First, Dragonslayer, SSPX in Australia? Be good to Fr Fullerton, we’re sending him from KS to be district superior there.
Enjoy him!
If I can weigh in, the most comments I’ve heard about how many children I have (three: 2, 3, and 4 yrs old) have come from the WIC office or my mother (who also had three children, but somehow it’s abhorrent when I do it…). We attend a very traditional (SSPX) parish where three kids is still a small family. The family that babysits ours so we can go to Mass had nine (two passed away). Now there is a woman who can handle anything. But no one there has ever commented on how we had three in four years, and then just stopped. No one has implied that we have too few or we’re not doing our work right–that only comes from the secular folks who say things like, “You know what causes that, right?” (Good answers: “We finally switched from Pepsi to Coke and that seems to have done the trick” or “You know, everybody’s got to be good at something”) or more often just gives me a disgusted look. It’s especially frustrating because one child is autistic so yes, in public he can be a wreck, but Judgy McJudgersons make it so much easier to deal with
.
I can attest that one of the reasons we have a ‘small’ traditional Catholic family is because I was fooled. I was deceived, not maliciously, but by the best of intents. I have a heart condition so pregnancy has always been . . . an adventure . . . and each of the pregnancies probably scared ten years off my OB’s life. The last pregnancy, we discovered that I had developed an autoimmune antibody that attacked the baby’s heart and could be life-threatening, and no matter what would attack future children as well: any children I had after this one would have the same problem, added to the fact that my heart was getting progressively worse with each pregnancy. So the gentle push from every medical professional we talked to was, “It’s your choice, it’s up to you, but get a tubal, get a tubal.” They convinced me. It was hard, but I kept hearing that “You have to make sure the babies you already have have their mama” and things like that, so I did it. During the c-section when #3 was born (thanks to God she was not at all what they told us to expect–there is a child who lives and breathes testimony to the goodness of our dear saints), I was under general anesthesia, and they performed the tubal ligation.
As soon as I woke up I regretted it. I don’t mean just, “Oh shoot I wish I hadn’t done that,” but I mean I
mourned having done it, for months afterward. It caused a lot of shame and a lot of pain (emotional and physical, oh yes very much physical…) and it was two or three months after Philomena was born that I finally spoke to a priest and confessed it and gained absolution. I still mourn the loss of my fertility, even though I always say, I’m not ready for four and won’t be any time soon, but the idea that I won’t have the chance to have a fourth still eats at my heart. We’ll be open to adoption when our lives are a little more financially secure and everyone’s health crises are at a lull, but I dream sometimes about the fourth child, the one who will never come.
So at least for me, my family is limited because I made a mistake, not even in the contraceptive mentality, but with all those good intentions and lead by people who knew better than I.
On a slightly different note, I was speaking to an older woman (older than me, not elderly) who had three or four nieces and nephews with different levels of autism, and she was saying how lovely my 4yr old is, and that she ‘pinged’ him immediately as autistic, and what a good job I was doing (sweet but kind of unbelievable since he was having a minor outburst during the blessing of the host’s house and Enthronement of the Sacred Heart), and she said something that, if I hadn’t been minding my best manners at a party I probably would’ve cried: “This [meaning my three wild children] is what it takes for you to become a saint.”
I didn’t realize I’d been so naughty.
very true…
