What should I bring to the hospital?

Just got back from the OB. Labor will be induced on July 10.

So anybody have any tips of what I need to pack to go to the hospital? I'll probably be there for two days. At the birthing center we went home a few hours after DB was born, so the bag I brought just had his going home outfit and some good Champagne.

Specifically, do I need to bring multiple outfit changes for the baby? Should I bring receiving blankets or do they already have them there? Diapers? Multiple outfits for me or just something to wear home?

I'll ask the OB's office for a list when I go there next but just wanted to see if anyone else has tips/suggestions.

Updates, breastfeeding and NFP

[This is an update to a post I deleted. To summarize what I said in the deleted post, I was really upset because in a 48 hour period I found out that I couldn't give birth at the midwife-staffed birthing center; will have to have an induced labor at the hospital; probably can't have an epidural; baby will be delivered by an OB who I didn't choose and just met; have to give myself shots of blood thinner every day; won't get much money back from the birthing center; and got the official word from my insurance company that they're not going to pay a dime of the maternity costs, not even the checkups with the new OB.]


I'm feeling better now. One of the things that helped was taking some good advice and making a clear list of things that are in my control and things that are not, and only focusing my energy on that which I can control. (I actually did a spreadsheet with the columns "IN MY CONTROL / MIGHT BE IN MY CONTROL / NOT IN MY CONTROL"). I made peace as best I could with the things that aren't in my control (e.g. the money, for now, and the fact that I have to go to the hospital) and put my energy into those things that I might be able to have some sort of say in (e.g. the epidural/pain relief issue, what procedures are done to the baby after birth, etc.)

I'd also like to note that I was always incredibly grateful for my health and my baby's health, I just didn't mention it in that post because I was focusing on all the crazy changes going on. It's hard to have both your birth plan and your finances do a 180-degree change in such a short time when you're 36 weeks pregnant. (I've actually been saying a little prayer through gritted teeth when I stand up and the horrible pain starts, thanking God for the pain since many DVTs have no symptoms and are therefore very dangerous.)

So the newest update, which ties into subjects more appropriate to this site, is that Dr. OB is not sure that I'll be able to breastfeed because of the medicines I'll need to be on. Even if I can he said I'll almost definitely have to wean early. I know not everyone would think this is a big deal and, again, I am very grateful for my health and the baby's health, but I am going to be very upset if I can't breastfeed. It's a big deal to me. Obviously the biggie is how important I think it is for the baby's wellbeing, but I'll skip that part since you've probably heard it before.

What's interesting about it, in terms of the things we talk about on this site, is that this comes right after I brazenly announced my embrace of NFP. I have to kind of smirk and wonder if this is not some sort of test of my "easy to say when you're healthy and already pregnant and planning to breastfeed" statement that I'm all about NFP even though I'm not yet Catholic. (For those of you who don't know, exclusive breastfeeding is a way to naturally space children since it greatly reduces your fertility for a few months). It probably goes without saying that I would not be prepared emotionally, medically or financially to be pregnant again just a couple months after this baby's birth.

The well-wishers who've been calling to check in on the situation usually pause after they get the scoop on the health stuff and gently ask, "So, you guys are done after this one, right?" Or, for those who know we want to have more kids, "You guys are going to wait a long time before the next one, right?" People are not sure what to say when I don't have a yes or no answer to that.

So, it'll be interesting to see how that all pans out. I'm not going to put too much thought into it until I know exactly what the treatment plan is for after the birth, and I probably won't know that until late next week. But it's an interesting philosophical issue to ponder, and it's definitely made me think about the Church's teaching on contraception more.

Although it really comes down to a pretty simple concept: either you think the Catholic Church is correct on all matters of doctrine or you don't. I am almost at the point that I can say that I do. And even with my fast-dwindling doubts, following Church teaching and trusting in its 2,000 year old wisdom hasn't let me down yet; in fact, it's been the best thing that's ever happened to me.

Thanks

Thank you for the comments to the last post. I deleted it because I feel like I've gotten some solid advice that I can act on, and based on some of the comments I realized that I shouldn't have posted the part about my upset about the hospital birth change. I didn't give all the information for why that scenario disturbs me; it's very personal and really not something I should go into in a public forum like this. So some of the more flippant, condescending comments about my handling of the situation hurt me more than they should have. My bad. I shouldn't have mentioned it if I couldn't give the whole picture.

