She's here!

Welcome our new little lady: Cecilia Teresa!

Born at 11:38 pm on Monday, April 22nd

8 lbs 9 ozs

21 inches long
And simply delightful

Thoughts at 38 weeks

The thoughts flying through my head before baby #2 comes... because clearly I should be updating my defunct blog instead of tackling my to-do list.


Miriam is the sweetest little girl ever. Every morning when she wakes up she hugs and kisses my belly and says "Good morning baby sister." If her little sister is even half as delightful I am going to be in big trouble.

Even though it's another girl, the seasons they're born in are completely off - which means I have to buy new clothes because I'm not going to need a snowsuit for this baby at 3 months. Which is actually awesome because now I can buy matching everything for my girls! Oh yes I am that mother. I refuse to buy any new clothes unless I can get it in both the baby's size and Miriam's size. Loving it!

We're using a birth center this time! I am so excited about this. We'd actually decided this was the best option for us after the first birth, but there weren't any in the area we moved to. Then, halfway through this pregnancy, they opened one only 10 minutes from our house! I'm not gonna lie, part of me feels this is very providential. So we switched to the midwife there and have been pretty happy with it. The other day she asked me if I had a birth plan. Um, nope. Coming here is the birth plan. To trust that my provider has the same philosophy towards birth as we do and then go with whatever happens!

I had back pain in the second trimester and it's really returned in the last week or two. So I'm finally going to a chiropractor this week for the first time. Better late than never, right? Although I'm afraid I have my hopes up too high - so many people swear by chiropractors that if I come away from this one appointment with anything less than complete pain relief and baby facing the right way (she's sunny-side-up now), I'm going to be disappointed!

Remember how I did so much research when it came to all kinds of parenting choices with baby #1? I'm so glad I did that then, because now I can just take what we learned and modify it. And since I never got around to updating on most of those things, here's the briefest of summaries:

• Breastfeeding: Awful doesn't begin to describe the first six weeks. By a couple months we'd finally gotten the hang of it. By about eight months I loved it. I finished weaning her at 18 months, and that really felt just right for us. (I'd originally wanted to let it happen naturally when I was pregnant with the second, but that didn't happen.) I can't remember exactly when we switched from nursing on demand to nursing on a routine, but that made me a much happier mama. I felt like I had never learned how to distinguish her cries because every time she made a peep I'd shove a breast in her mouth. (It did work, though!) So I imagine this time we'll get into a routine (not a schedule) much sooner.
• Elimination Communication: Miriam has been dry during the day since she was 19 months old. I was a bit upset that it took that long, but I think part of our problem was transitioning to training pants - next time we'll go straight from diapers to undies. I'm not sure if she's technically nighttime potty trained yet or not (is there an official definition of that?). She doesn't have accidents anymore and is in underwear, so I guess so. We go in and potty her when we go to bed around 10:00 each night, and then if she wakes up we'll go in and pee her again and put her back to sleep. We're not in any hurry to quit pottying her at 10:00 because neither of us can go 8 hours without waking to pee, so we don't know how a toddler is supposed to make it 11-12 hours!
• Sleeping: Speaking of sleeping, or really lack thereof... painful. Especially around 3 months. Until maybe 15 months. Approach this time: more prayers.
• Cloth Diapering: Yup. Really happy with that choice. Have I mentioned we use family cloth now, too? (Well, Miriam and I do.) So we're still in a laundry every 2-3 day routine, so washing diapers again shouldn't be a big deal. 
• Babywearing: I took a walk with Miriam in the sling every day until I was pregnant with this baby. We both loved it, so we're definitely doing that again. I've even toyed with the idea of trying some new carriers - any suggestions? I loved the Moby for little bitty, and the ring sling (Maya wrap) worked well enough when she was bigger, but it wasn't comfortable for longer walks. Maybe a Mei Tai next time?

Okay, enough of a brain purge. I imagine no one even reads this any more, but I'll be sure to update when our new little lady makes her appearance!

Contraception correlations

I was so excited to give my first big NFP talk last week. It was "big" in that it was open to our entire huge parish and 45 minutes long. It was not so big in that 7 people attended, including my husband. Luckily I had given over that whole "how many people will actually come?!" thing to God a long time before, so I could just enjoy the fact that there were no hostile audience members and give it a much more casual and intimate feel. And it went well!

