Category: parenting/pregnancy

Is it ok for poor people to have kids?: Part Two

February 1st, 2026

I know I’ve already addressed this topic in a previous post, but I saw a reel today that brought the question once again to the forefront of my mind. (Here it is, if you’re curious.)

The gist of the reel is this: a young mom posted a sweet little video clip of her husband playing with their toddler, and wrote something along the lines of: “I wish more moms knew that it’s possible to have a family on a single income.” She explained in the caption that she’s a stay-at-home mom, and in order to make that work they make a lot of sacrifices. As new parents, she and her husband had faced financial hardship, even resorting to a local food bank once or twice when times were especially hard — but that it was all worth it. Basically, encouraging young women to stop fearing financial hardship, because family is the real wealth.

Lovely, right? I thought so.

But who do we find in the comments but the inevitable crowd of social media mom-shamers: “newsflash, if you need to go to a food bank to feed your kids, then you actually can’t afford kids!” “get a job! By going to the food bank, you’re stealing from people who have no other option! You could get a job but you’re selfishly choosing to stay home with your kids!” “Sure, it’s fine now while he’s a baby, but what happens when that kid grows up and asks for Disney World vacations and the trendy new sneakers like all his classmates are wearing?” Basically, telling her that she should not have had this child.

Wow! Teeth and claws came out. Some of these arguments are more interesting than others. Let’s break them down, shall we.

Keeping in mind this one truth that most people on social media, and in our world today in general, seem to have forgotten: having kids, and raising them well, is a good and important thing to do!

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Argument One: “If you need to go to a food bank to feed your kids, then you actually can’t afford kids!”

She fed her child, didn’t she? For him, it doesn’t matter if the food came from her own paycheck or a food bank (which she only used once or twice anyway, as a last resort). Now, if assistance were unavailable, and there were actually no food to be had (like, I dunno, an extreme wartime ration situation or something), that’d be different. Then maybe it would be unwise to have a kid, because there would be literally no way to legally feed it.

But (and Americans might really need to try and stretch their brains to comprehend this): it is okay to receive help. We should, in fact, help each other. Americans really suffer from this obsession with self-reliance, this isolationist notion that we shouldn’t have to help anyone and shouldn’t accept help from anyone — unless, perhaps, we are literally on the brink of death. Humans in a society are meant to help and support each other.

Moms these days, especially in modern America, don’t have a village around them the way they used to historically. Family units are islands now, expected to do it all themselves. It’s unnatural. It’s not supposed to be like that. People, especially new parents, are supposed to receive help. That’s just how the human race has always functioned.

Caveat here: obviously, a family shouldn’t have a child expecting not to have to work to provide for it. The parents should have a plan for how they will provide for it, doing as much as they reasonably can to be self-sufficient while still prioritizing the wellness of all family members. (There’s a difference between, e.g., an already-exhausted parent taking on a second full time job and sacrificing their sleep, which is probably not an overall good choice for the health of the family, and a parent sacrificing something like hair appointments, “fun” money, vacations, streaming services, etc.: sacrifices that don’t adversely affect the family’s health.) Parents absolutely should plan on making sacrifices and working as hard as they can to feed their kid. You must not start a family with the mindset that “oh, it’s fine, I’ll just go to the food bank or get food stamps or whatever.” That would be absolutely deplorable.

But knowing it’s there for you to use in a real pinch, if plans A and B fail — that’s totally fine and good! That’s what it’s for.

Accepting help in a pinch is not a crime — and, as some wise commenters pointed out, is actually beneficial because it keeps the “help” system running. Food banks are there to be utilized; they only exist if people continue to use them.

This mom did nothing wrong by using her local food bank when she needed to.

And she’s right: parents should be okay with accepting help if they need to. That’s part of being a parent, and one of the reasons assistance programs exist. Having kids is good and important (especially nowadays, with drastically-declining birth rates). It is something that our society should encourage by offering things like food banks and government assistance for parents.

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Argument Two: “Get a job! By going to the food bank, you’re stealing from people who have no other option! You could get a job but you’re selfishly choosing to stay home with your kids!”

This accusation is a bold one!, but, I can tell it’s coming from a place of hurt and frustration, so I will try and be gentle here.

“Selfishly choosing to stay home with your kids.” Let’s think about that. What is the best thing for a child? To be with its mom. You can’t argue with that.

“But Mith, little kids need socialization” — no, they don’t. Not in the form of daycare, at least. That much is certain. Going out to play groups and such with mom, sure! But daycare is neither good nor necessary.

Being around its mom is what a little kid needs, more than luxuries, more than toys or vacations or a big house or whatever. A mom who chooses to stay home is doing the best thing for her kid. She’s not being selfish.

I think people mistake this decision, the decision to stay home, for selfishness, because it is appealing. It is the thing that most moms would like to do. And of course they would! That’s because it’s natural! A mom naturally wants to stay with her kids and take care of her home and husband. That’s the dream job, and the most important job in the world! As C.S. Lewis said, the homemaker’s job is the job that all other jobs exist for.

But sadly, most moms think they “can’t” stay home. And these moms who are suffering from a misguided belief that they “have” to work, get very angry when they see another mom doing the thing they wish they could justify for themselves, but are too afraid to, too hung up on financial comfort.

But the mom who made this post is exactly right. Barring extraordinary situations (like a husband who’s unable to work for health reasons, or a husband whose job pays minimum wage), most moms could stay home with their kids if they were willing to be financially uncomfortable.

And the other thing is, do the people making this accusation realize how expensive daycare is? Do they realize that, for many moms, the cost of daycare would eat up the entire paycheck that they’d be bringing in if they got a job, so literally what’s the point? Net zero gain, or maybe a couple dollars, and a ton of lost time with their kids, not to mention the psychological burden of the separation on both mom and kid. (Even if you’re a mom who likes to be away from your kids, you can’t deny that it’s scary sending your kid to daycare; all these horror stories in the news about kids getting abused and neglected, or worse, at daycare. If you’re a mom and that doesn’t scare you… I dunno what to tell you. Daycare is always a risk.)

Staying home with mom is the best thing for a little kid. Families should do everything they can to make that arrangement work. I daresay they have an obligation to try and keep mom home.

“But what if mom actually thrives at her job, Mith? What if she has a really meaningful career, or even a divine calling of sorts?” Totally valid. Doctors, pediatricians, midwives, teachers and professors, anything, you name it — all meaningful jobs that I can understand a woman feeling called to. But I would argue: can this career really not wait five years? Is it really more important to you than your child’s early years? Can’t you at least cut your hours back? It’s important for moms to stay home with their kids, especially before age six or so.

