning, Jon and I woke up with a start from napping after a hard night. We were sleeping in our crowded bedroom with Baby Abigail and Miss Tess. "Where's Maria?" we both asked. "She's still upstairs, right?" "I'll go deal with it," Jon said, grimly expecting to open the front door to either irate neighbors or the police.

When Life Imitates Art, Part III

Instead of censure, we got a gift! The door knock was a package delivery! Our Catholic friends sent us an "edible arrangement" of fruit to celebrate  Baby Abigail Clare's baptism tomorrow. Just like when Katniss from the Hunger Games was down on her luck and received an uplifting gift from her "sponsors", we credit the Holy Spirit for knowing exactly when our family needed to be reminded that we are NOT doing this hard walk alone. Thank you S. Family! God Bless You and your newest addition! Happy Easter!

An End to Lent

Lent is already over for me. I remember this feeling from having Hannah three weeks before Easter. It feels almost impossible to rewind, and patiently retread the sorrowful mysteries during Good Friday, when you have a newborn in the house. Every part of me is singing. It's like baby Abigail's birthday brought us Easter morning early.

So while my heart is anything but in tune with the church calendar, I'm trying to better imprint the necessity of suffering into my soul.

I'm a weak girl. I tend to give up six inches from the finish line.

Since I'm a weak Carmelite "with a very little brain," God tends to put the dots pretty close together for me. I saw His hand on me during my latest c-section. I could see that by going through this extra suffering, by giving birth in such a public way--with so much medical attention--that other people benefited from my sacrifice.

Baby Abigail is the finale to Tessy's NICU experience, just like my Maria was the end to her older brother's second trimester miscarriage. Sometimes it's hard to say YES to God. Yet my YES means more when I know fully how much pain can be on the line.

When my son, Francisco died, my heart learned that just sometimes God's will meant that my precious babies would never draw a breath in this world.

When Tess got sick in the NICU, my heart learned that sometimes first birthdays come with incredibly painful medical conditions. Breathing can hurt. Heartbeats are irregular. Sometimes little newborns suffering a million pinpricks of IV needles before their souls pass through to heaven, like my little son Francisco.

It's harder to say YES to more babies after a painful experience with a sick child. That suffering, however, is what makes the YES more valuable.

Last Year's Lent

On the last day of Jon's paternity leave, we lingered at the breakfast table and reviewed what a crazy year it's been. Last year during Lent, we got evicted for "having too many children." After Tessy's near miss in the NICU, my husband and my commitment to be "open to life" became extra precious.

At the time of my frantic housing search last Lent, I had no idea if we were ever going to have more children (Tess came after a 3 year drought of unexplained secondary infertility), but I wasn't going to let some mean regulations about the "proper number of people per bedroom" dictate my family size. That decision was God's alone.

For almost three months, we had no idea where my family would live starting June 6th. The clock was counting down. Our options were so limited, they felt non-existent.

Yet, God had a plan!

A new house, in a new state, with three bedrooms, a safe sidewalk with room to draw chalk pictures on, and space for a garden out back.

Unbelievably, as a bonus for staying open to life, we got a new house AND Baby Abigail. She got conceived during the hectic moving week.

God's plans are not our own. They are far better!

First Week Home with Baby

Some random notes from our first week home.

1. Tess (our 18 month old) looks at her little sister and laughs. She's got the sweetest laugh and the cutest smile. It's totally consistent. Every single time she takes a look at that cute little baby she starts to laugh. I have no idea what's she thinking--maybe "How can God make someone this tiny?" It's adorable.

2. The older kids fight over who gets to hold Baby Abigail. Since she's usually eating, or just fallen asleep after eating, they don't get to hold her very much. This gets loud complaints. I always think about this whenever people ask "are they jealous of the baby?"

3. I'm amazed that the baby fits into our life so easily. In the weeks before she came, I kept worrying "how will I handle five?" It's sort of cool how pregnancy really prepares you to handle new life when it suddenly appears in a pink car seat.

4. Allergy season hit has hit us hard. (Of course, the same week that the outdoor soccer season started.) I'm taking allergy meds this Spring with the blessing of Abigail's doctor. None of the little girls are sleeping well because of allergies. Last night, Tess, Maria and Abigail were all in our bed at 4 AM in the morning. It's times like this that I joke "Might as well add a newborn, since no one is sleeping through the night in my house anyway!"

Palm Sunday

Today was the first time that we took Baby Abigail Clare to Mass!

