How to Have A Baby. By APRIL OURSLER ARMSTRONG

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Charles Harris
6 years ago
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1 How to Have A Baby By APRIL OURSLER ARMSTRONG

3 How to Have A Baby By April Oursler Armstrong

5 How to Have A Baby DO BELIEVE we have almost forgotten how to I have babies. A We women of today know more about physiological processes of conception and birth than our mothers did, and so, of course, we have more to worry about than they did. We still battle old wives' tales. We have also new arguments over "natural childbirth" vs. anesthetic techniques, discussions of Rh factors, the effect of German measles and even the latest scientific theories about embryos contracting pneumonia in utero and thus injuring their brains. We are bombarded with advice on how to become pregnant and how to avoid pregnancy. In our society an expectant mother's name has cash value to a thousand commercial enterprises. Women's most intimate problems are hung out to dry in four-color glossy-paged articles. We are conditioned to the need of specialized books and paraphernalia to carry us through the nine months and prepare us to cope with the child once it arrives. We are swamped with the natural and unnatural clutter of modern maternity. But God has been locked out of the mother-to-be's heart as if it were indecent for Him to be there. In the name of progress we moved birth from home to hospital. And unwittingly we made it not a holy

6 thing, but an assembly-line process on a level with an appendectomy. I do not want to turn back the clock. I do not want to have my babies at home with midwife and boiling water any more than I want to be laid out in the living room next to the television when I die. I like our modern methods. ANY WOMAN knows in her heart that in the crisis of childbirth she should be supremely close to her God. Our Catholic hospitals, with Cross and Crib in labor and delivery rooms, are superbly ready to help us make modern childbirth the sacred event it has always been. The trouble is that many of us personally have forgotten the way to hold God's hand. We are embarrassed to link religion to the bodily function of birth. We speak daily of the fruit of Mary's womb. We consider it presumptuous and unfitting to see spiritual meaning in the birth of the fruit of our own wombs. For God's sake and our own it is time we relearned the magnificent wide-open secret of birth. It is time we learned the forgotten truth that every woman in the maternity wing is in a new Bethlehem. My husband and I have six children, all hospitalborn. Our sixth was born with the same medical techniques as the others. But her birth was an entirely new experience for me, with a spiritual beauty I had only suspected was possible. She was born as God and His Church intended, close to Mary and her Son. I remember when I was about to have our first baby feeling there should be some sign for me from 6

the Church that God cared. I remember going to Confession the day before birth was expected, and rather shyly asking the priest to pray for me. Then, a little lonely in soul, I went and had our baby.

7 the Church that God cared. I remember going to Confession the day before birth was expected, and rather shyly asking the priest to pray for me. Then, a little lonely in soul, I went and had our baby. I knew that later the Church would welcome me and our child with Baptism and the fine liturgy of thanksgiving after childbirth. Perhaps I was unusually obtuse, but it seemed to me that until then I was on my own. No one had told me the Church had a special blessing for expectant mothers. Only now is that tender prayer returning to popular use. Perhaps it was forgotten in a kind of general amnesia about the spirituality of pregnancy. YEARS WENT ON. Our family grew. Once in a while I caught a glimpse of some suspected glory to which I could not find the key. I remember hearing Bishop Sheen once compare a pregnant woman to a tabernacle. The idea startled me to tears. I remember the Italian-born priest who bowed his head and kissed my hand because he could see I expected a child. He said he always bowed to mothers-to-be because they were each moment so close to God.... I found many beautiful books and lectures educating me on the vocation of raising the children God sent us, but none on having them. I heard often, and understood, that it is a sin to thwart God by avoiding pregnancy. I was told, and believed, that it is a great grace to welcome His will and accept motherhood. But I had the feeling that once you accepted, and embarked on the nine months of waiting,: you 7

were somehow isolated in a vestibule of the Church, where the best you could do would be to offer up discomfort and indignity and pain, and get the job done. It did not seem right. It was not right.