When I was preparing for this talk, I was quite frustrated in not being able to find good numbers. You know how you hear people talk about how all these social problems increased hand in hand with contraception use? We all realize logically that this is correct, but I had a heck of a time finding the data to make pretty graphs documenting it. So I decided I should post what I did finally hunt down, in case anyone else out there wants to access these numbers.

This post is chock full of caveats, however, so please don't just copy and paste the charts without reading the text and understanding them! And if you know of any better data, please please share it!

Contraception Use

This is the data I had the hardest time finding. All the other numbers I could get fairly easily from the CDC, but this is basically all they had for contraception. For the years 1982, 1995, 2002, and 2006-8, they have numbers of women who have ever used any method (see document page 18/pdf page 26), which increases from 94.8% to 99.1% during that time period. (Please note they do include "periodic abstinence" in these numbers.) They also have the number of women who currently use those methods for the same years (document page 21/pdf page 29), which goes from 55.7% of all women to 61.8%.

This was unsatisfactory for a couple reasons, but most of all because it didn't have anything from the 60s and 70s, which would show the dramatic initial growth in number of women using contraception.

I finally found some numbers for how many women were on the oral contraceptive pill during those years, via the website for the PBS documentary "The Pill." I don't know where they obtained these numbers, which makes them a bit questionable, but they were the best I could find. With that, I was able to create this chart showing the use of oral contraception in the United States from 1958 to 2008.

It's not perfect, as I would have preferred percentages as opposed to raw numbers and a few more data points. It certainly doesn't show the full extent of contraceptive use in our country, as an estimated 34 million women use some form and this only highlights approximately 11 million. But the chart is effective in getting across the general trend of contraception in our country - a dramatic increase and then a sort of leveling off once basically every woman who wants contraception has access to it.

I then took this chart of oral contraception (OC) use and overlaid it with charts showing the divorce rate, unwed mother rate, and abortion rate. I did not do any math or anything for this, so statistically speaking you wouldn't want to say these are correlated until you did so. (And if someone would like to just punch this all into SPSS or something and do it for me, I'd be very appreciative. I can send you the raw numbers in excel.) But nonetheless, it's pretty clear that there is some sort of relationship between these factors.

Contraception and Divorce

We have plenty of accessible data on the number of divorces in our country, from 1940 to today, courtesy of the CDC. (Find that here: 1940-1997 and 1998-2009.) They provide the divorce rate as well as the marriage rate. The divorce rate goes from 2 per 1000 people in 1940 up to over 5 per 1000 people in the late 1970s/early 1980s, and is now back down in the high 3s. (For an extended view of the divorce rate, One More Soul has a nice graph of it from 1880 to 2000.)

However I don't think that particular chart speaks to people as powerfully as it could. So I took the annual divorce rate and divided it by the annual marriage rate to come up with the chart below. Again with the caveats - this is not an ideal way to get this number, and it doesn't indicate the likelihood of a given marriage ending in divorce. But I believe this is how people come up with the quote that half of all marriages end in divorce, as this rate has been hovering around 50% now since the mid 1970s.

Now check it out overlaid with OC use.

Wow, huh? Divorce just follows contraception use right along.

Now you obviously don't want to make light of the pain of divorce or the many complex reasons behind an individual couple's situation. No one is going to say "Oh yes, we got a divorce because we were using contraception." However, when we look at the big picture the two factors are certainly related. In particular, economist and demographer Robert Michaels looked specifically at that big jump you can see above, where the divorce rate doubled in 10 years – from 25% in 1965 to 50% in 1975. He concluded that 45% of that increase is due to increased use of contraception (1).

Contraception and Unwed Mothers

Not only are there more single parent homes due to divorce, but there has been a crazy increase in the number of children born to unwed women. (Here's CDC data from 1940-1999, 2000-2009, and 2010.) Currently 41% of all children born in the United States are born to an unwed mother. Isn't that shocking? And for African American children the situation is even worse - 73% of them are born to unwed mothers.

While it doesn't have the exact same line as contraception use, we can certainly see that an increase in contraception has not helped with these situations.

