Fertility

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Apparently, I'm not alone out there in my thoughts regarding fertility and how true openness to life is our path to sanctity.  Helen at Castle of the Immaculate, writes compellingly about real openness to God's plan. We need to be talking about this issue; there is so much confusion and misinformation out there.  Some of the busiest people I know--mothers of many--are the ones who must tell the younger women of great gifts He has for them if only they will utter a fiat of total abandonment!

It has begun...

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Even though I still feel rather like I'm in the first trimester, my growing belly and the handy dandy spinning wheel calendar are calling incessantly that "we're halfway there!"  My head is most certainly reminding me that it's time to feather my nest.  There is much to be accomplished and only twenty weeks left to do it, ten of which will be encumbered by a belly so large that I will only be able to point and beg that it be done.

So, we begin with the most physical tasks keeping me awake at night. 

  • Our learning room needs to be ruthlessly purged and re-organized (again). 
  • Our mudroom, which made a surprise appearance at Kitchen Comforts, must be tamed. 
  • The craft room, which has somehow taken on the appearance of a dumping ground, must be restored to its former glory.
  • Fifteen years of photos need to be scrapbooked (I'm beginning to resign myself to the fact that this is how I'll spend my golden years, but I keep putting it on the list).
  • The freezer meals must be cooked and stored but first the freezer is to be defrosted in anticipation of a side of beef.
  • The pantries must be stocked (why is it that I approach having a baby the same way I approach natural disasters: bottled water, batteries, fully stocked dry goods, plenty of books?).
  • I need to make sure there is nothing under beds or couches.  Why?  I don't know; it just keeps me up at night.
  • I've already enlisted my seven-year-old to wash walls and baseboards with me, a task which will be revisited several times before the stork comes.
  • Window washing is another ongoing task.
  • The spring gardens are nearly in, but fall bulbs must be purchased so that the children can plant during the babymoon.
  • One of these weeks, I suppose we should clean out the garage.
  • And then there is the fact that I had given up on ever being so blessed again:  I gave away all my baby things.

And on and on the list goes; I know that one key to a peaceful postpartum for me is to leave for the hospital with the house in very good order.  If the underpinnings of organization are in place, the rest will work much more smoothly.  I will share details as we go.

This time will have some unique challenges.  This baby is due days before his/her brother's eighteenth birthday.  This time, my biggest task is to pull together homeschooling transcripts/portfolios for college applications before September.  I don't want to be learning this new skill while sleep-deprived and nursing, so it must be nearly finished before I go into labor. That's where my computer time will go this summer.

That means it won't go into what I usually do before a baby comes:  lesson plan overdrive.  Usually, I write pages and pages of detailed plans to take us through the first few months.  And then we follow them, more or less (often less). It's been four years since the last baby, so I think I'll just recycle the old plans.  They are written for multiple levels and everyone can just move up a level. We'll study ancient Greece and then Colonial America with a heavy dose of fall nature study and nature books.  Yes, it's eclectic, but it's also proven and I'm looking for guaranteed successes this time around. This plan will make my dear husband very happy since that means there will be no pre-baby book buying binge. We have about nine linear feet of books on these topics. Some people buy layettes.  I buy living books. Many of them.

Since we are well-stocked in the living books department for the plans I will pursue, I'll just update the workbook stash, move the living books for the units I've chosen to the forefront, and see where that takes us.Of course, Catholic Mosaic is due to arrive in my mailbox in a couple of weeks.  I reserve the right to revise the plans and the budget.

But back to the household.  I've noticed during my can't-hold-my-head up stage, that this house doesn't really run very well without my direct involvement.  Could be a problem...

Before we hit the bullet points, I need to dust off and update the daily plan.  Yes indeed, it's time to re-establish the chore chart. 

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The pegboard is from Family Tools, but I don't use it the way they intended.  I'm not into complicated reward/punishment systems.  We expect children to do chores cheerfully because that's how they serve God--just like we are expected to do our duties cheerfully and so fulfill the duties of our vocations. One of my duties is to clearly outline my expectations.  I've fallen short here in the last couple of years or so.  Slowly, I slipped into just doing it myself rather than requiring someone else to do it, teaching her to do it properly, and inspecting the job when finished.This became woefully apparent when I was out of commission.  We've begun an intensive training period in housekeeping.  Everyone needs the refresher course or they need to be taught for the first time. This is not your usual "curriculum."  But it is real. And it's oh-so-necessary, both now and later. My children will leave my home knowing everything they need to know to run their own homes. It will make their young adulthoods much more fruitful and harmonious. Their spouses will rise up and call me blessed.  At least that's the idea.

For the Record

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A column appears in this week's Arlington Catholic Herald under my byline. It is not the entire article I wrote.  For the record, here's the whole piece, undedited:

After what I think was the longest winter ever, it’s good to see the sun again.  Shortly after the Feast of Mary, the Mother of God, I began to feel extremely ill.  Since I have a history of cancer and a vivid imagination, I was sure it was serious. And it was.  A couple of visits to the doctor and, just days after my fortieth birthday, I learned we were expecting twins.  Then I learned one of the babies would be waiting for us in heaven.  The remaining baby looks healthy and strong and we are taking comfort in the fact that he or she will always have an especially dear intercessor. Mom, on the other hand, has been completely leveled by hormones.