I'm sure I'll figure this all out. I'm filling the prescription for Vicodin today and am going to talk to the hematologists office to make sure there's nothing to be concerned about that the pain keeps expanding and getting worse. Once that's all taken care of and I'm not in constant pain and can get some sleep I think I'll feel better and be able to think more clearly. Thanks again for the thoughts.

You're so vein

[I cannot believe I'm actually posting this with that title. It's a testament to the fact that I am currently exhausted to the point of feeling punchy.]

Thanks for all the thoughts in my second to last post on birth. Interestingly, it all might turn out to be a moot point. I may be going to a hospital and Blue Cross Blue Shield may be obliged to cover it since I've had something come up that's pretty serious.

My ability to walk has been declining over the past few days as the pain in my right calf increased horribly. (On the bright side, I got plenty of opportunity to practice pain management techniques!) The pain was excruciating yesterday this morning so I called up a cardiovascular specialist and asked to be seen. A few hours and another ultrasound later they discovered a clot in one of the big veins in my leg, something called a deep vein thrombosis (DVT).

I'm not sure what the next steps are, I'm seeing a hematologist tomorrow morning, but I do know that I'm going to give myself injections of some blood thinner every day for the next month or so. Have I ever mentioned my horrible phobia of needles? Well, I've been presented with a wonderful opportunity to deal with this little fear paralyzing terror. Every day. For at least a month.

On an amusing note, these poor specialists just don't know what to do with me. I'm pregnant (which rules out a lot of treatments), I don't have a primary care physician, nobody referred me, I'm not employed but my insurance is in my name, and I'm going to a birthing center. I had this conversation more than once today:

DOCTOR: We need to talk to your OB.
ME: I go to the birthing center.
DOCTOR: Who's the OB there?
ME: There isn't one, just midwives.
DOCTOR: [Disappointed look] Who's your midwife?
ME: Well, there are four of them...
DOCTOR: [Gives me perplexed look like I've told him I'm having a Spirit Healer from the Far Hills deliver my baby.]

I have more to say about all this but am too tired to think anymore tonight. Prayers appreciated.

Fun little story

Here's a fun little story to start the week...

My mother was going to take DB (my son) to the pool yesterday and I really wanted him to wear this little life vest we have, just to be extra safe since it's really chaotic up there. I'd received it as a gift back in February and hadn't seen it since so I was concerned about being able to find it, especially since all the new baby gifts have made everything disorganized.

I tore through every drawer in my son's room, his closet, under his crib, all the drawers and shelves in my room and couldn't find it anywhere. I'd looked EVERYWHERE. I was thinking that it must have accidentally been thrown away since I hadn't even seen it since the moment we opened the gift box.

And then I remembered my mother telling me that her (very Irish, very Catholic) grandmother swore up and down that prayers to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost items, were extremely effective. Evidently she often told the story that a pair of precious earrings had been missing for two weeks and immediately after she said a prayer to St. Anthony she found them sitting on her lap.

So I gave it a shot.

I closed my eyes and said a little prayer telling St. Anthony that if this life vest was going to be found today it would only be through his help. I went to the kitchen to ask my mom if there was any chance she threw it away, packed it up in the garage, etc. And then I had an urge to go back to the closet. I opened the door, pushed back a tightly packed mass of clothes hanging over a shelf. I'd done this earlier but pushed it back a little further this time and saw the edge of a box. I knew it was going to be in there. And sure enough, hidden under some old rattles and bibs, sat the little toddler life vest.

Looks like my great-grandmother might have been onto something. :)

On birth

First of all, thanks for all the comments to my post about my little pregnancy issues. I feel much better about everything now, in part thanks to your comments and support. I think a lot of it was that I was just frustrated and exhausted the day I wrote that. I'm still limping and in pain but I'm kind of used to it now, and I've come to realize how utterly inconsequential it is compared to the honor of being able to participate in the creation of a new life.

And now for something that's on my mind that is also inconsequential in the grand scheme of things but won't seem that way for about ten hours in late July: birth.