Contraception and Abortion

Ah yes, and then there's this. First, a look at the abortion rate in the United States (from CDC data from 1970-1999 and 1999-2008).

Two notes on this chart. First, you can see that shortly before and then certainly after abortion was legalized in 1973, we have a dramatic increase. The rate doubled in less than 10 years. Second, you may be encouraged to see the decrease since the late 1990s, but it is very important to note that this is because the data is incomplete. Around 1998, the CDC went from having 52 states reporting down to 47. The actual decline for those 47 areas was only 2%. In particular, California stopped reporting. In the last year that estimates were made for California, 23% of all abortions happened there. So you can see how by simply not including them, it looks like we have quite a drop. If I had to guess, we probably have another plateau, from roughly the 80s to now. You know, essentially following contraception use again.

For more on exactly why/how an increase in contraception actually is followed by an increase in abortion (as opposed to a decrease, as many people expect), let me just direct you to 1flesh, because they have better graphics and plenty of references. I'll just repeat what the Supreme Court had to say about it (Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992):

“In some critical respects, the abortion decision is of the same character as the decision to use contraception… For two decades of economic and social developments, [people] have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.”

So there you have it. Numbers and simple charts illustrating them. Hopefully they're of some help to someone else out there!


(1) Michael, Robert T. 1988. Why did the U.S. Divorce Rate Double within a Decade. Research in Population Economics Vol. 6, p 367-399.

Game changer

I was going to sit down during naptime today and do some reflecting on goals from last year and goals for this year - you know, typical New Year stuff. Then I decided to try a snack that we didn't get around to last night and oh my goodness was so excited that I felt the need to post on this snack IMMEDIATELY.

You all. Did you know you can make popcorn on your stovetop - and it's not hard - and it's delicious?!

We haven't eaten popcorn in a couple years probably, because my husband isn't a huge fan and I was worried about getting cancer from the microwaveable bagged stuff. Then a cute boy scout came by selling some and so I bought plain kernels, thinking maybe someday I would get around to looking into it. A while after that I came across this recipe and pinned it, just in case. When my husband vetoed my plans for a black eyed pea dip for a New Year's Eve snack, I dug in my pantry and rediscovered the popcorn kernels.

Now, since we went to bed after the ball dropped, an hour before our midnight (seeing as our daughter wakes up at 6:00 every morning regardless of how late we stay up), I didn't have the unmitigated joy of devouring this last night. But I assure you it is still a delightful New Year's Day lunch.

And so easy. You just melt some coconut oil, put in the kernels, and shake the pan until they all pop. I'm pretty sure it took the same amount of time that a microwaved bag would have taken. And you can add your own good butter and sea salt! So yummy!

I was going to take a picture, but I really have to stop now because the keyboard is covered in butter. And I don't want photographic evidence of how full the bowl was before I started eating it, while my husband slaved away shoveling snow outside. But do yourself a favor and make an easy resolution to try making popcorn on the stovetop. You won't regret it!

Here's the recipe: http://thrivinghomeblog.com/2011/12/best-ever-homemade-healthy-popcorn/

Creating Christmas traditions for OUR family

I started a new Advent tradition this year, as I mentioned in the previous post. Unwrapping one book a night has gone great. I’ve really enjoyed it and every night Miriam gets excited that it’s time for her Advent book.

Only a few books left to unwrap!

But there is one little problem with this tradition: my husband hates it. He doesn’t let on in front of Miriam, of course, but he’s made it clear that more presents?! is not the right approach for our family. Between birthday presents and Christmas presents, more unwrapping is not helping us to focus on the reason for the season. In time, it would just foster an even greater focus on getting gifts than on anything else. So as for this tradition? We’re enjoying it for the rest of this Advent, then it’s getting the boot.

(I’m still happy to have all these Christmas books, though. I plan to exchange the regular books that we keep out for these on the first day of Advent each year, to remain out until the end of the Christmas season.)

So Advent next year may be a Jesse Tree or lighting a candle each night or filling a manger with straw for good deeds or something completely different. (I’m finally going to get Kate’s book and am assuming that will help!) The one tradition that we will hold onto is praying and lighting the Advent candle on Sunday night and then eating dinner around it in the dining room. So far that tradition, which my husband came up with and actually insists on, is going strong. So even if we do nothing else for Advent, we have that.