Which is why it’s anything but selfish for the mom in question to choose to stay home with her kids. She’s doing the best thing for her kid. Her kid needs her more than anything else. That is her duty, her obligation that takes precedence over any other.

“But she technically could get a job! She has the option! Which means that, when she takes from a food bank, she’s stealing food from people who, through no fault of their own, cannot work!”

Let’s be real now. I don’t have a source to back this up, but I’m willing to bet that most people who use food banks probably have, or could have, some kind of income. I don’t think it’s true that the only people who use (or should use) a food bank are those who are completely incapable of working any job. (For those people, there are disability benefits and SNAP, anyway.) If that were the case, food banks would be a lot smaller and less prevalent a thing than they are, and there would be much stricter regulations about who could use them. As we discussed above, food banks exist for anyone in a pinch.

And let’s be realistic here: I seriously doubt that this one mom was stripping the food bank shelves bare. They don’t even let you do that — they have limits on how much each household can receive (at least, the church food pantry where I used to volunteer had such limits, and enforced them strictly). I’m sure they have enough supplies to go around. How likely is it, seriously, that some other family somewhere went hungry because this one mom took her share that day? Come on now.

“But Mith, it’s the principle.” You know what: fair. I agree with that. If we were talking about a lazy mom with no work ethic, no plan to become more self-reliant, no goals, and no remorse, just waltzing into the food bank week after week and scooping up as much as she possibly could, then yes, that would be deplorable and shameful, and would even amount to stealing from the needy. But that is not the same as a motivated mom accepting help in a pinch here and there. Let’s stop reacting emotionally and making ridiculously extreme assumptions about people, just because we’re frustrated about our own situation.

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And, Argument Three: “Sure, it’s fine now while he’s a baby, but what happens when that kid grows up and asks for Disney World vacations and the trendy new sneakers like all his classmates are wearing?”

This is the dumbest and saddest of all the arguments, and one that I already addressed in the aforementioned previous post, but I’ll touch on it again since folks are bringing it up.

Seriously? You think a person’s life is not worth living because that person couldn’t afford the trendy sneakers or the Disney World vacation? You really think a person with financial hardship is just better off not existing? That their entire life and future is automatically a waste? If you genuinely believe that, then I really dunno what to say to you, but I’ll keep you in my prayers.

It’s a sad world where people really think the point of life is to have nice things and be comfortable.

“But Mith, when poor people have kids, it just perpetuates the vicious cycle: the 1% filthy rich minority are in control; this world is their resort, and the rest of us are just their underpaid staff. If poor people stop breeding, the rich won’t have laborers anymore. You are in fact morally obligated to not breed, if you’re poor, for the good of the world.”

Interesting take — I appreciate the commitment, taking the philosophy all the way to its logical conclusion. Because sure, if you really believe that life is only about getting what you want, if that’s really true, then yeah! Absolutely stop breeding and let humanity die out. In fact, let’s all go ahead and kill ourselves right now, because it’s all meaningless.

It’s such a sad and cynical way to think. Thankfully, it’s simply wrong.

My life, my identity, and my purpose are not defined by what my job is. So what if I am a pawn in the billionaires’ game; as long as I’m getting paid my fair wages, it frankly doesn’t matter. Because I care more about my divine Employer than any earthly one. And in God’s eyes, we all have great value. The purpose of life on earth is not to get what we want and be comfortable. It’s to get ready for eternal life. (Which, btw, we can’t do without help. We have to learn to be okay with accepting help, people.)

But even without putting a religious spin on it, you surely can see that anyone who’s not a total nihilist can find value and meaning, joy and beauty and fulfillment, in their life even if they are “just a pawn.” If you really think that life is pointless and you’re better off never being born unless you’re ultra-rich with no day job… then once again, I’m sorry, I dunno what to say to you.

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So to wrap this up: a woman who’s doing something good and important for society and her child by being a SAHM, accepts a bit of help in a totally legal, above-board way, in order to be able to continue doing this thing that’s good for society and her child… and people are attacking her for this? Saying she shouldn’t have had a kid at all? Seriously?! Fuck it, that’s enough internet for today. I’m done.
A Defense of “PAW Patrol”

January 21st, 2026

PAW Patrol: parents love to hate it. It’s the worst! It’s so ubiquitous. It’s so annoying. It’s so bad for kids’ brains. I used to feel this way, too.

Since I’m apparently now in the business of defending TV shows that other people hate, allow me, if you will, to make my little case here for PAW Patrol.

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My kids were never supposed to watch PAW Patrol. As a new mom, I found it revolting. I never wanted them to see it, or even know about it. Nowadays, I love it; I’m a big fan, and we watch it together on the regular.

So what happened?

It started with string cheese. At their grandparents’ house, my kids were given string cheese sticks that had images of PAW Patrol characters printed on the packaging. Thus, they began to learn the different characters’ names and colors. Soon they could identify them on sight when they saw them in other locations. Putting cartoon characters on food packaging really is a genius marketing move.

My kids’ intensifying fascination with these characters from the packaging on string cheese (and diapers, and graham crackers, and kids’ shampoo, and pretty much everything else for kids), led to me at last, begrudgingly, allowing them to view clips of the show in our own home. Then, when I was in the first trimester with my fourth baby, and sick 24/7, I finally gave up the fight and just let them binge-watch full episodes on Paramount+. Just all day long: PAW Patrol!, PAW Patrol!, be there on the double!

But I hated it. I hated the lazy animation style, the skull-piercing voices, the brainless music, the sheer idiotic absurdity of the plotlines, and above all, the way my kids were so obsessed with it. Just ask the internet: they say that PAW Patrol was basically lab-created (that’s laboratory, not Labrador retriever) to hypnotize your kids and get them addicted.

What garbage. I resented it, but permitted it anyway because for a couple months there I was too sick to do much of anything at all, and by the time the sickness faded around week 20, my kids were hopelessly hooked.

As time went on, I occasionally tried to banish PAW Patrol from our house, thinking it was in my kids’ best interest. I’d pack up all the plastic toy pups and their plastic vehicles, the plastic cups and plastic placemats and all the plastic merch and chuck it in a plastic trash bag and hide it in the basement because I didn’t have the heart to just throw it away entirely.

“From now on, we will only watch wholesome shows like Little Bear and Puffin Rock,” I told myself firmly. “If I just never show them PAW Patrol again, never buy any more PAW Patrol shit and never breathe another word about it from this moment forth, they have to forget about it at some point, right? From this day on, we will be a proper old-fashioned Catholic family, cleansed of the stains of all that worldly garbage!”

Inevitably, the merch would come back out several weeks or days later, because my kids asked for it and I am a softie.

Recently, I got sick of this cycle, and decided to just let go ahead and let them have their beloved PAW Patrol.