I'm not looking forward to the actual giving birth process, and it bums me out since I'd like to have nothing but joy in my heart when I think of the day I'll meet my daughter for the first time. I wouldn't say I'm dreading it, but my blood pressure does go up a bit when I think about it, and I wanted to see if any of you clever people have any thoughts that might help me. Here's the situation:

The Plan
Unless any unforeseen complications arise, I'm delivering my daughter at the same birthing center where I had my son. They have no pain medication there. It's basically the same thing as doing a home birth, just at someone else's place.

I'm pretty committed to natural childbirth in theory, but I can't say that my labor with my son is one of my favorite memories. In fact, it sucked. I didn't click with the midwife on call and my son was compound presentation, meaning he had his fist balled up on the side of his head. They say that you won't experience more pain than you can handle, but I disagree with that. I could not handle the pain. I was literally going out of my mind, speaking in tongues and crazy stuff like that. The day before I went into labor I had seen a documentary about that hiker who had to cut off his own arm with a dull knife, breaking his own bone and all. When I was in labor I actually let out a little grunt/laugh at what an easy walk in the park that would be compared to what I was feeling.

"So why don't you just go to a hospital and get an epidural this time?"
A few reasons. A big one being that, as small business owners, we don't have insurance that covers maternity. The total cost for all my prenatal visits, the birth, and six weeks of post-partum care at the birthing center is around $3,500. Doing all that throught the doctor/hospital route would add up to at least $12,000, maybe more.

But, honestly, I doubt I'd go to a hospital even if we had insurance that would cover it. The doctors around here recently banned midwives from having hospital privileges, so there's no in-between: you go the traditional hospital birth-as-a-medical-emergency route or you give birth outside of a hospital. That's it. And since I don't believe that uncomplicated birth requires much intervention and I don't want to be bossed around and have my baby treated like she's the hospital's property unless there's an emergency, I don't think that going to a hospital is really a fit for my personality anyway. I'd like the epidural but don't want all the B.S. that goes along with it.

(I should note that my research has led me to conclude that giving birth at the birthing center is as safe as giving birth at a hospital. Obviously issues with hospital procedures or money would be no object if the safety of my child were at stake.)

"What about a doula?"
I'm going to look into getting a doula (a woman who attends the birth to give the mother emotional support). But, frankly, I'm skeptical that it would help that much. Also, most of the doulas around here are the spiritually liberal, earth-goddess, pagan types, which isn't what I'm looking for.

I do need to call the mother of five and Catholic doula who I met that amazing day I stumbled into Mass on a Tuesday. Why I have not done so yet is a mystery that can only be explained by my laziness and utter awkwardness on the phone.

So where does this leave me?
In theory I am committed to natural childbirth outside of a hospital setting for this pregnancy since it's a normal pregnancy and I'm healthy. But I struggle with the pain issue. I hate to think of going through that kind of pain again, but do I hate it enough to deal with a hospital and pay $12,000? It's a close call, but I don't think so.

Things that might help
I do have some ideas about things that might make the birth go better this time. First of all, I was still an atheist when my son was born. It never even occurred to me to pray or ask for God's assistance with the birth. Of course I will not make that mistake again.

Also, I had a real exhaustion issue last time. My labor started at midnight and, as a nightowl, I had not gone to bed for the night. By the time my son was born around 7pm the next evening I had been awake for about 36 hours straight. And considering that the hardest work of labor is pushing, which is at the very end, and pushing was particularly difficult with him being compound presentation, it's really a wonder that I had the energy to do it at all. Surely this time I'll be better rested for the birth.

Another thing is that I didn't click with the midwife who was on call. She was a tense person and seemed really stressed from the moment I walked into the room. It made me feel tense and stressed as well. She's no longer at the birthing center and I like all but one of the midwives who are there now, so hopefully that won't be an issue again. Also, since it's my second birth I won't feel as dependent on the midwife for encouragement.

And, please God, hopefully this baby won't be compound presentation.

What do you think?
So, do any of you have any advice or thoughts from me? I'm interested in all opinions, even if you haven't given birth yourself.

