Expecting Baby #7 and I'm Finally Tired of This

So, yeah, I know why you’re reading this. Don’t feel bad. You’re not the only one. Itching to hear it. Or maybe patiently waiting for me to fess up. For those tiny veins along my temples to do their thing. Confession time. To tell the whole world what you’ve already guessed. What you’ve already suspected for some time now. I’m crazy, right? Or being slowly driven crazy? That, what-the-hell-was-she-thinking? Setting out into marriage without the culture’s favorite parenting tip, “the plan”? Seven. That’s seven, honey, in case you need the cashier to point out what the rest of us in line behind you can’t help but see and hear. Are you done yet? Are you going for greatest amount of stretch-marks award? Please, for all our sakes—Haven’t you had it with grocery bills and laundry piles and mismatched shoes and gritty tubs and sticky floors and grubby toes and sleepless nights and leaky breasts and toddler fights and NFP and public humiliations and disapproving eyes and God-help-us prayers at 3am and most of all—-no plan for your fertility? Dear God in Heaven! Aren’t you tired of all this yet?

Yeah, I know. Not in your questions, impertinent though they may be, but in your eyes. I see what you believe. I know your concerns. I hear your plans. That’s one thing we all know: THE PLAN. You, unlike me, are a responsible adult. You have a plan. Your senses for financial expenditure, budgetary spendings, proper sibling spacing, and keen awareness of the female reproductive limitations, are all too clear as manifested by your life choices. The experts told you how to be a good parent. You’ve listened, accepted, and implemented their strategy—the plan. And here we are. You’re the norm. I’m the anomaly—exposed to the logical, reasonable, recommended style of living and having totally rejected it. So, let’s hear it. You’ve made the less-responsible choice. Maybe you didn’t know what we guessed at baby #3 (less than two & a half years apart) but we knew at some point it would catch up to you. Well, has it? Has trading responsible family planning for noise and chaos ultimately made you happy? Made your husband happy? Your kids? Weren’t the experts right, you poor dear? Did you think you were singlehandedly going to jettison the pro-life movement at the cost of giving your children a childhood of neglect, struggle, claustrophobia, hand-me-downs, and compromised parental energy?

Or, maybe we’re wrong. Maybe you’re not like us. Maybe you’re a saint, or crazy, or both. Maybe your threshold for chaos is higher than ours. Maybe what sets us off at three kids, sets you off at twelve and that’s just the way you were genetically made. Maybe your self-esteem is only good when you feel fertile and so you’ve let your insecurities allow themselves to indulge in irresponsibility, and created a disordered home. Or maybe you’ve got no self-control and though a stanch Catholic who doesn’t advocate contraception, you’ve found that NFP is really just too-damn-hard. We honestly don’t know. But we want to, which is why we’re constantly asking the same questions of you:

“Are you done yet?”
“Do you think you’re going to have anymore after this one?”
“Do you like it?”
“Do you regret it?”
“Are you happy being pregnant?”
“When will you be done?”
“How many do you plan on having?”

Yes. Alright. Yes. I’m just going to say it. I’m tired. Expecting baby #7 and I’m finally tired, finally fed up. I’m not more patient than you are. My house is always insanely messy, except the three minutes before you arrive. I’ve gained and lost more than 315 pounds in the 12 years I’ve been married. I’ve got messes. I’m constantly being woken up from a sound sleep. Tantrums are a near-constant throughout my day. Homeschooling is more like home-hooky. I have more stretch-marks than Dolly Parton has wigs. Being pregnant doesn’t make me feel good about myself. Giving birth doesn’t make me want to be a pioneer woman. My home is less of a domestic monastery and more like a domestic asylum. Yes, on so many levels, you are right. I’m constantly feeling spread too thin, despite my child-bearing hips and thighs. I’m not enough. There’s too much. But . . .