Why? What happened?

I think the biggest factor in this decision was my realization that my oldest is about to turn six, and pretty soon, she won’t even be interested in PAW Patrol anymore. She will outgrow it, probably within a year or so. My nephew, who’s only nine months older than she is, is already over PAW Patrol, and on to more mature six-year-old things. Those days will soon be upon me. And it’s actually heartbreaking: the passage of time, how quickly your baby grows up. I’ll wake up tomorrow and none of my kids will care about PAW Patrol anymore. And I’ll look back on these days and wish for just one more minute of their precious innocence.

Because that’s what PAW Patrol is. It’s innocent. I mean, come on: it’s a show about superhero puppies. If you actually sit down and watch it, you will see just how innocent it is. The music, the animation, the way the characters dress and talk: it’s all very childish, very clean and simple. It lacks the glossy flashiness and Hollywoodesque aspirations toward tweenhood that you see in something like Super Kitties (which I abhor, and nipped that obsession in the bud without a trace of guilt) or KPop Demon Hunters. It also lacks the purely hypnotic, mindless, brain-numbing singsong quality of something like Cocomelon. PAW Patrol is just simple, colorful, back-to-basics animation with childlike stories and dialogue. There’s nothing sinister, nothing suggestive of anything more mature, and the “jokes” are painfully simple; that’s exactly why kids age out of it around six or seven.

And the stories in PAW Patrol are all about helping people. That’s the whole gist of the show: cooperation is fun, you can do hard things, and helping others is cool. Literally what is the issue?

“Lab created to hijack your kids’ brains and stupefy them” – blah blah, enough with that. Sure, it’s not high quality edifying stuff, but PAW Patrol isn’t going to make good kids bad. Like most worldly pleasures, PAW Patrol can be enjoyed responsibly, in moderation. My kids are not iPad kids. They have never owned a tablet. They love reading books, drawing, playing pretend, and going outside; they’re decently well-behaved; and all of them are highly intellectually advanced for their ages. And they also happen to love PAW Patrol.

So, I’m not convinced that all of the paranoia about PAW Patrol “ruining our kids’ minds” isn’t just a bunch of tin foil hat-type blathering. I really think people love to hate things that are popular. Back in the days when novels were a recent innovation, people thought those were brainrot and a waste of time, too. Probably thirty years from now, PAW Patrol will be considered vintage and cool and “crunchy” the way Little Bear is now. Hating PAW Patrol is just as much a trend as the show itself; change my mind. Being rational: there’s simply not sufficient reason to banish PAW Patrol entirely.

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Admittedly though, my change of heart about PAW Patrol was not entirely rational. My decision was based, about 75, maybe 80 percent, on emotion.

For one, there was the aforementioned realization that my sweet babies are growing up quickly, and all too soon will no longer care a whit about PAW Patrol. You ever feel homesick for a place while you’re already there?

And for two: after a year to eighteen months or so of PAW Patrol being part of our lives, it’s gradually become, well, just that: a part of our lives. It’s weird. In the beginning, PAW Patrol felt to me like this malignant force that encroached upon my family from without. But now, for better or for worse, it has become part of us, woven into the fabric of our family life. And I like our life. The citizens of Adventure Bay have become good friends of mine, by now.

“You’re just being a lazy mom, Mith! If you really cared about your kids’ well-being, you wouldn’t show them this filth at all, much less let it infiltrate your lives to such an extent.”

Ah, the “lazy mom” accusation. Yes, this one gets thrown at moms on the internet all the time, whenever they have the audacity to try to make life easier. I honestly think people just hate moms and want them to suffer (and sometimes it’s moms who hate on other moms in this way, which imo just betrays a very-thinly-veiled self-loathing and a deep frustration with their own lives). As moms, we are, believe it or not, actually allowed to choose the easy way sometimes. Like most things, it’s not black and white (“giving screen time at all means you’re a failure!” “You don’t love your kids if you don’t cook them three meals a day from scratch!” etc.); it’s a matter of moderation. “Lazy” because sometimes I want my kids to sit still and be quiet so that I can give one of them a bath, or clean the house or, God forbid, sit down and drink a cup of coffee or something? Sure, why not. Call me lazy if you want. My kids are happy, healthy, intelligent, and loved; I’m solo parenting and homeschooling them (four five and under) on a tight budget, with no village around me, but, sure, go off I guess.

Not trying to say that I have it harder than anyone else. Parenting is hard, no matter what your situation. This is not the suffering olympics. PAW Patrol makes things a bit more fun and easy at times. And as far as I can see it does no harm. So try again to explain to me why it’s so bad.

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Finally, just for fun: being a Catholic mom and a PAW Patrol mom, I’ve taken the liberty of assigning a patron saint to each of the pups:

Chase: St. Michael the Archangel, the Prince of the Heavenly Host and defender against demons.

Skye: St. Joseph of Cupertino, obviously: famous for levitating during prayer.

Rocky: St. Joseph the Worker: quiet, responsible, happy to be in the background, good with tools.

Marshall: St. Lawrence, who was a comedian and, like Marshall, associated with fire.

Zuma: St. Brendan the Navigator, famous for sailing across oceans and exploring the world.

Rubble: St. Thomas Aquinas: bit of a counterintuitive choice, maybe, but Aquinas was a chunky fellow who was nicknamed “the dumb ox,” so I think he might actually identify with Rubble the most out of all the pups.

Is PAW Patrol a good Catholic show? No, of course not. It’s very secular. In their holiday special, they even said some cheesy line like “the real meaning of Christmas is giving!” – thankfully, my five-year-old heard that and exclaimed “no, the real meaning of Christmas is the Birth of Jesus!” Which led to a good conversation about how we need to share the Gospel with those who haven’t heard it. See? It may not be a good Catholic show, per se, but it can be part of a good Catholic life.

That’s the thing. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s just (if you’re a toddler parent in 2026 who doesn’t literally live under a rock) a part of life.

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I imagine one day when I’m old and gray and an empty nester, I’ll be sitting alone in my clean, quiet living room, reminiscing, and I’ll look around at the emptiness and lack of clutter and toys, and sigh, and pick up the remote with my withered, liver-spotted hand and switch on some PAW Patrol, just for old time’s sake, and probably sing softly along with the songs, PAW Patrol!, PAW Patrol!, in my creaky lonely old-lady voice: be there on the double! And I like to think that I won’t have too many regrets.
Am I even a real person?: thoughts on veganism, Catholicism, parenting, & ED recovery

December 31st, 2025

Daily writing prompt
What are your feelings about eating meat?
View all responses

My personal thoughts on eating meat? Oh man. It’s such a complicated question, as are all food-related issues for someone with ED history. My stance on meat has changed so many times, in my thirty-six years. At this point I’m an herbivore who understands carnivores and kinda wishes she could be one. I’m also an accidentally, circumstantially militant vegan with an intentionally, philosophically militant vegan living inside me, whom I can unleash at will when the time feels right. I don’t know what I even identify as, or how to explain it. Where do I even begin!