Civilizational ennui, part II

I enjoyed reading knit_tgz's comment to the Mark Steyn article I quoted about Europe's "civilizational ennui" so much that I wanted to re-post it here for those of you who missed it. She makes some really interesting points that I've been thinking about all week.

I should clarify, since I didn't post the entire Steyn article, that I don't think he was saying that Europe's family-friendly policies caused this social decline; rather, I think he was just pointing out that Europeans aren't taking advantage of their lifestyle because they've become an agnostic, self-centered culture. I think he summarizes the situation well when he says, "A present tense culture amuses itself to extinction."

Anyway, here's the comment (knit_tgz, hope you don't mind that I'm re-posting it):

In fact, that's true, our laws are more family-friendly, as far as I know, than American laws. There is a longer maternity leave, and a paternity leave in some countries as well, there are paid holidays, there's a lot of social benefits you can receive to help your family.

[Warning: sweeping generalizations ahead. I tried to argue my point without detailing about exceptions, which should be accounted for, of course. We would be already dead were it not for the exceptions].

Still, we Europeans seem to have decided to extinguish ourselves. Why? Because of selfishness, that's the only reason I can imagine.

I don't believe this is happening because of the "family-friendly" policies, as the author of the article seems to imply, but in spite of them. I believe this is happening because of our general cosmovision. We are no longer faithfully religious, we are no longer fiercely atheist. We have become the worse we could be: lukewarm. We, Europeans, are lukewarm. We despise the notion of sacrificing ourselves to get a higher result. Our children, our fewer and fewer children, are well-fed, well-dressed and have better schools than I and my friends had (and I'm not THAT old), and they're worse students, more problematic ones, more violent ones.

What's the difference? The difference is in the parents. My parents, and all the parents in my generation, whether believers or communists or whatever, they had a common point: people need to make sacrifices to achieve greatness. Children need guidance and authority. Nowadays, parents are called to school to know their kid bit the teacher, and they say "the kid must have had his reasons". Children are seen as fragile porcelain dolls, instead of human beings in growing. They must not receive any form of punishment, for fear they become traumatized. So, teachers can no longer make children understand that every action has consequences, every choice has consequences.

This has been the result of several things, in my humble opinion. On no particular order, I can think of: 1) the media, who in the recent years started focusing a lot in the whining persons and less on the ones who truly suffer injustice, and who have made taboo the mere mention of sacrifice, honour, bettering ourselves, responsibility and consequences; 2) the general disillusionment of the population, who no longer believes in anything (nor religion, nor atheism, nor ideologies); 3) the specific generation of the parents of our present children (persons 5-10 years my elders, as over here we start having children on our 30s, alas!), who, for some reason I cannot understand, behave as spoiled brats instead of as responsible parents. I am not exaggerating; 4) the education reforms. I know several teachers who have always loved teaching and they all say that when the reforms were made (which, in my country, made very difficult to have a child fail a subject or be suspended for bad behaviour at school), children started behaving worse, and parents started to come complain for their lower grades, even though the kids were obviously not studying nor doing their homework.

A society that makes children believe they are inimputable, that whatever they do, right or wrong, they will not be held responsible, nor will their parents, is a society that raises spoiled brats who demand unreasonable things from everyone. Spoiled brats who make the disillusioned young adults from my generation think twice before having children. Because it is politically incorrect to think about punishing a child (I'm not talking about beating, mind you!), to say that a child who doesn't study should fail the year, to say that kids need to learn obedience, responsibility, sacrifice.

A close friend of mine once commented, while we were talking about this matter, that nowadays the only context in which we can talk of sacrifice to better oneself, of punishment for the ones who don't behave well, of responsibility, is the context of football (soccer). Unfortunately, it is mostly true. Maybe that's why people still care so much for it.

People no longer trust the ideologies to free them. They saw politicians of every kind of ideology go to power and use the power to care for themselves. People no longer fiercely adhere to a religion or to atheism.

The problem is not in our family laws. Our family laws are good. The problem is everywhere else. In our media, in our p.c. language, in the present parent generation who don't want to be held accountable to their responsibilities, so they don't hold their children accountable to their responsibilities too.

[End of sweeping generalizations].

