Baby 5: Week 25

How Far Along: 25 Weeks (15 weeks to go!)

How I'm Feeling: I'm pretty exhausted right now. Good old pregnancy insomnia is keeping me up at night. This isn't news to me, as around this time in every pregnancy my body starts training up for the marathon that is having a newborn in the house. Otherwise I'm feeling some very strong urges to nest and re-organize my entire house. My husband and I spent the better part of yesterday and today moving around furniture and cleaning up systematically. I'm so glad he's so willing to work with my craziness!

What I'm Thinking: With a mere 15 weeks left (or up to 17 weeks knowing me) I'm starting to get antsy. As per normal, I have a check list of things left to do. Literally. A check list. I kid you not that I'm already working on assembling my overnight bag. I've got my cute little newborn cloth diapers, all my biggest Mama needs, and some clothes ready to be put in my bag (which, I have decided in a moment of complete pregnant neurosis to wash to make sure it's pristine). I'm also getting ready to go nuts setting up the baby's room now that we know exactly what clothes need to be in the dresser.
 

What I've Done This Week: Like I said, Hubby and I went wild re-organizing the house to have it more ready for our growing family. I've also been doing my best to keep on top of all my regular housework, as I've been really letting it slide these past few months (years...).

What I Hope To Do Next Week:The only room left in real need to putting together is baby boy's room. All the furniture and loose ends need to be pulled out so we can finish prepping for the flooring. After that's down, I plan on going completely nuts arranging, re-arranging, and then re-arranging again all the furniture in the room. Plus, I can't wait to put all those cute little baby boy outfits in the drawers.

Baby 5: Week 24

How Far Along: 24 Weeks (16 weeks to go!)

How I'm Feeling: I'm feeling good! A little tired for general kick related night-time hijinks (what's up almost 4 year old??? Why all the waking at night, kiddo?), but surprisingly energetic. I was thinking back to not too many weeks ago, when all I wanted to do was sleep. Sleep and eat a little, and sleep some more. I'm finding eating isn't the highest on my list (I'm still eating, just not in all-day snack mode), nor is sleeping (except at night, obviously). During the day I'm up and buzzing about. The TV has been turned off all day for 4 days, and I've been baking muffins, playing with the kids, and simply enjoying them!

What I'm Thinking: My brain has been working double time. We got the results of our ultrasound on Friday, and everything was great. Apparently this baby is a very energetic, healthy baby growing nicely (not unlike my waist-line). We also decided for the first time to find out the gender, and have been spending the last few days passing names back and forth. We were SO sure we were having a girl that we had a perfectly beautiful girl's name picked, so when our doctor said this little munchkin will be our third BOYYYYYYYYYYY, we were stumped. We had a name, but the second it became so real that this is in fact a boy, we ditched it. We have a new name in mind, but we'll be praying hard about it before we make anything official.
 

What I've Done This Week: Besides baking, I also went nuts cleaning in the kitchen. It's not pristine by any stretch of the word, but as of right now there are no dirty dishes. Rejoice! This shouldn't be a big deal, but it totally is. I've also been busy with things at Church, like our Moms' group, the Welcoming Committee, Baptism Formation sessions, and some odds and sods. I've also gotten a pretty cool gig transcribing some audio files of my parish priest's talks down at a conference. He's writing a book based on some work he's done giving presentations on the New Evangelization in the Catholic Church. I've been doing that in the quiet times and enjoying it all.
 

What I Hope To Do Next Week: I hope to finish the bulk of my transcription, and then, (ha, how many times have I said this?) clean up baby boy's bedroom so we can lay the flooring. We're so close to getting it done, but as that room has become a kind of a drop zone it'll take some doing.

Baby 5: Week 23

How Far Along: 23 Weeks and 3 days (16 weeks and 4 days to go! I'm quite behind this week! Oops!)

How I'm Feeling: The cold is really bugging me these days. I'm finding my skin especially dry these days so the frosty chill of a Canadian winter is wreaking havoc on my skin (not to mention my hair, but that's not exactly a crowning glory of mine at the best of times, so mehn). I've also had some itchiness where my stretchmarks are getting their own stretchmarks. Laugh all you want friends, but by the fifth baby the once moderate length and width of my first stretchmarks (which already look like a young Spiderman's elementary school project) have been far eclipsed by the supernova of stretchmarks that come with each new pregnancy. I wonder if Michelle Duggar has any unstretched skin left on her stomach after so many pregnancies... But I digress. On the up side, with only moderate amounts of caffeine, I am much more alert and full of energy. I know the kids are appreciating this upswing of energy. I'm sure the two oldest are very wary by now of this brief spurt of energy, as at least the oldest will remember the down swing brought on by third trimester sleepiness. Enjoy it while you can, kiddos. Daily art projects and monster truck dinky races for all!
 