The point? That any traditions we want to create, no matter how great they sound on someone else’s blog or how beautifully they’re portrayed on Pinterest, need to meet two criteria: they need work for our individual family and they need to be meaningful.


The full force of that meaningful part has just hit me recently, actually. I was stressing out about Christmas day. You know how it goes: figuring out who to spend when with where, and the guilt (self-imposed or otherwise) for wanting to spend at least part of it as just your own little family. I was praying quite hard about this when it came to me: Christmas is about Jesus. I know, we all know this, I’ve said it and thought it a million times. But when I reflected on it, I realized that our Christmas day has not been about Jesus at all.

How embarrassing. How appalling. But really. Christmas day tends to look like this: Get up, open presents, eat breakfast, spend time with family opening more presents and eating more delicious food. Yes, we always go to church the night before. But the actual day where we celebrate the Lord’s birth? The Lord is frighteningly absent.

Once I had that revelation, most of my anxiety over whose-feelings-would-be-hurt-by-what evaporated. It wasn’t about people pleasing anymore. I was finally able to hone in on the one important thing: how can our Christmas day focus on Jesus? Not on relatives, as important as they are (it’s not like Mary and Joseph had a stable full of in-laws at the first Christmas). Certainly not on gifts, though they will still have a place. But on Jesus.


There are lots of ideas online to help with this. For example, I love reading through Ann Voskamp’s list of 10 Ways to Celebrate Christmas Morning (none of which are opening presents!). Below are the things we’re going to incorporate. Some of them may get tossed after this year, but hopefully at least a few of them become true family traditions.

Go to church.
Obviously this is the most important part of Christmas, and something we’ve always done anyway. We’re toying with the idea of going to a Christmas morning mass in addition to Christmas Eve, since we’re going to a late afternoon mass, but that’s not set in stone.

Read the story of Jesus’s birth.
Straight from the Bible. This is what I would like to do as the very first thing on Christmas morning. This year I’m hoping to do it even before we go downstairs and get distracted by gifts. Doesn’t snuggling in bed while reading the Gospel of Luke sound like a delightful start to the day?

Sing Christmas carols.
Now this is something that I’d also like to do first thing Christmas morning, before breakfast or gifts, but that is an example of something that would not work for our family. My husband is just not enough of a morning person for that! So this year we’re going to do it after unwrapping presents and/or on the drive to my grandparents’ house later in the afternoon. And to clarify, it will be songs like Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Joy to the World, not Santa Baby.

Just three gifts.
If that was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for us. (This is also my approach for birthdays.) I’ve seen lots of cute ideas for making those three gifts more meaningful by linking them to the three gifts from the magi, but that’s not going to work for our family simply because I don’t want to add that stress to myself. Some days I think that three gifts sounds like so little, but even with just us that’s already nine gifts under the tree, not to mention the piles of presents from extended family. Three is plenty.

Fancy meals.
We’re bringing out the china and gathering in the dining room around our (finally!) fully lit Advent wreath! I’m trying to find meals that are both special and simple. We host Miriam’s birthday party and all of my father’s extended family on the weekends leading up to Christmas, so I want something that won’t require too much more planning.

That’s it for this year, but in the future I also want to try out some of the following ideas. They may or may not work for us, but they sound great!

Reenact the Christmas story. (idea credit)
Dress up in costume and act out the story of Jesus’ birth. I so envision us spending part of Advent in the fabric store (“what color should Mary’s veil be?”) and then putting together simple costumes to use and really build up the anticipation. Ideally we’ll get grandparents and aunts and uncles in on the show!

Giving lists instead of getting lists. (idea credit)
Or maybe no lists at all. Again, we’re trying to get away from the focus on presents. (Can you tell that gift-giving is the very lowest of both my husband and my love languages?) After all, for at least the next ten years, I don’t think it’s going to be difficult to come up with gift ideas. Along with that, I really don’t see us taking our kids to sit on Santa’s lap. It’s not like we’re anti-Santa or think it’s an awful idea (although I really don’t like seeing babies screaming for a photo op), and maybe we will eventually if it’s something they’re just dying to do… but the whole “And what do you want for Christmas?” is again just putting the emphasis on presents. Not to mention the fact that you’re in the middle of a mall doing it, where you’re already being bombarded with buy!buy!buy! from every angle.