Of course there are still lots of good parents. Of course there are still people who believe in effort, in merit, in working hard, and teach these values to their children. Still, while all the "opinion makers" (media commenters, soap operas, serials) keep saying that children are a hindrance to one's future, something that you should avoid until you are well-settled to "take the blow" of having kids, instead of being an asset, a guarantee of a future generation, and also a motivation to work hard, it's no use that the governments try to make people want to have more children. A lot of people have been convinced that children are something to be avoided.

This is a hard issue for me. Since my teen years I know I want to be a mother. Of several children. At least four, though I would really want to have six kids. I am still single, and I know time is not on my side. I am almost 30. I have prayed over this a lot of times, and some times got angry with God because we, over here in Europe, are dying without children*, and I would love to have children, and would try to love them and teach them to be noble, upright, hard-working, thinking persons who have a conscience of right and wrong. And I don't have the chance to try. And I feel sad that no couple I know wants to have more than one or two kids.

* many of the ones who are born, unfortunately, due to the politics of "if the immigrants don't want to integrate themselves, it's OK", will be educated in fundamentalist Muslim views and closed from the rest of society. I know I am not being P.C., but when the 2nd generation cannot speak well the tongue of the country they live in and do not wish to mix with no-one else, and seem to hate the country where they were born, we have a problem.

(This issue makes me sad).

Favorite Books: The Two Income Trap

Since I spend pretty much every minute of free time reading, I keep meaning to share good books I come across. Here's one that I read a couple months ago that I've been thinking about ever since: The Two Income Trap by Elizabeth Warren.

Recommended to me by some friends who are bankruptcy attorneys and have taken classes from Warren, it's a really interesting look into why it's so hard for middle-class families to get by these days. Warren, a Harvard Law prof and bankruptcy specialist, talks about things like:

• Why it's financially dangerous to have both spouses working (if you're struggling to get by on one salary you'll love reading this)
• Why it's so much harder for families to get by than for single people (and she's not talking about needing to buy your kids $80 jeans or stuff like that)
  
• Why basic expenses take up much more of your paycheck than in your grandparents' day
• How common practices by credit card companies and mortgage lenders set people up for financial ruin
  

She backs up all her points with interesting data and does a surprisingly good job of remaining politically neutral, criticizing Democrat and Republican policies alike.

Our friends who practice bankruptcy law say that this book validates what they see in their practices every day (i.e. most of their clients are families who made a sincere effort to live within a reasonable budget and just got caught off guard by an unexpected event) and it jives with my personal experience as well. Every month my husband and I marvel at our budget and wonder why on earth it feels like it's so hard to get by when he technically brings home a decent paycheck.

This isn't a how-to book for creating a family budget (her other book, All Your Worth, is good for that) but I found it to be a fascinating read. Maybe it's because my husband's student loan debt rivals that of some small nations and we spend a lot of time talking and thinking about money, but this book was a real page-turner for me. I think I read the whole thing in about four days. I highly recommend it.

Thoughts from the ER

I've hit a little rough patch in my pregnancy. I'm not sure if it's typical third trimester issues or if my circulatory system just isn't up to par, but I've had a little bit of a tough time lately. It's all VERY minor in the grand scheme of things but, nevertheless, I've needed quite a bit of help from my family this past week.

Like with my last pregnancy, starting at about 30 weeks I'd get occasional bouts of extreme shortness of breath and the feeling like my heart was racing. When this happens I need to sit for a while and feel like I'm not getting enough air, even when I take slow, deep breaths (does anyone else experience this? is this normal?) It happens about three times a day. The other day when I was in the grocery store I was positive I was going to pass out. Luckily I didn't but I barely made it back to the car before I collapsed into the seat, and I had to work up the strength to get my son into his carseat and drive.

The big problem, though, is that I have some varicose veins in my right leg that seem to have gone awry. At first they were just unsightly, but starting earlier this week the whole back of my leg was throbbing and swollen and the veins began hurting to the point that I couldn't walk and couldn't bear to even have my pants brush the skin on my legs. I'd cry out in agony any time I stood up or bent my leg.

On Friday my midwife was concerned about it so she sent me to my doctor, who was even more concerned and sent me to the emergency room at the Heart Hospital where I spent my entire afternoon. The good news is that the ultrasound didn't show any clots; the bad news is that there's nothing I can do for the pain until after I have the baby. Due to the pain I can't walk much at all. My toddler, on the other hand, has no problem walking. Or running, climbing, jumping, and generally getting himself into a variety of harmful/house-destroying situations, which means I need a lot of help with him.