This Palm Sunday was also the 800th Anniversary of the day St. Clare left her house in secret to become a nun. How cool is that?

The Poor Clares of Adoration in Washington D.C. have been praying for my family for many years. They sent us the nicest "baby welcoming package" for little Abigail Clare. There is a wonderful article about the importance of this anniversary written by one of the Sisters. Hopefully, I'll find time to get some juicy bits posted on this blog soon.

I'm the Mother of an 11 day old newborn, however, so that might not be a realistic goal!

Happy Holy Week, everyone!

Some Babies Come with a Loaf of Bread Under Their Arm....

Little Abigail Clare came with a Prius!

My sweet husband is such a model of St. Joseph. Praise be to God we got some of our student loan debt cleared away this Spring. My little Carmelite family was finally looking like it was going to have a normal grocery budget.

Our little newborn daughter arrived and my husband became extra sad about his commute. To get an affordable house in the DC Metro Area, my husband commutes 150 miles round trip on the MARC train. He gets up at 4:30 AM and comes home at 7 PM. Many nights he holds Tess (our 18 month old) less than 10 minutes before she crashes and has to go to bed. My husband said couldn't imagine doing that same routine with Little Abigail from birth.

So we prayed hard for a couple of days.

I kept thinking about St. Joseph buying the donkey so that Mary could make the journey to Bethlehem.

St. Joseph came through! (He's such a great Saint for us. St. Teresa of Avila used him for all her urgent prayer requests). Today, my husband bought a Prius. The bank gave us a loan at a decent interest rate, which they said was impossible when we bought from Carmax ten months again.

So now we are going to eat rice and beans for a while. As I told Jon "It's rice and beans and Daddy coming home for dinner at 5:45 PM!" Daddy is what makes dinner special at our house, not the food!

Update: Prayer works! Jon said that a father of four ran to meet him at the car dealership today. He saw the stickers of 5 kids on our van. The salesman helped Jon pick out the right car. Then the finance person "pulled a few strings" to get us a ridiculously low interest rate for our credit score because my husband looked like a nice guy. See kids really do come cheaper by the half dozen.

A Full House

So we are scandalizing some people by fitting five kids into a three bedroom cape cod house. I personally think my "crowded" morning nap room is adorable!

Prayer Request

One of my friends from church had an emergency c-section on Monday. Her baby girl was born 8 weeks early. Mom and baby are doing well. However, the baby is in a NICU far from home for the next 2 to 3 weeks. Please pray for Mary and baby Fiona to heal quickly.

Multiple C-section: Physical Acts to Help Lessen the Pain of Surgery (Part III)

1. Being open about my panic attacks while waiting for surgery.

 I wish I had thought to talk about this with my OB before surgery. I found out only after I finished that one of my pain-reliever drugs post-hospital discharged was actually approved to take to "lessen the fear prior to surgery." I've always been reluctant to take drugs during pregnancy for fear of hurting my baby, but this seemed like an easy compromise. One drug a mere two hours early could have helped me in the past avoid an emotionally painful panic attack.

Because there was a chance my husband wouldn't attend my c-section, I had to mentally prepare to confide my anxiety condition to my pre-op nurse. I found just the act of being willing to talk about it, made my panic attacks disappear.

2. Treating the Anesthesiologist Like My Personal Caddy

In past surgeries, I've always focused on the doctor who is sewing up my womb. This time, I figured out that the Anesthesiologist is the only one in the room who is completely focused on me during the entire surgery. I made sure to tell him every time I started to get nauseous, instead of valiantly fighting these feelings on my own. Turns out vomiting is directly tied to low blood pressure. He gave me meds every time I felt sick. I ended up getting through the entire surgery without vomiting. As an extra plus, I did not start out my motherhood experience with Baby Abigail feeling like I just survived a week of the stomach flu. What a gift!

3. I tried to be "giving" during my surgery.

I don't think this would have worked if I tried to "fake it". However, I found that honestly caring about my team and praying for them, helped me come out of my shell during surgery. I didn't feel so scared waiting in the OR for my husband to appear. It also made the time pass faster as I waited for my little daughter to come out.

4. I asked for drugs during Post-Op Recovery

The two to three hour recovery from surgery is usually pretty rough on me. This time I wasn't shy about asking for Benedryll to control my 'itching" allergy symptoms from the anesthesia. Usually, I'm so in the "no meds" thing from pregnancy, that I also turn down Benedryll in the recovery room. This time I took it. It made life so much more bearable.