1. ED-Fueled Vegetarianism

I guess a reasonable place to start would be the beginning of my vegetarianism — although, I don’t actually remember when that officially was. I kind of became one by accident, and then decided to make it official. The ED came first. I stopped eating pretty much anything, and then realized at some point that I’d become vegetarian (none of my safe foods happened to be meat), and I happily assumed that identity because (a) it was an excuse to say ‘no’ to food, much of the time, and (b) it made me feel morally unimpeachable, as if my weirdness about food was actually some noble and unselfish thing (it was not).

But so I was vegetarian as a teenager and into my twenties, on and off. My occasional attempts at “recovery,” when forced upon me, coincided with brief forays into meat-eating, as I was often advised not to enforce any hard “food rules” for the sake of my mental health. I had mixed feelings about that. For me eating meat was always a performative thing for myself, like “ha ha, look at me, I’m having a steak, I don’t care anymore!” Invisible middle fingers to the voices in my head. Needless to say, it wasn’t sustainable.

I think I briefly attempted veganism my junior or senior year of high school, simply out of curiosity; but I found it too demanding then, because dairy is something I’ve always really liked. It was, in fact, a cup of Fage Total with honey that finally swayed me from veganism back then. (Fage is, without question, the best Greek yogurt out there. I dunno what they do to make it so much better than other Greek yogurt; it’s like a different food entirely. No, I’m not being paid to say this.)

Anyway, about four years after that, I was sick of food freedom and its resulting fatness, and once again on a super restrictive diet and, lo and behold, decided to go vegan again. You see the pattern. I was very serious about it now, and really enjoyed it, and it became a huge part of my identity: reading the philosophy, supporting organizations like PETA, all of it. This phase lasted for a while, went away, and made a resurgence after my second child was born in 2021, then went away again. I can take it out of the box and put it on when I want to, then pack it back up.

2. The Dormant Angry Vegan

It’s interesting in retrospect to see how I was (and am) able to look at this belief system from the outside, having no particular emotional connection to it (sure I liked animals, who doesn’t?, but, I’ve never been an “animal lover” per se, nor a hippie nor an environmentalist, and it wasn’t like I’d ever had some heartbreaking, life-changing epiphany about the cruelty in the meat industry or whatever), and just think to myself on some level: “why yes, I think I could happily become a radical animal rights activist. That sounds logically sound and also kinda fun and cool; let’s do it!” And I did really believe it, all that PETA stuff. I read and loved “Animal Liberation” by Peter Singer and “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer. I did (and still do) find factory farms deeply appalling and depressing. I truly did get triggered and irritated by people who ate meat. I really did think it was simply an inexcusably ignorant thing to do, and that no meat-eater could ever really call themselves a good person. I completely believed that. (I feel differently about meat-eaters now; more on that later.)

I could step into this identity, but then, I could just turn it off at will. When I got bored of it, or needed a change in my food lifestyle for whatever reason. Which tells me that I could still do that at any time, if I chose to; if I decide to devote the mental energy to it. Vegan Mith still exists, in there, and if I feed her with vegan literature and vegan content, she will grow stronger. I very well might do this at some point in the future, but right now, I just feel a bit too maxed out, between raising little kids, managing the family meal plan and food budget, and trying to be a good Catholic — in which world it’s very uncommon, btw, and even frowned upon to be vegetarian.

I do think that if more Catholics were vegetarian/vegan, I’d probably let Vegan Mith rise to the surface again. Or if my husband, or anyone around me, were veggie. But no one in my life is veggie, so Vegan Mith doesn’t get a lot of stimulation or encouragement, and just lies dormant.

Which shows me something kind of interesting about myself. Apparently it’s true that either (a) my convictions are so feeble that I don’t bother living by them unless it’s amusing or others around me agree with it, or (b) I’m just a fundamentally weak person with few, if any, real convictions.

3. Accidentally Radical WFPB

These days, for the sake of convenience and comfort, I’ve mostly just been plain old vegetarian: the kind who will eat eggs but not fish or any other animal. And even this is not because of any moral convictions, really. It’s just that meat is gross to me, after so many years meatless. I actually kinda wish that I could stomach meat, because more protein would probably be good for me (protein is the hottest trend in nutrition right now! I remember when I was young, it was all about fresh produce, whole grains, and low fat/fat free dairy products; wild how the tides turn). But it’s just gross to me. And at this stage in my life, I simply don’t care to devote too much mental energy to the morality of my diet — which, after surviving decades ruled by a crippling obsession with exactly that, is actually kind of refreshing. So I guess I don’t really care that I don’t care.

But here’s the funny thing. As of writing this post, at age 36, I’ve accidentally become vegan again, and a more strict one than ever before, although not for the animals this time; for an entirely different reason.

My fourth child, who’s five months old and exclusively breastfed, has a sensitive gut. (I strongly suspect it’s because of the IV antibiotics they gave me during labor.) He can’t tolerate it when I consume dairy, egg, (hello again, veganism), soy, or even corn. And soy and corn are in literally everything, it seems! Virtually every processed food item on the grocery store shelves contains soy or corn ingredients. Did you know that? Even things like the ascorbic acid they put in juice to add vitamins, or the chemicals in imitation vanilla extract, or the added vitamins in breakfast cereal or almondmilk, ALL come from freaking corn!

A normal person would probably give up breastfeeding at this point, but not I. (I’ve fed formula before, for unfortunate medical reasons, and loathed everything about it, ugh; the stink, the infinite bottles to wash, the ridiculously high prices, the constipated babies, the having to get up out of bed go downstairs and prep a bottle at 3AM, and worst of all the constant anxiety about the very real threat of factory contamination — I don’t know how you formula moms do it. Nursing is so much easier.) So, for nearly a month now, I’ve been on the cleanest diet I’ve ever been on in my life. I literally only drink water and consume whole foods with straight-out-of-nature ingredients that I can identify and pronounce. And my baby’s gut is doing much better (thanks also to Smidge probiotics, which are expensive but totally worth the price, and once again no I’m not getting paid for this).

Is it hard? For me, not really. I actually love it. The only hard thing for me to give up was almondmilk. But actually, it’s made my life a lot easier, socially speaking. I hate eating in social settings, and hate being offered food, because one layover habit from the years and years of ED is that I prefer to stick with my “safe” foods. And now, I have an excuse! I can’t eat this, I can’t eat that, and for once it’s not that I’m just neurotic — my baby has a sensitive stomach! Tbh I’m kinda dreading my baby turning one (the age when most doctors say these intolerances tend to go away). Because then I’ll have to start pretending to be normal in food situations again.