My mother has been picking up a lot of the slack, sometimes at the expense of her job and other commitments. My mother-in-law is going to make arrangements to come up for a while. Other family members and friends are concerned and frequently ask how I'm doing.

So this is all fine. For now. Maybe it's third trimester hormones or general paranoia, but I've started to worry about what people's reaction will be next time. As I approached hour number five in the ER and hour number seven since I'd left my son with my mother for a "quick trip to the doctor" (she had a big deadline at work that day that she ended up missing), I got increasingly paranoid about how this sort of thing will go over with future pregnancies. If the current trend continues and the shortness of breath, heart racing and vein issues get worse with additional pregnancies, it could get to the point that I really need a lot of help during the third trimester. The ER doc indicated that I can almost definitely expect to have big issues with my leg if I get pregnant again, and that I'm at a higher risk for the very dangerous Deep Vein Thrombosis or vascular infections.

Everyone is eager and willing to help now, but I'm still with in the society-approved range of children. I keep wondering what the reaction will be next time, or with pregnancy number four or five. All of this has seemed to confirm for everyone that pregnancy is (all together now:) SO HARD ON YOUR BODY and SUCH A SACRIFICE. I think people will be somewhat perplexed that I'd "subject myself" to future pregnancies (a couple people have said stuff like "at least you almost have this one over with and then you're done since you'll have a boy and a girl"). Of course my wonderful family and friends will offer me support whether it's my third or tenth child, but I can't help but think that they'll start wondering, "This is hard on everyone -- why don't you stop having kids?!"

So anyway, these are my paranoid thoughts that raced through my mind in the hours I spent waiting in the ER. I think a lot of it might be in my head, and of course I know that should I be so blessed as to be able to have more children any grousing by friends are family will be insignificant in comparison. It will just be interesting to see how it goes, building a big family and experiencing what may turn out to be challenging pregnancies in the midst of a culture that thinks that children are a burden to begin with.

My unsolicited opinions -- now available via radio!

I was stuck up at our office all day yesterday doing data entry work and was listening to Relevant Radio online (I want to kiss whoever is responsible for their free, high-quality feed). Drew Mariani devoted his whole show to the gay marriage debate and, seeing as how I was stuck in front of a computer with nothing better to do, I dashed off an email to weigh in on the subject. He ended up reading it on the air and he and his guest remarked that it was a good point. That was a nice little bright spot in an otherwise dull day.

-----------------------------
From: Jennifer F.
Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 5:21 PM
To: drew
Subject: The gay marriage debate isn't really about homosexuality...

Drew -

I don't think it's correct to see the current debate about gay marriage as primarily an issue with homosexuality. It's a subset of the larger problem that, mainly thanks to contraception, modern heterosexual marriage has degenerated into a sort of glorified roommate situation. The most common, accepted definition of (heterosexual) marriage today is that it's just a nice way to proclaim a long-term commitment when you really like someone. That's it. Everything else is optional. So it's not surprising or even that unreasonable that gays and lesbians look around and say, Hey, why can't we have that?

If we want to avoid the legalization of gay marriage we need to start with changing the way society defines heterosexual marriage. When are blase about the fact that the term "traditional marriage" has come to include contraception to make children optional, prenuptial agreements, no traditional gender roles, separate bank accounts, etc. it's hard to make the case to the gay and lesbian lobbies that heterosexual marriage is "special". This is the battle we must fight first.

Thanks, love your show!

Jennifer F.

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) on modern parenting

Glenn Reynolds makes some great points about modern parenting in this WSJ op ed. His ideas fit in well with our discussion about modern parenting that we had a couple weeks ago.

Really interesting read.

