The Marathon

As my 3rd baby reaches her 1st birthday it is time for me to prepare for the next possible pregnancy. God willing, I will most likely get pregnant again soon. As this time approaches, I think about what the next birth will be like and what my previous births were like.

I have had three awesome, amazing, astounding home births. I look back on them with relish. Not that I like pain, mind you, but the power and accomplishment of those births live in my memory. I'm proud of them. I like to talk about them, and think about them, and I look forward to the next, and I'll tell you why: It is like running a marathon.

Laugh if you like, but I think people who run real marathons are CRAZY. What the heck are they running from? Why do they run? And it is my understanding that running a marathon is incredibly painful and debilitating. What do you get at the end of a marathon, if you win and your chances are slim, a trophy. Oooh a trophy. When I finish my marathon I get a baby. That's right my marathon is better than yours.

At least my pain means something. Your pain means, "stop running your killing yourself". My pain means that my body is working. My body is telling me what the baby is doing and telling me what to do. I don't want a medicated birth, because I would miss what my body is doing, and frankly God gave me this body; I like it, and I want to use it to it's fullest. I get to feel not just the pain (which is excruciating) but also the baby. When that baby's head moves into the birth canal it is amazing, and with an epidural I wouldn't feel it. I wouldn't feel that baby's  head pop out. And then When I get that baby out all the way, since I am unmedicated, I can catch my own baby, pull him up, and hold him. I am the first person to touch my baby and that is satisfying.

I know modern medicine advocates who laugh at me, "Why not get an epidural? They are perfectly safe." Even though they make you sign something accepting the risks. I know of too many epidurals gone bad to use one for a casual purpose, like pain management. I say, "Marathon Woman take an opiate so you don't feel the pain of your precious marathon."

I don't think  God's primary intention of designing the female body was for running marathons, but he did design it to bear children, so it should work, and it does, when given a chance, a majority of the time, because if it didn't the human race would have died out long before modern medicine.

Before you laugh at my epidural free childbirth laugh at the marathon runner first.

AMDG JMJ+

As I sit here eating a delicious breakfast and sipping awesome coffee, I saw snow falling out the window. Big puffy snow flakes, really pretty snow. It reminded me of the presence of God, and that reminded me, of my mother...

My mother is a very good mother. She loved us, and she taught us to love God more than anything else.

My mother was always aware of the prescence of God. I remember, when I was little, my Mom's watch broke, and she needed a new one. She was very insistant to find one with an alarm that rang every hour. She was having trouble finding one, which frustrated her. I ask why she needed an one hour alarm. She said that she like to be reminded of the prescence of God every hour. That's why the falling snow led me to this conclusion. I live next to a church and whenever those bells ring (every hour), I am reminded of the prescence of God.

My mother told me always to keep God at the beginging of my day. My mother was a list person. Every moring she would make a plan for herself. And she would always write at the top AMDG and JMJ+. She told me they stand for Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (All for the Greater Glory of God) and Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

I feel very blessed to have a mother who taught me these things. And I hope I can be a mother like her.