And here’s the other funny thing about all this. Eating a completely whole foods plant based diet, with zero “processed” ingredients — it feels amazing! I’ve been doing it for about a month now, and I kid you not, I feel lighter on my feet, more energetic, less bloated, more alert, more generally positive — just more in touch with my body or whatever, as lame as that sounds. Even though I’ve been vegan before, I’ve never been completely whole foods vegan before without any processed ingredients. (I’ve always loved my nondairy milks and coffee creamers, cereals, boxed crackers, my Violife cheeses, my tofu and flavored sparkling water and all that fun stuff.) Now, I suddenly see why some people out there are so strict about avoiding processed foods. It really does make you feel better!

All of which makes me feel Vegan Mith gaining strength again. Gaining life, like Mariah Carey as November draws to a close.

4. Catholicism, Kids, and Carnivores

But, being Vegan Mith kind of puts me at odds with my religious community. Traditional Catholics are meat eaters. They’re homesteaders and “live off the land” farmers who raise and slaughter their own meat. I don’t think I could ever do that — I may not be an “animal lover” per se, I’m a bit too indoorsy for that, but I do hate to see animals suffering, and am kind of a softie about it. TradCaths are conservatives and old-fashioned types. In the TradCath world, eating organic, home-grown meat is the healthiest thing for your body. (It’s frustrating how nutrition advice is so different depending on whom you ask; I’ve seriously started to believe that everyone’s body is just different, and nutrition science is not universal.) In the TradCath world, vegetarianism/veganism is for liberals and prissies and hippies and government pawns.

And, you know what? I get it. I can see where they’re coming from. I’m no longer a Peter Singer stan; I do believe that humans are superior to animals (2011 Mith would think I’m a speciesist loser, lol), and that we have dominion over animals. And I do think it seems to check out that raising your own livestock on your own land and slaughtering them yourselves seems like a wholesome and healthy way to live. I’m sure all that protein is great for you. Logically, that sounds perfectly good to me. Which is why I’m no longer the kind of vegan who thinks all carnivores are ignorant, self-deceiving liars. I can see how, philosophically, meat-eating is not only permissible but even good, as long as you’re doing so as ethically as you can.

The other thing that’s changed my POV on carnivores is raising kids. I’m a mom of four kids five and under. And up until this year, I’ve raised my kids vegetarian. But recently I’ve softened their vegetarianism, and feed them meat sometimes; why?

A couple of reasons: (1), my husband is a meat eater, and if I make food that he likes, but the kids can’t eat it, that means I need to make two dinners. I’ve tried for years only cooking vegetarian, but my husband was never really satisfied, and always ended up sneaking out for fast food, so we ended up just spending more money on food than we should have been spending, and it was frustrating. I’m done trying to convert my husband to vegetarianism. I’ve decided to just accept that he is who he is, with food, and tbh it’s kind of a beautiful thing that he doesn’t overthink about it so much, like I do.

And (2), trying to manage four kids is hard. Together, they act like little dervishes, much of the time: a noisy little stampede of small humans, rampaging around my house. It’s incredibly difficult at church. It’s generally true that kids are calmer and better behaved when their bellies are full. And protein does fill you up faster. If I can get my kids to eat a bit of turkey or ham and actually fill up and simmer down and be satisfied, that’s better for all of us than just constant carb and cheese snacks around the clock. They’re so picky that, at this point, I’ll just feed them whatever I can to try and get them to fill up on something that’s not sugar.

However, if I decide to let Vegan Mith out of her cage, and let myself live by vegan principles again… guess I’ll have to figure something else out. Apparently I can choose to have convictions or not to have them. Which leads me to ask myself sometimes: am I even a real person?

5. In Conclusion

All of this to say, it’s a complicated issue; for me, anyway. I could happily be a militant angry vegan, if my circumstances allowed; I could happily be carnivore, if I didn’t mind the way meat made me feel physically. Which perhaps says more about me than it does about the issue. I guess I’m just a flake.

I welcome your comments on any of this, so please do chime in if you have strong feelings or any kind of reaction to this whole issue.
Is it okay for Catholics to do “Santa Claus”?

December 14th, 2025

Tis the season!, the season for me, an American Catholic convert and mom of littles, to once again lose sleep over the ethics of Santa Claus.

Here is the situation, in case you’re not familiar: a great many American Catholic parents, especially the more Traditional ones, are eschewing the annual practice of “Santa Claus.” They don’t tell their kids the story that Santa Claus is a jolly fat guy in a red suit who lives at the North Pole with a bunch of elves and, once a year on Christmas Eve night, hops in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and delivers presents to boys and girls all around the world, parking on the roof and sliding down the chimney. They just teach their children from the get-go that Santa is just some dumb/silly made-up story, and that Christmas presents come from Mom and Dad.

Why do these parents eschew Santa? As far as I can gather, they do so for two main reasons: (1) to emphasize the real meaning of Christmas, i.e. the Birth of Christ, and not a commercialist orgy of spending and gift-getting; and/or (2) because they see that it’s unethical to lie to their children. Indeed, I’ve even seen claims from Santa-haters that they themselves felt “betrayed” and “traumatized” when they, as children, found out that Santa was not real and their parents had been deceiving them all along.

I will address these in order.

But first, a sliver of my personal background, so you can see where I’m coming from. I was not raised in a Christian household. My family home was happy and loving, but decidedly secular. Did Santa come to my house? You bet he did! It was magical – it was some of the happiest memories of my life, the whole Christmas season, everything about it. I’ve always loved Christmas.

When did I find out that Santa wasn’t real?: It happened organically. No one ever told me; there was no light bulb moment. I grew up and gradually made sense of what was really going on, and realized that, on some level, I had kind of known it all along. Was I sad? No. By the time I was old enough to accept that Santa was a story, I was old enough to not feel sad about it.

Did my parents lie to me? Did I feel betrayed?: No, and absolutely not! Not to invalidate anyone’s trauma, but I do think this is a kind of silly thing to call “betrayal.” (Feel free to debate me on this, though.) I do not really agree that doing Santa is “dishonest,” and here’s why:

There is a difference between telling a story/playing a game, and telling a lie. The former means: play, enchantment, creating magical childhood memories, levity, all in fun, with the intention of spreading joy. The latter is not about magic or innocent fun, but deliberate deception for some self-centered reason. Maybe the difference is too subtle for some of these mad trads to grapple with, or maybe they just haven’t thought too hard about it.