8 were somehow isolated in a vestibule of the Church, where the best you could do would be to offer up discomfort and indignity and pain, and get the job done. It did not seem right. It was not right. And then, with our sixth child, I found the door of grace. It was, I know, Mary herself who opened the door in her gentle, invisible way. Many things, many people, helped. But if I were to point to the one thing that marked the change it was for me the pamphlet called "A Mother's Retreat." To be frank, I did not much like the idea of reading the pamphlet. I am by habit leary of prettythoughts-for-mothers, and I am given to the kind of pride which whispers that all such pamphlets are written by celibates anyway. "A Mother's Retreat" is not a startling booklet. It is not highflown, inspired prose. There is little or nothing new in it. It is not highbrow, nor does it drip with caramel piety. It will not flatter your ego. Nor will it put you to sleep. But it does provide a focus for the soul during pregnancy and birth. It is a companion that can change your life. The pamphlet reminds you that Eve had a child, and Mary had a Child, and that both mothers play a part in the way you will have your child. It reminds you that you are not simply a patient, not just a creature in parturition, but a part of the Mystical Body of Christ, working with God the Father in union with the Holy Spirit. And the pamphlet suggests that you use the days in the hospital for a private informal retreat. Women 8

often say that their stay in the maternity wing is their only vacation, and they are not really joking when they say it. Mothers also find it almost impossible to go away ever to a retreat house.

9 often say that their stay in the maternity wing is their only vacation, and they are not really joking when they say it. Mothers also find it almost impossible to go away ever to a retreat house. But with this booklet you realize that you can take a few hours a day in the hospital to rest in communion with Our Lord, praying, and meditating on the holy work you have done. I began my meditation ahead of time. I have not finished it yet. I do not think I ever will.... THE MOST tremendous thing a human being can do is to consecreate the Host at Mass. The next most tremendous thing is to bear a child for baptism. A priest by God's power changes the substance of bread and wine into the flesh and blood and soul and living presence of Christ. But you as a mother, by God's power, change the substance of your own flesh and blood into a child. You are bringing forth a person who will become part of the Mystical Body. That is a sacred and overwhelming task. You honor the nuns, who make altar bread, the artists who create chalices or build churches, altar boys carrying wine and water. Your honor in pregnancy is not different. The child whose heartbeat rests on yours is one day to be transformed spiritually into Christ, to hold His life in the chalice of his own. I think perhaps one reason God did not choose women as His priests is because in motherhood all are priestesses unseen and unsung. 9

The change of the Mass and the change of birth do not seem the same. The change of the Mass is swift and clean. It was purchased by the love and agony of God Himself.

10 The change of the Mass and the change of birth do not seem the same. The change of the Mass is swift and clean. It was purchased by the love and agony of God Himself. The change of birth is slow and painful. But it too is purchased by love and sacrifice. In both we go beyond this world and touch eternity. You did not feel the shadow of God's hand, but it hovered over you and before you knew a child was to come He had formed a soul and entrusted it to you. He gave into your keeping an immortal unique soul. In that instant two angels towered beside you. Your own guardian is joined by your child's guardian, and you walk enfolded by heaven's care. Then begins the silent novitiate of your soul, the nine month parable of truth. You ARE NOT yourself, as they say. Sights, sounds and smell assail you like demons. You are tired. You grow peevish unaware, prey to uncounted small ailments. You are clumsy and misshapen. You are not yourself, at all. You are possessed commandeered by a life not your own. You exist now to preserve and shelter and nourish that life at your own expense. Do not all of us live only to bring forth another life the life of Christ in ourselves? Are we not meant to die to ourselves so that He may live in us? The whole world, says St. Paul, groans in travail giving birth to Christ. And you, carrying a child in 10

your womb, are a divine picture of all life on earth. There are times when you feel like crying out for your freedom, to be for one moment yourself alone. And you are never alone.

11 your womb, are a divine picture of all life on earth. There are times when you feel like crying out for your freedom, to be for one moment yourself alone. And you are never alone. Your body is not yours to command as you please. It is not yours anyway. You gave it, in marriage. Only now, in the demand of growth are you completely aware of that surrender. You are joined to the child within you as your soul is to Christ. The mystery of the Incarnation, of Mary and her Son, is before you. It was most delicate and triumphant of God to be born of Mary. What finer proof could there be that every human soul is actually capable of conceiving God and sharing His life? You kneel, you and your hidden child, at the altar rail. You know that when you receive the Host, His flesh and blood become your food for body and for soul. But is it not wonderful that He has made your own flesh and blood, nourished by Him, become the food of the child for whom He created the soul? BIRTH AND DEATH are sisters, the strange twins who bridge the verge between eternity and time. The hour of birth draws near and no woman in the world can be completely free of fear. It is not pain or danger which haunts you most. Though you may not have the words to capture it there is in you an awe at the fact that there will be one moment when life and death graze in passing. Our own deaths will be our own births into heaven. And having given birth to life we will not be 11

afraid of the labor of death, from which our souls emerge into the only full life. Our whole span here on earth is a preparation for that final birth. The time of waiting is a time of testing.