5. I gave myself a break from doing breastfeeding "perfectly" in the recovery room.

Thanks to Tessy's NICU stay, I'm now so much more relaxed about breastfeeding. I used to get myself so anxious because a c-section usually means you miss that "one hour perfect window" when an alert newborn is most easily taught how to breastfeed. This time breastfeeding at first was miserable. Baby Abigail couldn't get the concept of how to latch on. I had no mobility in my waist or legs. I also had to lay flat because of my low blood pressure. I literally couldn't get my body into a position for her to comfortably nurse for the first three hours. We flopped though our first breastfeeding dance awkwardly. I just kept telling myself that things are going to be okay. I knew she wouldn't starve. I knew that we'd have plenty of chances in the next 24 hours to get things moving along better. I'm so happy that I finally took this 'performance pressure" off of myself.

6. Follow Directions

I've grown in the understanding of the virtue of obedience this hospital stay. I was impatient to walk when I first got to my hospital room. However, the nurse said I was confined to a 12 hour bed rest. I followed the nurses directions carefully. Surprise, surprise! My recovery was even faster than before.

Multiple C-Sections: Spiritual Help (Part II)

Here are somethings that helped me spiritually.

1. Sacrament of The Sick

2. Adoration

3. Mediation on the Way of the Cross

4. Theologically Understanding The Concept of Redemptive Suffering (especially by reading the works of St. John of the Cross)

5. Asking for Prayers from Others

6. Wearing my Brown Scapular into Surgery

7. Carrying a St. Gerard Scarf into Surgery

8. Praying Morning Prayer the Morning of My Surgery

9. Enjoying my Routine of Motherhood before the enforced break of a hospital stay.

10. Reading about the importance of obedience (i.e. deciding in advance to cheerfully follow all requests of the nurses ahead of time) and sickness from the works of St. Teresa of Avila

11. Striving to be extra kind to my husband (Thank you, Danya)

12. Reading Tobit. Praying to the Archangel Raphael to guide the surgeon's hands

(other things that have worked for you, dear readers?)

A Frank Discussion About How to Better Carry The Cross of Multiple C-Sections, Part One: Know Thy Enemy

(Note: In this series of posts, I'm creating a safe haven for women who carry the cross of multiple c-sections for Jesus Christ. If you leave a comment that's anti-c-section, or pro-V-BAC, I'm going to delete it. Holy and intelligent women already avoid entering into the trap of"unnecessary" second c-sections. In this small corner of the internet, I'm demanding respect for Christian women who carrying this specific cross.)


Know Thy Enemy


Child birth always involves a spiritual battle. In Genesis, the Lord ties the "pain in childbirth" directly to the salvation of a woman's soul. Sometimes when I  hurt after surgery, I sarcastically think "Thanks a bunch, Mama Eve!" However, the pain of a c-section is extremely honorable. My pain directly benefits another human being.  I have the chance to mirror, in my own humble way, the wonderful words of our Lord, "This is my body given up for you."

Because the Devil likes to screw up anything holy, there is a lot of hidden pride involved in childbirth. "I pushed for 20 hours without an epidural!" Yet a c-section is often a shameful and embarrassing thing. No one boasts "Hey, my body failed to eject my daughter before her heart-rate plummeted towards death." Or "Man, you should have seen me survive those itchy allergy waves from my withdraw of a morphine like substance."

All of this shame, invites the Devil to mess with our thoughts. Anxiety can rob us of joy. Anxiety robs us of Trust in Our Lord. At the most extreme end, anxiety can rob us of our future children. How many poor women without access to Mommy Mary end up on birth control (or even NFP) out of fear of having "too many" c-sections?

Here are some "enemies" that I've encountered in my childbirth travels.

The Earth Mother

I graduated from an all women's college. At age 18, before I'd even gone to second base with a guy, I KNEW the only proper way to have children. A girl on my college debate team had a Mother who was a midwife in Alaska. We actually spent long hours in the car on I-95 talking about how it was possible to give birth at home using only a bottle of purified oil to avoid vaginal tears. Real women pushed out babies in pools of water, or in their actual beds, or even in hospital parking lots assisted my EMTs.

Then I had Hannah.

After ten hours of labor with the crunchiest Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine that I could find, my little girl needed to exit quickly with an emergency c-section. In that moment, I realized that all of my theories about the ideal childbirth experience were just theories. When the moment of crisis came, I had peace with taking the "unhip" c-section surgery. I wanted my daughter out. I wanted my daughter safe.