One example I like to use is this thing my MIL used to do for my husband when he was a little boy. She’d collect dollhouse furniture, and surreptitiously set it up in cute little arrangements in nooks and crannies around their house and yard, which my husband would then discover with delight, and she would tell him it was the fairies’ home. As a forty-year-old man, he still talks about this and how cool it was for him, as a kid, and he credits his Mom’s creativity for fostering his passion for fantasy and storytelling. Was my MIL lying to him? Was my husband betrayed and traumatized when he grew into the knowledge that the fairies weren’t real? Of course not!

To be fair, I guess you could argue that it can’t be called just a “story” or a “game” if one party doesn’t know that it’s a story or a game. Is it really a fair game if it’s one-sided? So maybe therein lies these Trad parents’ beef with Santa.

We should consider, though, the precious innocence of childhood: for young children, magic is entirely possible; the distinction between real and story is less clear. And while this absolutely doesn’t mean we should take advantage and deceive them, because they are people and have dignity, it does give parents a unique opprtunity to create magic for their kids through things like play, games, and stories. (Remember the movie Pan’s Labyrinth?) A child’s innocence is a beautiful thing. They are able to believe in fantastical things. Why not let magic be real for as long as it can, as long as it’s presented in a harmless and loving way?

“But is any lie ever harmless?,” you may be asking. Good question. This is an interesting point, and it is one that I keep in mind when doing Santa with my kids.

How can I make “Santa” distinct from straight-up deception? How can I ensure that I’m not just lying to my kids? Here’s my personal take:

– Whenever I speak of Santa Claus, I do so with levity, in a playful way. I don’t try to explain the logistics realistically, in literal terms, nor do I make serious threats about Santa bringing coal instead of presents or whatever.

– I try to remember to always preface claims about Santa with “According to legend, …” or “As the story goes…”

– If my child asks questions about the details of how Santa functions, my response is something like: “What do you think?” “That’s just what the story says.” “How do you think that works?”

– I’ll even tell them things like “the legend of Santa Claus arose from the real Saint Nicholas…”, i.e. sneaking in little admissions that it’s a legend without explicitly saying so.

“But still,” you may be arguing: “even if you can manage to keep it a harmless game, all this Santa Claus nonsense detracts from the real point of Christmas!”

Another fair point, and one that I make a concerted effort to address. The first two-thirds of my life I had no religion, and the first five-sixths of my life I had no children, so this whole “Catholic Christmas with Kids” thing is pretty new to me, and doesn’t come naturally.

How can I incoroprate “Santa” into a proper Traditional Catholic celebration of Christmas?

– Santa Claus and Saint Nicholas are the same person, in our house. I’ve taught my kids how the two names are synonymous: “Santa” = “Saint” and “Claus” = short for Nicholas. As we see it, he stops by on his feast day to leave a few goodies in the shoes, then comes back again with more gifts on Jesus’ birthday (which is obviously the more important day, for him, because as a Saint he loves Jesus very much!).

– When my kids start asking questions like “so does St. Nicholas come down from heaven?”, “I thought he lived at the North Pole?”, “Does he really have elves?”, I just respond with “I don’t know; that’s just how the legend goes,” et cetera.

– I have explained also that, while some people draw Santa as fat and silly, that’s probably not what he actually looked like.

– Gifts are secondary to the religious celebration. I try to remind them of this constantly by: going to Mass before we open presents, discussing the reason why we give presents on Christmas, and giving mostly religious-themed gifts.

– We also observe Advent and the full Christmas season, leaving decorations up and continuing to listen to Christmas music and do Christmas activities all the way through the twelve days.

“That’s all well and good, Mith,” you may be saying; “but why not just do away with Santa entirely? Wouldn’t that make it easier to keep the focus on Christ?”

Well, maybe in some ways it would. Why incorporate Santa? Well, I guess simply because, it’s fun! It’s magical! It brings us joy! And furthermore, we’re Americans, and Santa is an American thing. He’s part of our culture.

“SMFH. Your poor kids are going to be so confused,” you might be saying. I hope not! I admit, I do worry about this, because I’m the only person I know who does things this way, and I’m a bit insecure about it. But I hope that, if I keep being tactful and lighthearted about Santa Claus in the ways I’ve described, my kids will naturally make sense on their own, in time, of the fact that the flying reindeer and the “coming down the chimney with a sack of toys” stuff is just a legend.

And besides, one small beef that I have with the Anti-Santa Trads: why is it that y’all say it’s a “lie” and “unethical” to tell your kids Santa brings presents on Christmas – but it’s okay to play such games when it’s Saint Nicholas “bringing presents” on Saint Nicholas Day? I get the feeling that a lot of these Trads just resent Santa because he’s a popular, mainstream thing of secular American origin. Like they’re trying to be all hipster about it, refusing to like something that other, less-cool people also like. To which I would respond: come on now, it’s okay to like things. We needn’t take ourselves so seriously. Should I also refuse to wear socks because secular people wear socks? Should I refuse to eat bananas because non-Catholics grow and sell them?

“But Mith, it’s different,” you might argue. “Santa is a commercialist distortion of a real Christian Saint. Socks and bananas are neutral.” I actually would argue that Santa is also neutral. His holiness or baseness depends upon how you choose to implement him in your house.

And as I was saying above, one other thing we American Catholics have to consider is: we are American. (If your family’s immigrated to the US relatively recently, I’m not talking to you; I’m addressing those of us whose families have been American for many generations.)

America is not a Catholic country. (It’s arguably kind of an anti-Catholic country, if you look at its history and founding principles, but that’s another story.) Other countries around the world have all kinds of unique and beautiful Christmas traditions specific to their cultures. America’s holiday traditions are all vaguely Protestant in flavor, but mostly secular/commercial. Like, spinoffs of spinoffs of the real thing. Any cool Catholic traditions that are practiced in the US were brought here from other places. There really is no such thing as American Catholic culture.

So how do those of us who come from a secular, all-American background celebrate Christmas without just appropriating other cultures’ traditions? Well, I guess we could simply appropriate other culture’s traditions. But that would feel kind of forced and fake (to me, anyway, as the most boring and basic of plain white Americans). Isn’t there some way to begin to create a Christmas tradition that is authentically Catholic and authentically American? Is it possible to do both? This is the question that comes into my mind this time of year, and it’s from this question that my whole approach to Santa Claus stems.

Because how can we create a Traditional Catholic American culture, in general? Our country is so young, and Traditional Catholics are such a minority; it’s still a work in progress. Will we do it by deliberately re-creating other countries’ traditions here in the US – basically larping as Europeans? Or, will we let our culture grow organically, by incorporating and sanctifying elements of the culture that’s already around us? I feel like the latter option is more in keeping with how tradition actually works.

