I love everything about being a mom. Including the "I had something I wanted to write about the other day, but Josh started having more trouble with his teething so I totally forgot," and other excuses. But especially waking up from co-naps on warm days and just having that really good nap/cuddle feeling.
Oh! I think it was goals. Goals are what I was going to talk about.
It's crazy, how your productivity and outlook changes when you have a little person for whom you are solely (while Dad's at work) responsible. To be honest, I still have a lot of goals. I just don't really put them in unnecessary time frames anymore. I used to have this crazy organization in which I had a list of urgent and flexible to-dos, and sometimes specific times to do them, etc. Now, my main goal for the day is to drink enough water. Did you know people are supposed to drink half an ounce of water for every pound they weigh every day? And I'll tell you, that put me close to 100 oz. of water when I was pregnant. It's a lot, lot more than "they" say: "8 cups." (Well, unless you're my mom or my friend Angelica who actually weigh less than 120 lbs. In any case, I've been doing well on that these past couple days because I have a 33.8 oz smartwater bottle and I just tell myself I need to drink about three of them a day. (No, I don't still weigh 180-something; the extra is for nursing.) Isn't it interesting how one tiny thing can make a big difference? The water has been one of my goals, gosh, for several years now. It was a New Year's resolution, then more recently a pregnancy thing, and now a nursing thing. But maybe I've actually got the hang of it now? We'll see.
Other than that, my goal is to serve my husband and raise a holy child (or twelve).Some days that means having a nice dinner started by the time Bryant gets home, and some days it just means feeding a baby off and on for the whole afternoon. Yesterday and today I've been able to do both of those! However, I have not been to the store for over two and a half weeks...
This could be one of those blog posts that goes on and on. I don't even remember when I started it, but it'd definitely been a draft for more than just a couple weeks.
In other news, I'm eating leftover shrimp that I just microwaved. Keeping it classy, yo.
So since this post apparently had a point earlier, I'll get back to it. I came across something somebody posted a couple days ago that said (lots of good things, but this is what I remember) "Change one thing a week." I'm applying it to my whole "eating organically/living sustainably" shift. Sure, I want grain-fed meat and real, true sugar and a lot less gluten and cloth napkins, "un-paper" towels, wipes, etc... but I sure can't do it all in one day! There are 52 weeks in a year; imagine your life if you changed 52 things by next fall! And, of course, the same applies to virtue. In high school, I was in a group called the "Handmaids of Mary" and we tried to work on one virtue per week. I skimmed over a quote last night from a saint who said something that translated to me as meaning "The worst way to grow in virtue is in a hurry." The "God, I wanted to be perfect yesterday!" mentality, if you will. So, here goes.
Virtue of the Week: Hospitality. I want Bryant to look forward to coming home even more than he does. I will try to greet him with a kiss and a smile, no matter what else has been going on that day, and save the negativity for at least an hour (negativity= challenges of the day, criticisms, things to do, etc.). If I do that, that hour worth of negativity might just disappear! Because how much of it was really necessary anyway?
Natural Life Goal of the Week? (I'll think of a better name): Cloth wipes. I already have a lot of scraps from starting my t-shirt quilt; all I need to do is bring them from my parents' house and figure out the spray!
Maybe next month starting my birthday week I will write out a few months worth of goals. Nope. Next month I WILL write out a few months of goals, then go back and check them off (or not) each week. Okay. Sounds like a plan! See you then! ;)
JUST KIDDING!!! But it's related.
Well, I'll slap this up there just to catch the tail end...
As excited as I am about NFP Awareness Week, I was torn about writing an NFP post... until I read this one by Kendra at Catholic All Year. Her post helped me realize that even if you're not currently practicing it to a "t," you're still allowed to write about it!
Bryant and I have recently re-discussed (or re-re-re-re-discussed) our current reasons to use NFP to postpone pregnancy. (I know the term is "avoid," but I prefer postpone, at least for our situation.) And, while our savings account is closer to replacing an appliance or two than ready for a down payment on a house, we've decided to take a break from charting. (Notice I didn't say NFP in general.) Our method right now is taking advantage of the ecological breastfeeding side effect of prolonged infertility. That could end in two and a half months (the point at which it starts to decrease from 99% effectiveness), ten months (the average length of infertility for women who practice ecological breastfeeding), or four years! (Sound unlikely, but apparently happens for a few women?) While ecological breastfeeding for the sake of infertility could be done with a contraceptive mindset as easily as NFP, it is another method that is accepted, and even encouraged by the Church (not well, obviously).
When Bryant and I were engaged, I just assumed we needed to learn NFP and we would use it to postpone at least the first couple years of marriage. (The typical, responsible things all young, married Catholics right out of college do.) We went to all our FertilityCare (Creighton Model) meetings, got used to the charting, and, at the end of each meeting when our practitioner always asked how we planned to use the method once we were married, we answered "to avoid pregnancy."
Then came the honeymoon.
And I hate to say it that way, because even at the time, I was concerned what people would think. So just to get it out there: no! Joshua was not conceived in a moment of unthinking, honeymoon-induced passion. There, I said it. As a matter of fact, (TMI alert!!! Skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to know...) I had my first fertile sign of that cycle on the wedding day, so, poor Bryant, as responsible NFP practicers, we did not have a "wedding night" in that sense.