No. I’m not tired from all that. No, I’m not tired yet . . . Not of this life I’ve chosen but I am tired of something. I’m tired of you, sweetie. Tired of your questions. Fed up with your blindness. Exhausted from kindly trying to show you, trying to share with you, what you don’t seem to know already. What you’re either too scared to see or unwilling to see because you’ve bought the culture’s lie hook, line, and sinker. But more than tired, I feel sorry for you. I pity you because you carry a load on your back of anxiety, future regret, unsatisfied longings, and unverbalized resentment to which you have no name, to which you can’t for the life of you figure out why, since you’ve made all the right decisions, all the adult financial choices. But here you are. And here I am. The more full my womb becomes, the more you need me to reassure you that what you’ve done, what you’ve chosen, what you’ve given up, has been worth it. That the suspicion, that ache in your gut, is quite possibly your conscience whispering to you that you’re living a lie. That your fertility has nothing to do with your plan, and everything to do with God’s. That you’ve been asking the wrong questions all along.

It’s never been about the numbers. Three or twelve children are irrelevant and the numbers have never been the point. It has never been about assessing future anxieties and basing choices on fear. It’s never been about doing what’s done. It’s about you and God. Your spouse and God’s unfashionable desire to change the world through your marriage and its fruitfulness. How can He do that when you tell Him the plan? When you stop His abundant grace from multiplying your strengths, while you’re so focused on informing Him of your limitations? No, Lord, I’m done. Here’s my limit. Here’s my plan. Get on board, please, and pour on the graces. And you wonder why you’re unhappy? Unchallenged? Why your anxiety gets worse the more you simplify and try to control your world? The more you act like God, and act less on His trust?

I never planned on having seven children. But here I am, nearly seven months pregnant with my seventh. But I’m not tired. I’m not fed up. In fact, I’m exhilarated. I feel that baby rolling and squirming around my used uterine wall, like a little angel running through a scarred battlefield, and I’m full of hope. Full of peace. And more full of profound faith in God’s providence and mercy than I’ve ever known before. Why? Because I’ve proven to myself that I can go the distance? No, far from it. I’m just as crazy, impatient, sensitive to chaos, and terrified of challenges as you are. The difference? I’ve come to see, through jumping off that cliff of the status quo, that I’m not alone, nor am I reckless or unreasonable in handing over my life, my plans. To embrace radical trust in order to push aside fear, selfishness, weakness, blindness, false idols of ideal body weight and dusted shelves, for a better plan. A better story than the one I’ve written in my small, fragile, little baggage-carrying mind. The Creator of the infinite universe conceived me with a plan, a much better plan than the culture, or you, or I can possibly imagine. And I’m excited to continue to discover what that is.

So, when you ask me if I’m done or tired or unhappy or crazy or irresponsible, I can’t help but ask you: Are you tired? Tired of running the universe alone? Tired of your plans leaving you bored and restless? Tired of soft, pink skin, of puffy fingers, and littles toes, of cooing sounds, and eternal souls and physical manifestations of love and sacrifice? Are you tired of allowing God to enter into the intimacy of your martial bed? Of opening the sacredness of your womb so that His Divine Will can become flesh and bring about salvation history? Or, are you just . . . done? Have you set a limit on the amount of access you’ll allow Him? Is your prayer ‘bless my plan’ or is it ‘open my heart to Your plan, my Lord and my God’? Perhaps His plan is to give you more children than you’ve got now. Maybe it’s nine more. Maybe it’s none. Maybe it’s His will for you to suffer a childless marriage. Maybe it’s adoption. Or the pain of an emergency hysterectomy. Again, it’s never been about the numbers. It’s about creating a small quiet, open space in your heart—just for Him—to quietly whisper to you what His plan is for your fertility.

If your prayer is one of openness, your courage and trust will set the world on fire with His love. But if it isn’t, if your fertility is just another asset, like your house or your portfolio which only serves to reflect the valuation of the ego, remember this: the culture won’t be there for you when you realize you were wrong. When you realize you had so much more to give, so much more to grow, so much more to live, and so much more to love. It’s not going to reassure you, nor will I, that you were as generous with God’s blessings as He wanted to be with you and your spouse.