"Lord, I am not worthy"

It's my favourite part of the Mass. Gets me every time. We echo those centuries-old words when we pray, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed."

For a long time, I pondered exactly what word it is He would say. It's not like an "abracadabra" kind of magic word, I know. I assume it's probably The Word. You know, the Word who was made flesh and dwelt among us. The Word who was there in the beginning, who was with God and who is God. That makes sense to the logical part of my brain.

But the emotional, sentimental part of my brain thinks of it a different way. I think of the story of Easter, when Mary Magdalene didn't recognize the resurrected Jesus. She addressed him as the gardner at first, and only saw who he truly was when he spoke her name. She hears him say, "Mary" and immediately she knows him. For me, during Mass, that is the word that is spoken to heal me - Jaclyn.

I bet you're wondering why I bring this up.

If you read my last post, you know that Francis was out of town for a couple of days, and I was on my own with a toddler and a newborn. Thursday morning was great. Thursday afternoon was even better. As of 6pm on Thursday, it all went downhill. Fast.

Come Norah's bedime on Friday, I was done. Spent. Finished. Gonzo. I had nothing left to give, after getting only four hours of broken sleep on Thursday night, and having a rough day with two exceptionally cranky kids all day Friday. So when Norah threw a tantrum as I put her in bed, I wasn't in the best state to deal with it.

She was in her bed, crying. Simon was in my arms, crying. And I was sitting on the floor outside Norah's (open) bedroom door, crying. And trying to reason with her through my tears. She wasn't having any of it. Finally I gave in, and took Simon into her room, where the two of us sat on a chair and waited for her to fall asleep. At this point, I was feeling like an utter failure as a mother. I know that most of that was irrational, post-partum stuff. But that's how I felt. So I prayed.

I told God how unworthy I felt to be given the enormous blessing of raising these two (and any future) children. Desperately and completely unworthy. They're so perfect, so wonderful - and I'm so broken and flawed. I can't possibly be worthy to be their mother.

And then a song came on. We always have a CD playing in Norah's room while she sleeps - it helps to drown out the noise from the rest of the house, and having worship music playing while one sleeps is lovely. So it's Matt Redman in Norah's room, and one of the songs on this particular CD is called - get this - "You're Worthy".

Now obviously Mr. Redman wasn't singing about me. He was singing to the One who is truly worthy. And that's when it hit me:

"Lord, I am not worthy to receive these children. But only say the word, and I shall be healed."

And so He who is worthy has spoken the word - or the Word - and I am healed. I may not be worthy by my own merit, but He has made me so. And for that, I praise Him!

A funny thing happened on our way to having a baby...

Well, not just on the way to the hospital, but there were many funny moments, many ups and downs, during the past five days. So here comes the birth story!

On Monday I went to see my OB, and we had planned that she'd do a stretch and sweep at that appointment. She informed me she couldn't even reach my cervix, let alone tell if a S&S was possible. "Sorry," she said, "but it doesn't look like anything will be happening any time soon." HA!

At about 6am on Tuesday morning, my contractions started. They were sporadic and varying in intensity all day, but around supper time they started to pick up speed. Francis and I decided that while it may not actually be labour (though I was fairly confident it was), that we should head to the hospital to get checked just in case. Because of my previous caesarian birth, I was at risk of uterine rupture, so we felt it was prudent to not wait too long.

We arrived at the hospital around 9:30, and went to triage at labour & delivery. My contractions were every 3 minutes at this point, and lasting around a minute. I was pretty sure this was the real deal. They hooked me up to the monitors to keep track of Simon's heart rate and my contractions. This meant I had to lie on the bed for two hours. As any woman who has gone through childbirth will attest, lying down is definitely not the ideal way to labour! At this point, my contractions got much, much stronger, and I was nearly beside myself.

(A little elaboration here: I had severe back labour with Norah, as she was posterior. That was painful. This time however, all day I kept describing my contractions to my mother and Francis as "not normal". They hurt in a strange spot. Explanation to follow.)

So lying on the table, I was close to throwing up at several times, simply because of the pain. I couldn't believe how much worse it was than when I was in labour the first time. Thankfully, after two hours of this, I had dilated another 1.5cm, and went from 50% to 95% effaced. It was announced that I was, indeed, in labour. We began the process of getting admitted, and were in our room by 1 am.

Now regarding pain medication: With Norah, my plan was to go as long as I possibly could without asking for an epidural. I made it about 27-28 hours before I received my epi. This time, I had made up my mind that I most certainly would get the epidural, as soon as I was able to. Why? Well, if things went wrong quickly and I needed and emergency caesarian birth, I'd be ready to go. Without the epidural, they would have put me under general anaesthetic, and I refused to allow the possibility of being unconscious when my baby was born!