All of which is why, after much stress, angst, deliberation, and prayerful consideration, I’ve decided that it is possible, and even good, for a Catholic family to do “Santa” with their kids. I don’t think it’s a lie or imcompatible with practicing the faith. Indeed, I think it might even be a good and healthy way to let our Catholicim and our Americanness coexist and grow together. I think it’d be cool to see American Catholic Christmas become its own thing over time; and if it does, I think it could, or even should, include Santa Claus.

In conclusion, as the song goes: “let’s give thanks to the Lord above, ’cause Santa Claus comes tonight!”
TOP 10: Cuteness Aggression-Inducing Things about a Baby

October 31st, 2025

This post is simply to celebrate the best thing in the world, which is: babies.

I post this today because it was one year ago today that I found out, with great joy, that I was expecting my youngest. As I write this, he is three months old, and a truly superior baby: A+ work if I do say so myself. I love all babies (how could anyone not!), but my favorite stage of babyhood, if I had to pick one, is probably from birth through approximately five months. The age where they are just helpless cute gurgly blobs, and you can set them down and step away for a minute and they will still be in that same spot when you come back. 10/10. (Of course, when mine hits five months, I’m sure that I’ll change my mind and decide that five months is my favorite age, then six months, and so on; this happens to me every time.)

I sincerely don’t think there’s any more purely delightful element of the human experience than the company of a tiny baby. There’s something supernatural about it, I think. Little kids are aware of this, too: they are drawn to babies, and have this intense wonder and delight about them, and always want to hold them. Rolling through the grocery store with my baby in the car seat holder of the shopping cart, everyone, but especially little kids, absolutely loses it when they see him: “it’s a baby!!!”

I feel like this phenomenon, of tiny humans seeing other, tinier humans and being immediately filled with senseless delight and desire to hold and care for, is just another sign of how good and sacred a thing human life is. Whenever there’s a baby, everyone wants to hold it. (Unless they’re nervous, which is fair; I am usually nervous around other people’s babies, because they’re like little extensions of their parents, so interacting with them just as socially stressful as interacting with their parent, if not more so, because if you screw up the interaction with the baby, the parent will be angrier than if you’d screwed up an interaction with them (the parent) directly. But! That doesn’t mean that I’m not at the same time, on some level, desiring to hold the baby.)

How can you not want to hold a baby? How can you look at a baby and not want to violently throw objects against a wall and/or physically fight someone because it’s just so cute? The following are some of my favorite things about a baby. This list is far from comprehensive, so do feel free to chime in:

13. Baby’s involuntary arm and leg movements. The way these movements look exactly the way they felt while they were in your belly. It’s the very same thing! I mean, obviously it is, and you already knew that in your brain, but to see it with your own eyes – I always get such a kick (no pun intended) out of that.

12. Fuzzy newborn ears. I don’t know if your babies had this, but all four of mine were born with fuzz on the edges of their ears. It goes away sometime in the first month or two, which is always heartbreaking.

11. The bottom of the baby. Why are babies’ butts so cute? “Baby Butt” was, in fact, how my husband and I inexplicably found ourselves referring to our firstborn, all the time, when she was a baby. Because the butt was just so cute. Cuteness aggression-inducing fun fact: did you know that patting a baby’s butt often calms them down because it reminds them of when they were in your belly and their little butt was (hopefully) pointed up, and they could feel your heartbeat there?

10. Baby smells (and lack thereof). We all know that a baby’s head smells great. But can we also talk about how babies are the only people in the world who don’t smell bad? Breastfed baby poop doesn’t stink. Baby’s breath doesn’t even stink. It’s like they’re such pure creatures they’re incapable of producing a bad odor.

9. The way their little arms aren’t quite long enough to reach up and touch hands over the top of their giant head. Can you imagine having a head that size?

8. Baby noises. Those first little sounds that baby starts to make when they’re first figuring out that they can make sounds – it’s almost a shame when they start to learn words (not really, of course).

7. The mind-boggling fact that they’re a whole entire person, a whole individual, who will one day be big but for now they are yours and you can literally just pick them up and carry them around.

6. The newborn scrunch when you pick them up. Its the most satisfying thing; I get such vicarious pleasure. My three-month-old has pretty much stopped scrunching, by now, which is devastating.

5. Staring. Staring at things, my baby’s pediatrician said, in all seriousness, is an important part of his development, so it’s good to take time to just stare at your baby and let them stare at you. Which is awesome, because I love to sit and stare at my baby and be stared at by him. I also love it when babies stare at me in public. Just watching them absorb information like that is so cool. At what point does it stop being cute and become unnerving and rude, though?

4. The fuzzy head. I know some babies are born with lots of hair, and others are born totally bald, but all four of mine have been born with just a nice soft layer of kiwi fuzz, which is so soft and soothing to pet.

3. Cheeks. The fat cheeks of a baby: delectable. Some moms talk about wanting to eat their babies’ feet, which I wholeheartedly relate to, but for me, it’s even more so the cheeks. I actually still sometimes try to nom on my almost-three-year-old’s cheeks.

2. Rooting, om nomming, and the feeding face. The little open-mouthed head bob that a new baby does is the cutest thing on this planet. And the way that, if you put them in the feeding position, or even put your knuckle or something near their mouth, the little toothless mouth pops open and starts om nomming. The sheer determination with which a baby will thrust its face towards something it believes to be food, mouth wide open! They’re like little animals. Also, the face that a new baby makes while it’s feeding: the businesslike, serious stare straight ahead; or sometimes, when they get a little older, the way they smile up at you and laugh mid-feed. Totally worth the mess.

And obviously, the thing that makes me the most insane:

1. Baby smiles and happy squiggles. Any baby smile is gold, but when your own baby smiles or laughs, it seriously feels like some kind of really good drug. And, even better, when the baby is just laying there chilling, and then you walk up to them and they see you and then they smile and start involuntarily squiggling their arms and legs? It makes you want to scream and punch something just thinking about it.
Watching “Adolescence” as a Catholic Mom

September 18th, 2025

Needless to say, this post contains spoilers for the show Adolescence.

A month or so ago, my husband and I watched Adolescence, which as you probably know is a highly critically-acclaimed British limited series, released earlier this year, available on Netflix. Which, btw, I just saw that that young actor just became the youngest boy ever to win an Emmy; well deserved, he acted the heck out of that role, damn. And I guess it was nominated for a ton of other Emmys as well, so I needn’t waste any time talking about what a good show it is. Personally I love the limited series format, and I wish that more shows would limit themselves to just one season; all too often, the creators keep on dragging things along long after the story’s died and rotted, just because there’s money to be had, and it’s disgusting.