12 afraid of the labor of death, from which our souls emerge into the only full life. Our whole span here on earth is a preparation for that final birth. The time of waiting is a time of testing. There is nothing else to do but trust in the living God. There is nothing harder for an imperfect soul like ours to do, than to learn that we ourselves can do nothing and all things can be done by God. What can you do to hasten the development of this child? There are vitamins and doctors and these are important, but they do not assure you the child will be healthy and well. The time before birth always seems longer than any other. I have thought God made it seem so long so that we would be forced to wonder about Him this Father of ourselves and of our children. You lie awake and trace in the darkness the strange patterns of Providence. God wills that some infants live and some do not, that some are physically perfect and some not. For each there is a divinely merciful, all-wise reason. You are with God, and you must look at Him with the eyes of faith in those long nights. WITHOUT WARNING, the days are accomplished. The pulse of labor descends on you. And suddenly you are alone from everyone on earth. There may be a hundred people around you or one, and still you are cut off in a way that must be experienced to be known. Your hour has come and it is yours- not your 12

13 husband's, not your doctor's. You are alone except for God. You and God now are joined to bring life into the world. God willed this life into being. With Him you have given this life shape and substance. You have carried His work monstranced within you. And now it is your suffering and yours alone which God needs to give a new life to the earth. Suffering. Wherever in this world a mother is in labor and a child is bom, there Calvary and Bethlehem meet It is human nature to cringe from suffering. But in birth the glorious reward that is suffering's right is visible as nowhere else. And when that hour is lived with Christ it can transform a soul. Saints have gone seeking suffering to purchase that transformation. You do not need to go and seek. The price and the reward are handed to mothers in the ineffable domesticity of a God who honors all mothers in Mary. It could be, if we knew how to use grace, that the coming of one child could make us saints. To be a saint is only to love God and to will to be possessed completely by Him. To make His ways your ways, and His thoughts your thoughts. YOU WALK in labor, and your steps are steps of the journey Mary made in the long road to the Nativity. She did not know physical pain in that birth. You do. It is no matter. The path is the same, the path of loving surrender to God's will. "Be it done to me, according to thy word." 13

Birth is not a matter for the body alone. We are not animals. What we do is done with body and heart and soul. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord." It is the soul that learns in birth.

14 Birth is not a matter for the body alone. We are not animals. What we do is done with body and heart and soul. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord." It is the soul that learns in birth. And what it learns is the truth mystics and theologians have struggled to express for centuries all Truth encapsuled in an hour of time. Christ redeemed the world through crucifixion, through the giving of the last drop of strength in suffering and love. The grace in your soul and mine, the new life that came to us in baptism, was mystically born. The price Christ paid for us, the price His bride the Church still pays is the birthpang of utter yielding of Himself. Through death comes life. Through suffering, glory. The road to Bethlehem was the road to Calvary. This strange violent physical process of birth is the story of all life of love and thought, of waiting and growth, of suffering and sacrifice, and triumph. There are few greater honors than to be asked to live it with Christ. In birth you do not decide to face suffering. It comes to you like thunder and you cannot postpone it and you cannot run from it. The time of it was set by God. And the thunder sweeps you away, so there exists nothing but this moment. Giving birth, like all doing of God's will, is hard work. It is truly labor. And there comes an edge to time, when you can go no farther, when you are suspended between earth and heaven, almost separated from yourself. 14

15 And then it is done. It is consummated. "A woman when she is in labor hath sorrow because her hour is come; but when she hath brought forth the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world." To you and to God a child is born. It IS TIME to rest. You have the sudden luxury of an island of time when no one will ask anything of you. And part of that time must be spent with God. Your soul is no stranger now to Him. You have been His partner in eternal creation. There is much for you to say with and without words. And more that He will say to you, in your retreat. Of what it means to Him to trust you to raise His saints. Of the new nearness of you to Mary. Soon you will bring your child to be presented in His temple and given His life at the baptismal font. Soon you will kneel for the thanksgiving and blessing we call Churching. You will hear the priest pray: Almighty, everlasting God, who by the childbearing of the Blessed Virgin Mary, hast for Thy faithful turned the pains of childbearing into joy, look with kindness on this Thy servant, who comes rejoicing to Thy holy temple to give thanks to Thee, and grant that after this life she and her child may, by the merits and intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, attain to the joys of everlasting life. Through Christ our Lord, Amen. And you will understand those words as never before. 15

First Sunday of Advent Prayers and Litanies

Prayers and Services: First Sunday of Advent First Sunday of Advent Prayers and Litanies Gathering Words, First Sunday of Advent 1. Joseph has a dream, and God makes way for the light of the world. Joseph