So I got the epidural around 1:40, and tried to get some sleep. At 2:30, they decided my contractions weren't strong enough to progress my labour, so the decision was made to break my water. Back to sleep I went. At 4 am, my doctor checked me and informed me of the bad news: in three hours, I'd dilated only about 1cm.

Pros and cons were tossed about, and Francis and I agreed that it was best to just head to the OR. Better to do it before things turned ugly. I was prepped for surgery, and wheeled down endless corridors.

Simon was born at 5:38am. It was very different than last time - much more relaxed in the OR. Everyone was chatty and jovial, and I wasn't nearly so exhausted. (Plus this time I didn't have to watch the whole thing in the reflection of the OR lights!) Because there was no meconium in the amniotic fluid (like last time) the actual delivery was less scary, too. They delivered his head first, and after some preliminary suctioning, I got to hear my baby cry! Then they completed the delivery, and took him to clean him up. Nobody announced the baby's gender, so Francis was invited to go around and see for himself. As soon as I heard him laugh, I knew I was right - it was a boy! I'd thought so all along.

When they brought him to meet me, I cried. I was so overjoyed! He was perfect and beautiful and perfect, and... well... perfect. We had had two possible boy names chosen, and wanted to wait until we met the baby before choosing the right one. The moment we laid eyes on him, we knew he was Simon.

(Choosing Peter as his second name may sound like a serious Biblical reference, but really it's actually more coincidental. It was decided long ago that Baby #2's second name would be one of Francis' parents' names.)

This is when the shenanigans began. First, his birth weight. He was measured at 21" long, and 6lbs 8oz. That would make for one very long and skinny baby! This mistake wouldn't be confirmed until his 24 hour weigh-in, when the scale registered 7lbs 9oz! (Details in a future post.)

This was the time for me to learn interesting things about my anatomy. Apparently, I have a heart-shaped uterus, and my OB determined during the surgery that this is likely the reason why both Simon and Norah were posterior and refused to descend and engage in my pelvis - causing both labours to stall, resulting in the caesarian births. The second thing I learned cleared up a lot of confusion. Remember I mentioned the very strange contractions? It would seem that when I healed from Norah's delivery, the scar tissue from my uterus formed adhesions with my abdominal wall. That explains the extra-intense pain, and the strange location of the main pain of my contractions. It's unlikely I would have been able to endure that for a natural child birth, even if I hadn't already decided to request an epidural!

Next came the Big Fat Delay. Simon and Francis went off to the nursery, where they could enjoy an hour of skin-to-skin contact time. I, on the other hand, was wheeled of to the reovery room to practice lifting my knees. The doctor assured me that since it was the middle of the night and the recovery room would be empty, Francis and Simon would be able to join me.

Well, I waited patiently. When Norah was born, she was brought to me after her skin-to-skin time to initiate breastfeeding - I was expecting the same thing this time. After close to two hours, my OB came in to give me the news. Simon was breathing very quickly, and wasn't allowed to leave the maternity ward. She assured me that his vitals were fine, and his O2 saturation was fine. They weren't entirely sure why his breathing was abnormal, but their best guess was that it would self-correct after he was able to breastfeed. Yet they wouldn't bring him to me, nor would they allow me to go to my room to see him. In fact, between the moment he was born and the next time I saw him, nearly three and a half hours passed! (I'm very grateful that I didn't find out until much later that he also has a heart murmur.) I knew I couldn't leave until I was able to lift my knees about 6" off the bed. It seemed to take forever - at first I couldn't budge! After learning about the breathing concerns, I was more determined than ever to get those knees up. I've never worked so hard at anything in my life! I finally discovered that if I cheated a little, I could do it. Lifting my knees straight up didn't work, but if I turned my knees outward, I could bend them outward and then fling my knees upward. I did it a hundred times or more, until the recovery room nurse was satisfied. I was grateful my jello legs cooperated.

Finally, the long-awaited moment arrived, and Simon and I were reunited. Three and a half hours of separation is a very long time right after nine months of 24/7 contact! Simon took to breastfeeding immediately, and for that I'm immensely grateful. He's a very happy baby, and I'm sure he'll be a good sleeper eventually. For now, he much prefers to sleep in Mommy's arms or on Mommy's chest. I'm happy to oblige!

The story doesn't end here, but it's long, so I'll continue it in another post. (Or two. Or maybe three.) Stay tuned for exciting stories like "Blasting the Billi", "Oh, What a Night! Coming home from the hospital" and my favourite: "Norah Has a Brother".

Thanks for reading. And thanks for all your prayers and well-wishes. Simon, Norah, Francis and I are feeling well-loved and supported!