Follow the light. (idea credit)
Set up luminaries (or candles in mason jars or whatever) outside leading a path to a nativity. End Christmas day by following the path and spending a few more minutes singing glory to God in the highest. I LOVE this idea. I think it will be a nice touch to the end of the day and really make an impression on our children. The only reason we’re not doing it this year is because we’re driving back at bedtime, but it is definitely on the agenda for next Christmas. That way we're ensuring that we both start and end the day with a focus on Jesus.


What Christmas traditions work well for your family? Do you have any that you tried and scrapped? Share with me so I can try (or not try!) some of them!

(For some reason I can't get the image on here, but this is a part of the Little Holy Days Link-up!)

Our Advent plans

December is busy. You know this. You've got a gazillion commitments to juggle. Over here, we've got my husband and daughter's birthdays, along with hosting my dad's extended family the weekend before Christmas. Last year we were able to light an Advent wreath every Sunday and that was about the extent of our Advent celebration (okay, and it might've been pushed back to a Monday once in there).

But I longed to embrace Advent. I want my family to take the time to prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ, not just hustle through a different to-do list each week in preparation for whatever gifts will be opened that weekend.

Let's be honest, the to-do lists aren't going anywhere. But this year I took a couple evenings before Advent began (anyone else loving how early Thanksgiving felt?) to plan out our month, and although we're only on the second day of Advent, I'm already loving the difference.

I saw so many wonderful Advent countdown ideas online - everything from family activities for each day to Truth in the Tinsel, and Jesse Trees that ran the gamut of print-out coloring pages to gorgeous heirloom-quality ornaments. For our family right now, I feel like our almost-two-year-old is too young to appreciate a Jesse Tree (though I really want to do one in a few years!) and our kitchen is already cluttered enough without pulling out different craft supplies every day. And those cheapo punch out calendars with the nasty chocolate inside are not my thing.

So we're going with a book countdown this year (e.g. as seen here). Every evening we'll open one wrapped package containing a book or holy card as we walk through Advent toward Christmas. This idea appealed to me because it was a simple way to decorate (purple wrapped presents on the mantle fit the bill for decorating for both Christmas and Advent!) and it wasn't a lot of extra work (we read every night anyway!).

Just books and real holly, because decorating is unfortunately not my forte.
We'll be adding the stockings on the Feast of St. Nicholas (Dec 6).

The only part that could be kind of tricky is in gathering over 20 books. Luckily I had seen this idea last year and latched onto it, so I was able to buy some beautiful books for half-price after last Christmas and kept my eyes open at thrift shops for other Christmas books throughout the year. I also alerted my mom to my plan so she could help out, too.

But come the end of November, I still didn't have the 23 books I needed. That was okay, though, because I realized I wanted to incorporate holy cards, too! I loved the fact that sitting down to plan the next several weeks facilitated us finally marking other holy days, like the feasts of St. Nicholas, the Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Lucy, etc. I would really love to find books about each of those topics, but my local Catholic bookstore at least does not have them (with the exception of St. Nicholas), so holy cards had to do. For the most part I scheduled them to be opened on the night before the feast day, so that we could appreciate it throughout the entire day (for example, go to mass, ask for their intercession, etc.).

In case you're wondering, there's no feast for St. John the Baptist during Advent, but I wanted to include him since several of the Sunday readings are about him.

Speaking of scheduling, I really took some time this year to figure out which books to open when. Because I am a super nerd organized diva I even made a spreadsheet for it. This is not necessary, of course, but I really wanted to work around several of the holy days, and some of the books just worked better at different times. For example, the Berenstain Bears book is all about putting up a nativity set, so I planned that for the night before we would set out ours. In addition to the sheet specifically for this year seen below, I also put together a generic one so that it would be easy to do this in the future - it notes holy days and any books I want to associate with Sundays or special events (such as putting up the nativity scene) so that as the dates change year to year I don't have to think too hard about what to read when.