What I'm Thinking: I've been having lots of wacky and funny pregnancy dreams lately, which have been giving me a laugh during the day. I'm not sure I can even explain half of them as they make no sense to me anyway. Last night I dreamt that I took a pilgrimage to Rome (Rome=Home, as my German friend often reminds me) with my family. We were there to have the Pope baptise this new baby (who was, by the way, born but had neither name nor gender). Apparently in my dreams I have access to the Pope, which is pretty cool and random. For a somewhat normal pretext (especially considering my parish priest is currently in the Holy City, and tweeted some great pictures from St. Peter's square), my dream quickly descended into wacky land. Let's just say it involved one of those wacky British sitcom style chase scenes where people are running out of different rooms in a long hallway (which was, by the way, the Papal Apartments in my dream). Swiss guards, toddlers, a stray donkey. You know, the usual. So yeah, pregnancy brain is hilarious when I'm asleep.
 

What I've Done This Week: This week was our Parish's Stewardship of Talent Fair, so I was pretty busy with getting ready for that. We also celebrated my wonderful husband's 30th birthday. All of this means that it looks like a series of bombs have gone off in my house. It was totally worth it for the sake of all the fun we had! We also got to meet my friend's 2 week old baby boy. He was totally adorable. It's a good thing I'm already pregnant, because for real my ovaries were clenching with new baby love!

What I Hope To Do Next Week: I'm kind of in survival mode right now. If I achieve anything, I will give myself a high five. We have a doctor's appointment on Friday and we'll hear the results of our 20 week ultrasound. That we haven't got an ominous phone call before now means that everything is fine, but I will be relieved when we hear all the details. We also have the chance to find out our baby's gender. We've never had the option to find out for free before, so we will see what we decide!

Raising Saints

I wrote a post a little while ago about the growing faith of my three oldest children. Knowing that they're our kids, my husband and I are rarely shocked by the sweet and faithful kids our things say. The truth of the matter is that their lives are deeply soaked in the stories of their faith, and everyday problems and duties are framed in light of service. (Or at least we're trying). Even now, the three oldest kids are watching the biographical film Therese, about one of my favourite Saints, St. Therese de Lisieux. They haven't yet asked to watch any of their other favourites, mostly from the Disney catalogue. My oldest daughter is especially in love with this movie, and keeps putting blankets on her head like a veil. The life of her faith, and that of her younger brothers, is growing before my eyes. We've started going to daily mass as we can, and I see through my own struggle to keep 4 little ones even mildly calm that somehow, some of this is getting through the fog of princesses and cowboys to have a firm place in their hearts.
This weekend was the first time my Dad was the Deacon at our regular Mass. He was ordained to the diaconate on the 8th at our Basilica, and even though it was a day of great spiritual joy, the Mass was later in the evening and the kids were tired and very cranky. A few days after his ordination, my eldest son was having a rough night, so I came in and cuddled with him in his bed for a few minutes in hopes of helping him relax. He and I got to talking, and something we ended up talking about Heaven. He really liked this idea and wanted to know what Heaven was. I told him that it was the place where we go when we die so we can be with Jesus. We talked about the fact that the people we loved who had died were in Heaven with Jesus. When I asked him what he thought Heaven was like, part of me expected him to say that it was like being on the playground all day or something sweet and childlike. To my surprise, he said: "Like Church for Poppi's ordination. (A pretty big word for a 3 year old!) We would have Jesus and our family. We would be happy. And we would eat cake and I would smile." This really warmed my heart. Of all the kids, he had been the wildest during the ordination, but through all his tiredness and crankiness, he had seen our time at the "big church" as something special, beautiful, and worth experiencing again. It was wonderful to see too that he felt Jesus was an important part of his Poppi's ordination.

Fast forward to this past weekend, we're sitting together, all in a good mood (shocking I know), attending my Dad's first Mass as a Deacon at our regular Sunday morning Mass. Even though I knew they didn't quite understand what Poppi was up to in the Sanctuary in that big green cape (aka dalmatic, haha), their eyes were on all the action more than ever before. While they were preparing the wine and bread to be consecrated, our oldest girl was watching intently. She turned and asked me what her Poppi was doing. I did my best to explain that he was helping prepare the wine and bread so that God could make it into his Body and Blood. She nodded sagely, noting that when Jesus was crucified he bled and it was sad. A few moments later, when the priest elevated the cup and recalled the words of Christ that before us was His blood given for us and our salvation, my sweet little 4 year old daughter turned to me in all earnestness and whispered: "Mommy, look at the cross. Look how Jesus is bleeding into the cup!" She then turned and stared intensely at the crucifix at the back of Sanctuary, which from her perspective was right above the uplifted chalice. I felt a shiver go through my whole body  and tears spring to my eyes. I wished in that moment I could see so clearly what she was seeing, that my faith was as innocent and fearless as hers. I know that if I saw what it was she was seeing, I might be nervous to share it with anyone, but with her childlike faith, she assumed this was normal, and needed to be shared. The rest of the Mass went on as normal, which its share of giggling, pushing, smiles and tears, but I was struck by the depth of her words. Even now I'm still in shock at what she said.

