the heroic details

Abigail Aleth and Ignatius Theophorus were born on September 7th, 2018 at 38 weeks gestation via a planned cesarean.  Abby was born first at 6:11pm, weighing 5 pounds and 13 ounces. Theo was born second at 6:12pm, weighing 6 pounds and 8 ounces. The primary reason for a cesarean birth was the babies' positions.  Abby was breech, and although Theo frequently changed between breech and cephalic through-out my pregnancy, he was transverse just before delivery.  I thought that I had had plenty of time to come to terms with the C-section, but once the day finally came I realized how not  ready I was.  Emotionally, I was terrified. The hospital told us to call them at 5:00am, so after a restless night of little sleep we called them first thing at 5:00.  They told us they would call us back at 8:00.  Court went ahead and dropped the big kids off at school, then we waited for the call.  It didn't come, so we called them again.  They said they were having a busy morning an

On May 1st, the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, we found out that our twins are a boy and a girl.  By May 18th, we had decided on names for them. In case you haven't noticed yet, we have a subtle theme in our choice of names: they all start with vowels.  E lijah, A nja, O liver, I sabelle.  We kept with the theme and the twins will be called  I gnatius Theophorus and A bigail Aleth. Ignatius is after St. Ignatius of Antioch, it means "fiery one."  Theophorus means "bearing or carrying God" and was a nickname that Ignatius of Antioch often went by. Abigail means "father's joy" and Aleth is after Blessed Aleth, St. Bernard's mother. We will call them Abby and Theo. Today I officially hit 30 weeks, which means we are getting very close to the end of this twin pregnancy.

Right off the bat, this pregnancy was different.  I remember on the morning of January 16th, 2018, I was cleaning the kitchen after breakfast.  I wasn't feeling very well.  It was that crampy, irritable, fatigued feeling a woman gets when she's about to start her period.  I glanced at the calendar to look at the date and realized my period was a day late.  I had been tracking my cycle very closely ever since my miscarriage, and it had eerily come every month on the 15th like clock-work.  I knew in that very moment, even being just 1 day late, that I was pregnant. I happened to have an unopened pregnancy test in the bathroom.   I waited until I needed to go, then peed on the stick.  It was positive! Having had a miscarriage just four months ago, I wasn't exactly eager to announce the pregnancy.  I had my doubts as to whether or not this one would "stick."  I told my husband of course, but we kept it between the two of us for 13 long weeks. It was very

For the past 6 months, my oldest son has been receiving instruction at our parish for the sacrament of Confirmation.  His class consisted of 10 boys/men.  It worked out really well because Elijah's class at school is also preparing for Confirmation, so his religious instruction at school for this whole year has been focused on that.   Originally we did not think he would be Confirmed this year at all, but then our priest made the announcement about the classes and although Eli and his good friend, Finnian, are both only 11, the priest let them into the class.  They both did very well, and they were the two youngest confirmed yesterday at our church. During Mass Processing in The Bishop presiding over the ceremony was Eusebio Elizondo, one of our auxiliary bishops.  I had never had the pleasure of meeting him before, and I very much enjoyed his joyful and vibrant personality. His speech to the confirmadi was good and hilarious.  I couldn't hel

On April 4th, we celebrated Anja's 9th birthday.  My parents drove into town this week because Elijah is receiving the sacrament of Confirmation this weekend, so they were here to celebrate with us.  Because her birthday always falls so close to Easter, it often ends up that her grandparents are here for her birthday.  She has a tradition of asking my mom to make lasagna for dinner. Unfortunately, I was hit with a cold on Sunday and it was a brutal one.  It's Friday now and I'm still struggling to function.  There's not much I can take for relief because of the pregnancy, but I did go to an urgent care doctor and he did prescribe a couple of things.  Mostly though, I am unable to do much of anything but rest until it passes. Needless to say, her birthday was kept very low-key due to my sickness.  The morning of, my mom and I went to the dollar store and bought a few decorations.  Everything was pink, just like she asked for.  The day before I had picked up a chocola