Many of these are simple board books and I hope to incorporate a few nicer and longer ones as our children's patience continues to grow. Most of the books are about the nativity story, but there are a few others thrown in - a Santa book or two just so Miriam knows what the other kids are talking about, and different books for birthdays. My husband loves putting up trains at Christmas, so we're opening The Little Engine that Could on his birthday, and we're going to look over Miriam's first year album on her birthday (the goal being for her to get a new photo album for each birthday... though this year she's not getting it until Christmas... ahem). 

I probably made all this sound entirely too complicated, but what I love about this is that it really is a simple way to stop and celebrate. Each evening before bed, we unwrap a book and enjoy it, spending just a few minutes to appreciate this liturgical season. As the mound of gifts on the mantle dwindles, the anticipation builds as we see that Christmas - the true gift - is drawing near.

Night one of Advent: opening a holy card of St. Francis Xavier.
Yes, I left her bow on with her pajamas for a good photo op. Naturally, a meltdown occurred shortly after this photo was taken. Just wanted to keep it real for you.

I would also like to eventually do something like this for the 12 days of Christmas (yes, the ones following Christmas). I may wait a year or two on this, though, in an effort to hunt down books for those specific holy days as well. I may also wait to do this until we start doing a Jesse Tree, so that Advent and Christmas are differentiated and not just one long book unwrapping season.

Finally, we're also still doing the Advent wreath. My husband decided we would eat supper in the dining room after lighting it, and I'm very excited about that little extra effort that will help mark each Sunday evening.


I'm so excited to be sharing in the Little Holy Days link-up! I'll be spending the rest of naptime checking out other people's posts - I hope you do, too!

7 Quick Takes (86)

1

You know how you always see these awesome blog posts of people who celebrate feast days with their families? I always pin them and think yes, I will do that next year. Well this week I finally got around to doing it! I made soul cakes (okay, mini pumpkin donuts) and we ate them for breakfast on Halloween, All Saints Day, and again this morning for All Souls Day. Miriam approved.

2

Speaking of Halloween, we had one beautiful butterfly fluttering around.

Thank you, Martha, for the wing pattern.

And in a successful effort to show children everywhere that women's costumes can indeed be unsexy, her mother went as a caterpillar.

Thank you, Pinterest, for the inspiration.

3

We handed out raisins, pretzels, and kit-kats. I'm pretty sure my husband had bought an extra bag of candy in case I had tried to fool him by not putting any chocolate in there. Miriam, on the other hand, was thrilled about the raisins and recommended them to the kids that came up. I think half the fun was opening and closing the tiny boxes. The other half was indeed eating the raisins. I'm pretty sure by this time next year she will have discovered what candy is (yes, she's still blissfully ignorant) and we won't be able to simply take her candy away and give her a measly box of raisins. But for now I'm reveling in it.

4

After thinking about it for months and months and months, this week I ordered my first bottle of fermented cod liver oil (actually a butter oil blend), a food-based prenatal vitamin (even though I can get generic prenatals free from the grocery store), and real salt. I also activated my first sourdough starter. I made chicken stock like it was no big deal and spent Halloween night watching Genetic Roulette. I think this means I'm finally on the real food train to crazytown bandwagon.

5

I thought this was going to be the week I finally got around to getting a blog post up, but it's looking dubious right now. Seven takes? Hm. 

Oh, I had an article in The Well, a website that supports Christian women in graduate school, about whether or not I'm wasting my education by being a stay-at-home mom.

6

We get to meet Miriam's first cousin in a week and a half, and we're so excited! It's hard to believe that my brother-in-law and his wife and baby have never met Miriam yet. They're flying back to the States for their 6 month old daughter's baptism. Now the question is, what in the world do we get for a baptism gift? My husband is the godfather, so it has to be something good. But I imagine she'll get plenty of little religious knick-knacks from the 50-75 other people that are coming (did I mention it's her American debut? yeah, big party), and her parents aren't really sentimental knick-knack people who will be eager to haul figurines back to Japan with them. So we're a bit stumped right now. What's the best baptism gift you've given or received?

7

Taking weekly pregnancy photos during my first pregnancy got old after, oh, the second week or so. But I persevered just because I knew in the future I would want to compare them! I decided this time I'll take one at the end of each trimester. I knew my belly would pop sooner this time than last, but I was surprised at just how much! My 13 week photo this time looks like me at 19 weeks last time! Hello, belly!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!