I'm in love...

...with a very handsome man. His name is Simon Peter (Chinese name still undecided) Kwok.

I'll post more when I get time. Check back in about 18-20 years.

Food Friday

Okay, confession time.

I'm a little... um... odd, when it comes to baking and serving guests. Just a little.

In the last weeks of my pregnancy with Norah, I had that time-honoured nesting instinct kick in. But where many women channel that energy into a good deep-clean of their house, or stocking their freezer with pasta sauces and frozen casseroles, my energies went into something a little less practical.

You guessed it. Baking.

By the time I'd finished, my freezer was packed with cookies. Sure, there were some meal-related things in there, but those were mostly prepared by Francis and my mother. My contribution was laden with sugar and real butter. I won't bother to tell you exactly how many cookies and squares I put in there, but let's just say I was well into triple digits...

And why did I feel the need to do this, you ask? Follow, if you can, my twisted, hormonal logic:
"When the baby is born, people are going to want to come over and visit to meet him/her. If people come over, I have to serve them something. I'm not okay with putting out a plate of Mr. Christie's finest. But I'm also not likely to have the energy to bake with a newborn to look after. Therefore, I should bake now."

As if people would care what I put out, or even if I put out anything! But one cannot rationalize with a woman preparing to give birth. It's just not possible.

I still like to serve fresh, homemade baked goods when people come over, but I don't always have a lot of energy or a lot of notice. So I've come up with a few things that I can make in a hurry, with a few simple things that I can have on-hand in my freezer at all times. Here's the first:

Berry Galette*

*A "galette" is really just a free-form tart. It just sounds fancier!

You will need these things from your freezer:

Ready-made pastry. Makes everything easier! (Confession #2: I've never made pastry from scratch. Never ever.) Just let it come to room temperature (only takes about 15 minutes) before you try to handle it. By the way, try to get the "deep dish" variety. It just works better.

Of course you can substitute any kind of frozen fruit here, it just so happens that my favourite is the mixed berries. And don't be afraid to buy the no-name version - I'm not hugely brand-loyal when it comes to frozen fruit.

The Cool Whip, of course, can be considered optional. But I like to garnish, so for me it's mandatory. Plus - it's pretty yummy.

Now you just need a few standard things from your fridge/pantry:
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp unsalted butter (margarine is fine too, if that's what you have)

Mix the first 4 ingredients with 3 cups of berries. Take the pastry out of the aluminum pie plate, and place it, more or less flattened-out, in the middle of a cookie sheet.Pile the berry mixture in the middle of the pastry, and dot with the butter/margarine. Now comes the fun part! Fold the pastry over the berries, overlapping the folds and leaving the berries visible in the centre. (Optional: you can brush the pastry a mixture of an egg whisked with 2 tbsp of water to help with the browning). Bake for 35 to 45 minutes at 375, until golden brown. Allow it to cool for 20 minutes before cutting into it (this helps it to thicken).

Trust me, it tastes as yummy as it looks!

If you choose to skip the Cool Whip, you can always dust the galette with a little icing sugar. It's also very tasty if you swap the Cool Whip for vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt. (My problem is that ice cream isn't as likely to survive in my freezer!)

Try it out. You won't be disappointed!

*Next week: Chocolate Trifle, also with simple things from your freezer!

Sticks and stones

You know how it goes:
"Sticks and stones may break my bones,

But words will never hurt me."

Not true, my friend. Not true.

I remember my mother (and father, and aunts, and teachers, and, and, and...) repeating this to me/us when I was little. Whenever my brother would call me poo-poo-face, or whenever I ended up at the business end of some new fat joke at school. I know it was always said with the best of intentions, but it just ended up making me feel like I shouldn't be as upset as I was. And frankly, I'm pretty sure that at least most of the time, I had every reason to be upset!

So why bring this up now?

An anniversary looms on the horizon. Not the happy kind, either. Francis and I got engaged on Christmas Eve of 2005. In the spring of 2006, right after Francis got his acceptance to the B.Ed. program, my parents (well, Mom really) put an engagement announcement in the local newspaper.

This is the photo that ran with the announcement. Weren't we cute?

Not long after it was published, I received a card in my mailbox at work. The announcement had included the name of the parish where I worked in Orleans. The envelope was addressed to:
Jaclyn Gannon
c/o Divine Infant Parish
Orleans, ON

That's it. No address, no postal code and no return address. I thought it was a little odd, so I checked the postmark, and saw that it had come through the post office not too far from my parents' neighbourhood.

I opened the envelope, and took out a pretty flowered note card. Inside held a message written in lovely, somewhat old-fashioned penmanship. The note began by congratulating me on getting engaged. How sweet! I thought. Yeah, right...