I know as my children get older, they faith will grow in some ways, and possibly wither in other ways. They will be taught by others to suppress their innocent belief in favour of greater understanding. In some ways, it will be wonderful to watch them grow in knowledge about the facts of their faith, but I pray that they will be the lucky ones who will be able to maintain their complete trust, innocence, and vision.

I Knew She Was a Girl

I knew before I was married or even pregnant that my first child would be a girl. I knew her face. I knew her joy and her smile.

When I was still a nun I had an experience which to this day still leaves my faithful soul in awe. One Saturday afternoon, after our formation classes as a community, we were all just hanging out at the Sisters' convent house out in a small harbour town. Out of nowhere two very dear friends of mine dropped in with their daughter. In retrospect she must have been 7 or 8 months by her size and the confidant crawl she had going. Their small family left me with a feeling of joy but when they left I felt a sudden deep feeling of longing. It was as though for the first time I realized I would never be a mother so long as I stayed with the nuns. I'd always believed I was fine with that. In my mind I had decided I would be like a spiritual mother, praying for all the lost souls and my students when I eventually become a teacher. Cuddling with that little baby girl had opened up a wound in my heart I had never realized was there. 

When my friends left it was time for Adoration in our small chapel. We had the whole community with us that day so I ended up sitting on the radiator while trying to muster myself to pray. I remember how uncomfortable I was and how distracted I felt by my realization that I would never be a mother. After about 20 minutes of this I was about to leave the room to get some air when all of a sudden a wave of peace washed over me. As I looked up at the Blessed Sacrament a strange vision came before my eyes. I saw clearly an image of a woman sitting with a child in her lap. Not just a child, a little girl with reddish hair that had a cute curl around the fringe, big blue eyes and the most joyful smile I'd ever seen. The woman was me. I was wearing nondescript clothes but it wasn't my religious habit. I was sitting with this painfully beautiful child in my arms with a look of perfect joy. She and I were rocking in this very particular Boston rocker. The stain, the shape everything stuck in my memory as though it was essential to the scene. As I looked closer I noticed a man's hand on my shoulder in this vision. My mind travelled up and in the vision I saw a very familiar face. With a flush the vision fell away and I found myself weeping in our tiny chapel, my hands clutching the uncomfortable radiator. I ended up leaving the room to have a quiet moment in one of our side rooms, shaken by my vision of a life that I still felt I could never have. 

Was this a calling or a gift of realization of what motherhood could have been had I been led along another path? I couldn't allow myself to see the vision as cruel even as I tied my rope around my grey habit the next morning, counting the three knots symbolizing poverty, chastity and obedience. All good things deserve sacrifice and I knew religious life included the sacrifice of physical motherhood. I still couldn't help being haunted by the clear vision given to me, though I pushed it aside as I struggled on in this beautifully difficult community life.

Flash forward more than a year later. I'd left religious life not long after that day in the chapel and was married less than a year later. Two days after Christmas I was in my in-laws bathroom staring at this strange scientific creation with its code of colours and lines. Two lines to be exact. I let out a choked laugh and then ran across the hall with the tiny stick tucked behind my back. Pregnant. We were pregnant. I was pregnant. The girl who thought she'd never be a mother. A beautiful joke on me by a God who always has a better plan. O was convinced right away that this new life (that made me very nauseous) was a girl. Everyone found my conviction laughable except my husband.

Fast forward to our 3rd Christmas as a married couple. In my lap sits a buoyant and joyful little girl with pretty strawberry-blonde hair, smiling in the glow of her loving extended family. Behind me stands my husband with his hand on my shoulder. We're sitting in a particularly beautiful Boston rocker. It had been a gift by my father-in-law to his wife when she was pregnant with their first child, my brother-in-law, on the occasion of her first mother's day just before they became parents. I can't help but smile as I know this moment was mine before I knew the truth of it. This day was planned for me before I believed in any of the details. Every detail down to whose hand was on my shoulder was exactly right. I knew in that moment how good it was to really trust, to really give in to a plan greater than my own.

And that's how I knew my first child was a girl before I was even pregnant.