Andrew Benedict Christy

The baby is finally here!! The whole family is SO happy that we are all wandering around happy and confused. Everyone wants to hold the baby at the same time and I can’t keep track who is next. The only thing that is really consistent around here is that I get my baby every time that he cries. As soon as he is calm, I have a swarm of children demanding that they are next to hold him. It is day 4 and nothing has changed. I need to have some dry erase board and a timer at my bedside so I can keep track of who holds him next and make sure they don’t go over their time or I will certainly be hearing, “Theresa has got to hold him for 100 hours….” Or “Samantha has had him AAAALLLLLL day!” Or, “I’ve never got to hold him.” It is a problem but a good problem to have.

I did not find out the sex of the baby. I found out the sex of Mary Kate and it took the element of surprise away so I decided to never do that again. The whole family, including Roy, wanted a girl this time. We do a boy/girl/boy/girl pattern so we did not want to mess that up. Plus, raising boy’s has been a challenge. Keeping them alive is the first problem. Then there is….keeping them out of trouble, keep them from embarrassing me in public, keep them focused, try to get them to care about academics, manners, cleanliness, etc. etc. My biggest fear is the challenge it takes to get them into heaven. What I love about girls is their desire to love and to be loved seems to be so much more visible. They want to love God and be loved by Him. I see boy’s as being a real challenge to desire this same type of love-exchange. This may be all in my head but there it is. This is what goes through my head. I need to get all of these little people to Heaven. It is the job I was entrusted and I don’t want to screw it up. If this is not accomplished with one or more of my children, I will surely blame myself on some level whether there is any credence to it or not. It scares me. Now that I have convinced you that I wanted a girl, I will say in the same sentence that I am happy with my boy. I don’t get to choose what I get. I don’t even get to choose how many or how long I get to keep any of these children. They are not MY children. They belong to God and only He decides how many and how long I can have them. My job is to lead them to Heaven and to trust that He knows what He is doing. He has a reason and plan for giving me Mary Kate, the special needs child, and He has a reason for giving me a boy or a girl. He is WAY smarter than me and I hope to never pretend that He isn’t. If He ever takes one of my children early, I pray and hope that I can carry this same attitude through my grieving process. Until then, the words are easy to say and believe but the actual experience is totally different.

I sincerely believe that this little baby was conceived as a result of my prayers to my friend’s 13 year old son who passed away unexpectedly, Nolan Connors. As I was driving to his house on that day, I begged him to intercede for me. I felt like I got to him first. Maybe he would go to God with my prayer because I was first in line. Maybe that is selfish and childish of me. I am running to the front of the line like its Black Friday or something but I was really wanting another baby and I wanted to seize my opportunity. I got pregnant that month and gave birth 3 months shy of the one year anniversary of Nolan’s death. Forever and ever, little Andrew will be reminded that God answered my prayers because of Nolan’s intersession. This also might be why I had a boy. Maybe he will resemble the same love for nature and the outdoors like Nolan did. I will spend years doing comparisons between the two boys. Nothing will surprise me.

Since Samantha had such a great experience watching the birth of Matthew when she was 10 years old, I thought it would be nice to let Theresa watch it this time with Samantha. Well? Maybe I was wrong. I was expecting the delivery to be the same as the first 8 where I felt NO pain at all because of the glorious and wonderous epideral. That didn’t exactly happen. I had a new doctor fresh out of college and who clearly had somewhere else to go after the delivery and she didn’t have time to wait to give me more of the good juice. I told her that I wanted the pain to go away and she told me that delivering a baby would get rid of the pain. I wanted to slap the…….nevermind. Anyway, my pain was too much for poor little Theresa to bare. She watched as much as she could and hid in the bathroom for much of the time. Samantha dragged her out to see the baby come out but even that didn’t out-way her trauma. Oops. You win some and lose some I guess. When I brought up the idea about letting Samantha watch the birth to my doctor 4 years ago, he said, “That would be a great way to scare her off from getting pregnant.” I made my confused face because that was not my goal at all.  My purpose was to bring my girls into the miraculous experience of life, birth and motherhood. I wanted them to desire this joy for themselves. Not scare them away. Fortunately, Theresa understands. She understands because it was the real deal and she had real loving feelings for the baby. I have preached my hatred toward those stupid fake babies that teenagers come home with from the public school. There is NOTHING real about it. When my REAL baby is asleep at night, I stare at him in the hopes that he wakes up soon so I can care for him and feed him from my life-giving milk. If I had a fake baby crying, I would pick it up from its ankle and toss it in the trash outside. The schools are teaching that they are one in the same.  The real reality is that with one baby, the care you give to him is driven by love.  The other baby, I/you are only caring about ourselves and our peace because we know in our heart of hearts that it is not real.

WARNING!!!!! This picture below is TMI…..nothing graphic but the graphics are implied. I didn’t even put it on Facebook but the girls faces are just priceless and funny. I wish I could have captured Samantha’s face years ago. It was NOT the same expression. LOL.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After you recover, here is the rest of the story. …..

 

We had no name for this little baby. We considered Charles, Andrew, Phillip, Simon, Patrick and even Nolan. After several hours of votes and we were all allowed to vote as many times as possible, all hands went up for Andrew. Then everyone thought it would be cute to have the initials ABC. That was my initial (no pun intended) thought too but had to remind myself that this is not a game and this baby isn’t really ours. What would God want? Naming him after the vicar of Christ popped into my head… Francis! It didn’t take long to remember our former vicar, Benedict. Ah ha! Thank you God. You are too kind.

Andrew Benedict Christy

 

 

The New Buddy

Benjamin Richard Christy

 

Like the other pregnancies, all of the kids anticipate who the next buddy will be for the new baby. We picked out Benjamin as the buddy for Andrew. It seems fitting on many levels. I knew this baby would be a boy because he was so aggressive in my womb. He was just as aggressive as Ben. He will have so much to teach this little guy which, in turn, will teach Benjamin a lot of responsibility. I hope it will teach him the patience he needs to be happier and content with his daily life. Ben is so proud to have this responsibility and tells everyone about his new job. He really is a good boy. He may be more high maintenance then the other boy’s were but he brings us such indescribable joy.

 

Time to come home with my new family:)