Forgiveness

I think that one of my biggest challenges as a Christian is going to be forgiveness. Not even necessarily forgiveness for major transgressions; in some cases I've found it easy to forgive people who have done me great wrong since it's easy to see that they just have major problems in their own lives. But little, petty things often get me really fired up and full of vitriol, and it's extremely difficult to imagine that I'll ever get to the point that I can be one of those people who lets minor offenses roll off their backs, simply promising to include the offender in their prayers. For example:

Since I never see any of my friends anymore I decided to have a little get-together to celebrate the impending arrival of baby #2. On the invitations I described it as a Potluck & Baby Shower, and I included a note asking people to bring a dish for the potluck in lieu of gifts. I thought it would be a nice idea to have people bring food instead of gifts since I have all the stuff I need for the baby and have NO room for new stuff (80% of our belongings are already in a storage unit). I hate for my friends and family to spend their hard-earned money on things that I don't have space for and probably wouldn't even use.

Anyway, my mother-in-law has some friend who evidently thinks my son is just too cute. She has no children of her own and evidently likes hearing about and seeing pictures of our family, including putting a picture of my son up on her refrigerator. Because of this my mother-in-law is always adamant that I invite this woman to all my events (my first baby shower, my son's birthday, etc.) even though I've never met her. Great, no problem. So I sent her an invitation to this get-together. My mother-in-law called this morning and mentioned that this friend received her invitation, and that her comment about it was, "What's wrong with these people that they can't even afford to provide food for their guests?" So, how would my priest say I should respond to that?

RIGHT: "I'm sorry that she isn't familiar with the concept of a potluck. I do hope she'll join us anyway. I'll keep her in my prayers."

WRONG: "What's wrong with that [expletive] that she's never heard of a [expletive] potluck? What an [expletive] [expletive] [expletive]!"

Guess which one was my reply, as I ran to my computer to delete her contact info from my address book to ensure that she never receives another invitation or Christmas card from me again.

I have been on fire and full of ill wishes for this woman all day. Clearly she touched a nerve, probably because I actually can't afford to provide food for my guests and I feel bad about that. Ever since my husband and I totally realigned our priorities in life we've had a lot less money at our disposal, and it's something I'm self-conscious about.

So that is going to be my spiritual challenge and thought project for this week: trying to conquer my hot-tempered nature and actually practice the whole "as we forgive those who trespass against us" part of the prayer I say every night. Especially for things like this that are really minor in the grand scheme of things, I should be more spiritually mature than to stew about this all day. This woman was created in the image of God just like me and I should let her comment go.

Even if she is a total wench. :)

Civilizational ennui

Mark Steyn on atheist Europe:

As [Henri] de Lubac wrote, "It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God. What is true is that, without God, he can only organize it against man."

Which is why there are no examples of sustained atheist civilizations. "Atheistic humanism" became inhumanism in the hands of the Fascists and Communists and, in its more benign form in today's European Union, a kind of dehumanism. Last year The New York Times ran a column by the eminent Princeton economist Paul Krugman. The headline was "French Family Values," and the thesis was that, while parochial American conservatives drone on about "family values," the Europeans live it, enacting policies that are more "family friendly." On the Continent, claimed Professor Krugman, "government regulations actually allow people to make a desirable tradeoff--to modestly lower income in return for more time with friends and family."

How can an economist make that case without noticing that the upshot of all these "family friendly" policies is that nobody has any families? Isn't the first test of a "family friendly" regime its impact on families? On present demographic trends, by 2050 60% of Italians will have no brother, no sister, no aunt, no uncle, no cousins. The last surviving big bountiful Italian mamma will have no one to dole out the pasta to. "Funiculi, funicular, funic yourself," as Noel Coward remarked in another context.

As for that "desirable tradeoff" and all the extra time, what happened? Continentals work fewer hours than Americans, they don't have to pay for their own health care, they don't go to church and they don't contribute to other civic groups, they don't marry and they don't have kids to take to school and basketball and the 4-H stand at the county fair.

So what do they do with all the time? Where's the great European art? Where are Europe's men of science? A present tense culture amuses itself to extinction. Post-Christian European culture is already post-cultural and, with the present surging Muslim populations, it will soon be post-European. An entire continent is expiring from civilizational ennui.

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I don't know whether a society can recover its faith, or even recover the lip service to faith of, say, social Anglicanism. But it should at minimum be able to end its disdain for the public expression of faith. Separation of church and state is one thing, but the modern social democratic West's belief in the state-as-church has been a disaster.