For a long time, I felt like a failure because I didn't get a healthy, happy childbirth experience. Now I see in retrospect that I was true, spiritual Mother from the start. I chose to put aside my selfish "Earth Mother birth fantasy" when my daughter needed extra medical help to survive.

Fearful Experts

I live is a secular world that is completely anti-life. Even though I have individual doctors that I trust, the vast majority are pro-contraception and anti-large families. I've had physicians tell me to stop having babies with less concern than they would be to tell me to stop smoking. The Devil seems to know just when a "off the cuff" remark will keep me up at night.

My personal rule of survival is: "If you are lecturing me to stop having c-sections without looking at my personal medical chart, I don't have to listen to you."

Thankfully, every doctor who has actually reviewed my chart has always given me the green light to have more c-sections. I've promised myself that if I get to the point where a doctor I trust tells me to stop, that I at least owe it to myself to get a second opinion from a Catholic OB specialist.

I'm not trying to have c-sections against Medical Advice. I just want the medical advice to be based on the individual facts in my case and not a blanket belief that more than one c-section is bad.

Spiritual Envy

Because I didn't have the childbirth experiences of my dream, I had great attacks of spiritual envy. I'd read about someone having a beautiful home birth with their seventeenth kid and think "Why not me, God?" It was amazing, but the people who helped me most overcome this sin was all the wonderful Adoptive Mom blogs I read during my pregnancy. I stopped worrying that the hospital OR didn't have mood lighting! After all, what Ukrainian Orphanage offers "mood lighting." Orphanages and ORs are holy places because they are the first chance we have to meet our beloved sons and daughters face to face!

Dismissive Catholics

There are some Catholic women who seem genuinely shocked that a V-BAC is not a good option for each and every girl. I think it goes along with a larger phenomina of being "scandalized by the cross." It's really important to protect your mental health from this type of fruitless discussion. I have driven myself crazy second guessing my first and second c-sections YEARS afterward as a recrossed this territory with younger children.

The antidote to this type of second-guessing crazy is to strengthen my trust in Christ. I remind myself that I made these "decisions" while in grace and while actively trying to determine God's will in my life.

During pregnancy, it's common to feel persecuted by each of these three groups of people in my life. I need to remember to stay calm and focused. I also need to actively pray for these people. I need to remember that I'm fighting "Powers and Principalities" during this c-section journey and not get resentful of individual people.

Go Papa Go!

Except for the title this wonderful article on Papa's call for better teaching on the topic of chastity.

Having Help

No I do not "have help" at home. Except, I do. I'm rapidly raising happy big brothers and big sisters. My husband is a gem. Today, I was snuggling with Baby Abigail and my four year old Mimi. Out of the blue, Mimi says "Jesus loves you Abigail! He's in my heart. He's going to be in your heart too after I tell you all about Him." I almost started crying! Can you believe I've already got help in raising Little Abigail to love her Catholic Faith?

How Baby Tess Survived Mama's Hospital Stay

Some kids were interested in meeting their youngest sibling. Baby Tess however was all about the exploring the exciting electronic equiptment in Mama's hospital room. This is my future IT girl at work! (I also think she accidentally called the Nurses Station button at least 10 times during our two day stay)

How Miss Chili Pepper Got Her Nickname

I couldn't see my daughter for the first 20 minutes of her life (b/c of my c-section) but I could hear her. The girl never stopped screaming. None of our other four kids had such a strong reaction to their entrance into the world. I was reassured that her lungs worked,  but I also thought "Oh dear, I pictured a mellow blonde to match the name of St. Clare of Assisi. We might consider a name change for this fiesty daughter!

Because Baby Abigail is so fair, when she gets mad her entire body changes to a vivid red color. The girl turns blood red on every diaper change. The first night I nicknamed this transformation "turning into a chili pepper". Hannah (my oldest) thought this wasn't girly enough. She thoughtful called her "turning red like a cherry." No whenever Abigail gets a little over-dramatic, my girls say "Oh, here comes our Cherry." I also like to joke that our youngest child is "the cherry on top" of our family!

Our Experience at a Catholic Hospital, Part III

More than five professional staff members said "See you next year for number six!"

Our Experience in a Catholic Hospital Part II

Had an energetic chat with Deacon in Training Patrick who brought us the Eucharist. He says the entire hospital maybe sold next year if the HHS mandate remains unchanged.

Our Experience at a Catholic Hospital

The Crucifix torn off of each and every hospital room wall.

Abigail & Abigail Clare