But anyway. Little did I know, although we had discussed and discussed (how much I had always wanted a baby, how we felt it would be a good idea to get out of debt before I got pregnant...), Bryant wasn't as on board with the "me-teaching-two-years-and-paying-everything-off-first" idea. (And how glad I am!) Being such a considerate and patient husband already (three days into it) he waited until we were well into the relaxation of the honeymoon to spring the idea of NOT waiting on me. Ha. Haha. Something I didn't even know about myself: after making and rearranging my pros and cons lists (by worldly priority, and spiritual, and who knows what all else), I came around to Bryant's way of thinking, and "stress-watched" TV. You know how some people "stress-eat" or "stress-sleep"? Well, I turn my brain off by watching stupid TV shows. I think it was King of Queens. Good times.
To be clear, Bryant's way of thinking was simply this: we didn't have a serious reason to postpone. If you couldn't tell by the prior reference to list-making, I'm a planner. I organize, I talk things out, I rearrange, I schedule. (If only I had the follow-through! But I'm working on it.) In my mind, having a plan was enough of a serious reason! But, thankfully, Bryant helped me understand that this was a God-inspired idea (as if you couldn't tell that just by looking at Josh). And so our "how we planned to use the method" changed.
Nine months later! Isn't he cute?
Coming back to the present... I can tell you, trying to do Natural Family Planning (of any kind) while breastfeeding is difficult. Add to it the challenge I already had of a "continuous mucus cycle" that didn't respond to a super-vitamin or progesterone, and you have one frustrated mommy! At our first NFP meeting after Josh was born, I had just learned about ecological breastfeeding and was all gung-ho about wanting to find out when my fertility would return. I wanted to know if I would be the typical fourteen months, or longer, or shorter, or way longer... and I "thought" that was a serious enough reason to "use the method to postpone." (Of course, you all reading this probably can recognize the flaw in my train of thought.) The Catholic Church states (2368) that married couples can use Natural Family Planning to space children for "just" (serious, grave) reasons. Well, let me tell you, if money's not a serious enough reason for us (at this time), then waiting for my fertility to return is certainly superfluous!
But what brought me to this conclusion (if you didn't get the drift, Bryant is always waiting on me- in more ways than this!) was my emotions! As women, we're always fighting to control them, to eliminate the negative ones, to hide them... but here's an example of a negative one that wasn't just there to annoy me. I mentioned earlier that my cycle makes charting difficult, not to mention breastfeeding, and I was frustrated. It's true! Very frustrated. Because it is difficult to find a baseline, and decipher the rest of everything, and I am still not expecting my fertility to return for at least two more months (via the 99% statistic). So I was frustrated. I realized (by the grace of God- I hadn't really brought it to prayer, but He brought it to me!) that my emotions were telling me something. NFP is such a great tool, and it does so many good things for marriages, and infertility, why in the world would I (gasp!) hate it? Well, I came to the conclusion that I *should* feel thankful. And if we had been using it for a just, grave, serious reason (like health, or dire financial straits, or whatever situation), I WOULD feel thankful. I would tell God "Thank You" for the method while I was observing and charting, and mean it. I can tell Him "Thank You" now for other people, but not necessarily for me.
In conclusion, NFP is freeing. It's freeing when it's a tool you desperately need to heal your marriage, or support your family, and it's freeing when you realize you really don't need it! And, right now, it's freeing me to worry about other things rather than charting, and freeing our family to be ready for whenever the next blessing comes around! (Hopefully in a package with PINK bows this time, haha.)
Hi. My name is Sarah Winslow. In the past year, I have graduated from college, gotten married, taught my first year of second grade, and had a baby!
I was really glad to graduate; college was never really in my plans. In high school I realized "Oh! I guess I had better decide what to do after this," because I had always mentally skipped from high school to marriage. I was bitterly disappointed when my parents and I decided that Benedictine was not financially an option, but in retrospect, I'm very thankful for the people I met at Emporia!
I really enjoyed wedding planning! Well, most of the time. Our day went so smoothly and beautifully; God clearly was all over it. My mom was irreplaceable, too. She was on top of the planning, and on top of me being on top of the planning. Bryant and I are so blessed with the community who supported us throughout our engagement, wedding, and now!
Teaching was... tough. I will admit I could have gone in with a different attitude. If I knew I was going to teach for more than one or two years, I'm sure I would have felt better about it, but I knew Josh was on his way, and my strongest desire was to be home with him. So while I met some really awesome people with whom Bryant and I really hope to stay in contact, I won't say it was my favorite year.
And the baby. Oh, the baby. MAN, I love him. He is the best. :) You know, when they say "Having a baby changes everything," they are not kidding. Literally everything in my life has changed over the past year, but especially in the past three months. What I wear, what I eat, what I read, what I do in my "spare time" (ha!), even what I think about! And it's also true that I can't even remember what my life was like before we had him. What did we do all the time?
I'll tell you, I have had an incredibly easy life. God knows I'm weak, and has planned accordingly. But as simple as my life has been so far, I am looking forward to this next season even more! I have the most wonderful, supportive husband, an adorable, amazingly sweet baby, and my primary job is to care for them! Yay!