            My midwife found it comical that I had no suspicion I was pregnant.  And the way my body’s reacting, one would think it had no idea what hit it. Never mind the fact that we’ve been here seven times before. My children have gotten a crash course in self-sufficiency. Did I mention that my husband’s traveling extensively? I’ve learned to work at the computer with my head on the desk. This is a more than a bit chaotic.  And it all looks so unplanned.

            The truth is, this baby is due exactly four years after the last one was born and we have been praying for him or her the whole four years. In the midst of all this nauseated chaos, I was blessed by a conversation with several of my friends, who are also mothers of large families.  We’ve traveled a similar road when it comes to understanding the real blessings and the nuances of openness to life.

            Early in marriage planning or in the early years of marriage, many, if not most, Catholic couples learn about Natural Family Planning.  They learn that NFP can be a real blessing in helping to understand better how a woman’s body works.  They learn that it is a valuable tool when trying to conceive.  And they learn that it is also very effective when trying to prevent conception.  Unfortunately, what they often don’t learn is that abstinence in Natural Family Planning is to be regarded as a privation.  Too often, they come away with the belief that using NFP to space babies or prevent them is the default mode for a holy marriage and not the exception. 

            What many parents of large families have discovered is that NFP has its place, but that it’s a very limited place and not the usual day-to-day mode of operating. In Covenanted Happiness, Msgr. Cormac Burke writes,

Spouses need to improve in life--to rise above their present worth--if they are to retain their partner's love. It is good therefore--it is essential--that each spouse sacrifices himself or herself for the other. But it is doubtful if any husband and wife, on their own, can inspire each other indefinitely to generosity and self-sacrifice. Children can and do draw from parents a degree of sacrifice to which neither parent alone could probably inspire the other. It is for the sake of their children that parents most easily rise above themselves. Parental love is the most naturally disinterested kind of love. In this way, as they sacrifice themselves for their children, each parent actually improves and becomes--in his or her partner's eyes also--truly a more loveable person. "For the sake of their children, spouses rise above themselves, and above a limited view of their own happiness. Moral stature is acquired only if one rises above oneself. Children, above all, are what spur a couple on to moral greatness."

That is why family limitation is not properly described as a right and is wrongly thought of as a privilege. It is basically a privation. It is meant for exceptional cases, for those couples who are obliged by serious reasons--by some powerful and overriding factor--to deprive themselves of the fulfilling joy and the enriching value of children. A couple who, in the absence of such an overriding factor, choose not to have more children, are starving their conjugal love of its natural fruit and stunting its growth. They are lessening their mutual preparedness for sacrifice and in that way undermining the mutual esteem that can bind them together.

Open-to-life sexual relations are the normal expression of married affection and alone fulfill the conjugal instinct. To encourage people, without serious reason, to abstain from such relations is to place an unnecessary and unjustified strain on the solidity of their married life. The conjugal instinct, which draws people to marry, is not a mere sexual instinct, nor is it satisfied simply through the companionship and love of a spouse. It looks to the fruit of that love. In other words, people are naturally drawn to marriage by a deep desire for fatherhood or motherhood.

It has been my privilege to be surrounded by large families.  All over the world, I have witnessed the examples of couples who have truly understood that children are always and only a blessing and that to limit family size truly is a privation, one that is to be undertaken only for grave or serious reasons. Some of those parents come from large families and they knew from the beginning that that was what they wanted for their new families.  Some of them come from the small families of the first birth control generation and they have come to understand the blessing as it has unfolded in their own married lives.  In the coming weeks, we will explore how a big family is one of God’s greatest blessings.

For now, here are the words of Bridget Galbraith, one of ten children and the mother of seven children:

It is hard to explain to a young couple just starting out or even to an older couple who has not had this openness how married love can grow from the challenges of many children. Indeed, the openness may be key here, rather than the actual numbers of children. The openness is up to us, the number is up to God.

How can you explain that when you look at each other, in the midst of chaos and just break out laughing together, that builds another layer of trust and love?

How can you explain the abandoned joy you share in a unique new baby … who looks just like the whole bunch at home? In fact the appreciation for each baby and each other seems to deepen with every child.

The work load is heavy. How do you explain that when we both are diligent in our respective roles as husband and wife, and support each other in those roles, that it all comes together? (It’s not always pretty, but it works.)

We are working together for a far greater purpose than our own fulfillment. We're essentially fighting for souls. Sometimes we fight valiantly together and sometimes we just muddle through. But it is sanctifying.

            Sanctity is the goal of married life.  God created us male and female and he gave us marriage.  If we are called to marriage, it is his plan for our sanctification.  Day after day, year after year, we must ask ourselves what he intends for that marriage.  How does he intend to sanctify?  For the couples who have embraced true openness to life, the path to sanctification is not easy, but it is simple.