It went on to say that the sender (who signed the note only as "A Grandmother"), was sure that my decision to marry "outside my race" must be a huge disappointment to my parents and my grandmother, because she was certain that they had "raised me better than that". She went on to tell me that such unions never last, and I should go find a "nice white boy" to marry instead. She insisted I should spare myself the future divorce, by getting out while I still could.

Reading this, standing in the parish office, my jaw was dropping lower and lower. The secretary and another staff member (both ladies I was very close with) were watching me with some concern. They could tell something was wrong. But it wasn't until I read the next part - the part that reduced me instantly to tears - that they swooped in and took the card away. (After reading it themselves, it went instantly into the shredder.)

The "grandmother" told me I was being selfish. She said I obviously hadn't considered the future of my poor children, who would "bear the mark of my sin" because they'd be bi-racial (except she said "mixed").

My sin? My sin? Marrying a good, honest, loving, faith-filled man is a sin? Just because he happens to be Chinese? For some reason, this woman was raised to believe that God has a problem with people marrying someone of a different ethnic background. Even though she seemed to be somewhat familiar with my family (identifying my grandmother), she clearly doesn't actually know my family. If she did, she'd know my parents and grandmother would never have a problem with my choice of spouse based on race. Not just because they're not racist, but because my father himself is the son of a bi-racial man. My dad is one quarter black - his paternal grandfather was a black man who married a white woman.

I've had many (and I do mean many!) strangers stop me on the street, in stores, in church, just to tell me how beautiful they think Norah is. In fact, it happened 3 times in 2 days last week. Nobody has ever stopped me to tell me that they could see the "mark of my sin" in her.

I still feel the sting of those words in that card. Not because I believe a word of it, but because it saddens me that racism still exists. It upsets me to think that Norah may someday personally encounter someone who thinks that way. Growing up white in a predominantly white area, I'd never experienced racism like that on a personal level before this. It changed me. It made me aware of the need to continue to pray for people's views to be changed - for hearts to be changed. I can't hate the woman who sent that note, because I'm sure she honestly believed she was doing the right thing. And, more importantly, because intolerance can never be healed with more hatred.

Sarcasm is not becoming

Is it pregnancy itself that makes me more sarcastic than usual? Or is it the exceptional number of sarcasm-causing comments that I get while being pregnant? I prefer to think it's the latter, though my husband may disagree.

What is it with people that makes them think a woman's body/child-spacing/future is fair game once she gets pregnant? Don't people (other women, other mothers, especially) realize that the hormones and sleeplessness that go hand-in-hand with gestating a human make one less able and willing to receive such insensitive comments with grace? Honestly...

*The following comments are all actual things that have been said to me over the past seven months - and more than once.

"Wow, Jaclyn! You're HUGE!" Yeah, you too!

"Two under two, eh? You're going to have your hands full!" Really? Hadn't thought of that. I was thinking it would get easier the more kids I had.

"Pregnant AGAIN? You do know what causes this, right?" No, care to explain it to me?

"Wow, you're actually going to eat THAT? (Pointing at whatever evil brownie/cookie/peanut product I happen to be holding.) I guess you're not too worried about your baby!" Baby? No, I only worry about my taste buds.

"Are you really going to drink that coffee?" Yes, but don't worry - I made it good and "Irish".

"So you'll be done after this one, right?" Done talking to you? Quite likely.

"You're planning to have more? Have you considered the cost of university educations?" Yes. But it's okay. We plan to encourage all our children to drop out of high school and spend their lives flipping burgers or maybe cleaning people's windshields for spare change.

"Do you know what you're having?" Well, we hope it's a baby, but you never know - could be a small kitchen appliance.

Just for the record, I've never actually said any of those responses out loud. Usually I just smile and bite my tongue, or say something nice and polite. At least I only have about eight and a half weeks left. Oh, but then it's "You still have 2 months left? Where are you going to put the rest of it!" I'll tell you where I'd like to put it...

See? I'm sarcastic and NOT NICE!

Food Friday

This isn't a typical Food Friday post, because it's not about something that I made. Rather, my sister got me hooked on a baking blog, and I just have to share!

I absolutely love to bake cakes. And even more than baking, I love to decorate cakes! So ever since Jenna pointed out this blog to me, I've been hooked.

In particular, I love her cake pops. She mixes crumbled cake with icing, rolls it into a ball, puts it on a stick, and then decorates it.

Yup, they're all edible!

If you love baked goods, even if you don't make them yourself, just check out Bakerella. The photos of the stuff she comes up with will make you drool all over your keyboard. Don't say I didn't warn you!