But so anyway, as you know if you read this blog, I am a really stupid person and not any kind of critic or anything, so I can’t contribute anything of value to the existing discussions of this show. I don’t pay any attention to the whole “redpill” thing or to whoever Andrew Tate is, so I can’t comment on any of that, although it did seem painfully obvious to me that whoever wrote this show has like intense personal beef with this Andrew Tate. I haven’t been inside of a high school in seventeen years (thanks be to God), so I can’t comment much on the state of public education, either, although from what I’ve heard this show depicted it very accurately, which, yikes.

No, as is the case on this entire blog, I have no expertise, so the only thing I can really put out there is my personal reaction, in case anyone out there, like me, just wants to talk about it. And for me, the big takeaway, the thing that I was left thinking about for days and weeks afterwards, was: do we have any control, then, over who we are, and how our kids turn out?

As a mom of little kids, I worry about this a lot. Maybe it’s a “millennial mom” thing, but it gives me a lot of anxiety, trying not to mess up my kids. I always overthink about every single thing I say to them, and worry that I’m psychologically damaging them no matter what I do. At the end of the day: “I was too mean and strict, they’re going to be traumatized and go no-contact with me as soon as they’re grown up, and rightfully so!” Or: “I was too lenient, I’m spoiling them, what would my priest say?!, they’re not going to have any sense of respect or discipline, I am one of ‘those’ modern parents, I am part of what’s wrong with society!” It seems that no matter what I say, I always look back on it at the end of the day and think that I should have said the opposite. No matter what I do, I am damaging them somehow, and setting them up for a future full of misery and expensive psychotherapy. But, how much control do I actually have over my kids’ outcome?

In the last episode of Adolescence, it seemed like the show was simultaneously blaming Jamie’s parents, and excusing them from culpability for his actions. Yes, it was their fault, because Dad had unresolved anger issues and was at work all the time, and Mom didn’t pay attention to the warning signs, like the way that Jamie was just in his room on the computer all the time. But, also, Dad couldn’t really help it, could he, because his own dad was violent with him, and Jamie’s dad was just doing the best he could, trying to contain his rage and not take it out on his kids (but instead on things like sheds and vans). And I guess the idea was that Mom wasn’t really at fault because she lives in a world where teenagers sitting on their computers all day is normalized. Both parents were, in their ways, just products of their own upbringing and environment.

Aren’t we all? How much control do I even have over myself and my own choices? I’m not going to talk about whether or not free will exists. That question is too mind-bendy for me. As a Catholic, I know that it is somehow both true that free will exists and that God has the ultimate power as well as foreknowledge of how everything will end up – that I simultaneously have control over my actions and have no control whatsoever, which is confusing, but it makes sense as long as you don’t think about it too hard, because it certainly appears true that we have free will, and it feels weird to think otherwise. As you can tell I’m far from equipped to talk about such lofty subjects as free will.

So I guess the question here is, can anyone ever not be just a product of their own upbringing and environment? Can anyone ever not doom their children to be just products of their upbringing and environment? Is it really all just one big hopeless vicious cycle of disorder and trauma?

I admittedly stress about this a lot, and that stress definitely swelled up again, for a while, after watching Adolescence. But fortunately for me, I am, as I already mentioned, Catholic, and in the Catholic Church, we are shown the way to freedom – to breaking that hopeless cycle.

Sure, as long as you’re just being yourself, living according to your own human limitations, seeking no more than as much human satisfaction as you can get, you’re going to be stuck in the cycle. You’re probably doomed to misery. I do not know this firsthand, as I am definitely not a saint, but I know from reading the lives of the saints, that the only way to escape that cycle – to breach the surface of these whirling murky waters of human pain and struggle, and finally take a breath of air – is to become a saint. I’m pretty sure that’s the only way to be actually free. A saint is the only kind of person who’s entirely free from the world and all its emotional/psychic/material anguish. A saint lives entirely in the truth.

Hm, so, does that mean that, if I’m not a literal saint, I’m doomed to be a shitty parent, and my kids are doomed to generational trauma?

Well, first of all, I think there’s a common misconception about saints that they never do a single thing wrong. That’s not what a saint is. The saints are not the same as Christ or the Blessed Mother. On earth, they weren’t perfect. They sometimes get things wrong. But the thing that made them saints was that they loved God very much and were entirely devoted to doing His will, not their own. They are already living in eternity; they have their priorities straight. But they’re still people, i.e. imperfect. So, I don’t think it’s necessarily true that one must never ever make a single mistake in order to be a good parent, to raise mentally-healthy kids.

What, then, is the secret? – No, really, can somebody tell me? Lol. I try to do my best, but my oldest is still only five, so despite having four kids, I’m still quite new at this.

I figure probably one of the most important things one can do, when it comes to raising kids who are free from the vicious cycle that is the human condition – i.e., kids who have the best chance at true happiness – is to pass on the Faith to them. That is the most important thing that we can give them. But of course, we should also practice what we preach. It’s not going to help our kids much if we teach certain habits and virtues but behave completely differently in our own everyday lives. That will just lead to confusion and fallen-away souls. The responsibility of being a Catholic parent is incredibly daunting. Which is why stories like Adolescence make me so anxious. Am I doing enough to save my kids? Am I doing enough, am I doing enough, am I doing enough?? If you’re a mom, even a secular mom, you get it!

I’m never doing enough, it seems – but, at least my children will know their Blessed Mother, who is perfect, and who will never fail them like I inevitably will to some degree.

It’s always interesting to me when secular stories like this accidentally profess the truth of God and His infinite love. Yes, every person is indeed doomed to a cycle of hopelessness and ruin, evil and pain, if they try to live without God. I guess all good art tells us something about God, really, and that’s why it is good.
a birth story.

July 28th, 2025

As you may have noticed, I haven’t posted on this blog in over a month – not because I’m done with blogging, but because I was busy having a baby. My fourth kid was born earlier this month. Now, I don’t typically like to share a lot about physical stuff. But I thought I’d share my birth story on here, because for the first time I feel like I got it right, and am actually proud of how it went, and feel like it could potentially be useful to someone.

In the third trimester I spent a lot of time reading birth stories as I tried to mentally prepare myself; so, I figure I’ll pay it forward or whatever and go ahead and share mine for any mom out there who might happen to be reading this as she prepares for her own birth.

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Four days before my son was born, I went to confession, which I try to do every two-to-three weeks regularly. This time, the priest was one that I’d never been to confession with before. And for penance, he assigned me a prayer I’d never been assigned before, in my ten years of being Catholic: the Anima Christi prayer.

Of course I was familiar with the prayer, but it wasn’t one that I had memorized or anything. So as soon as Mass was over, I looked it up and prayed it and studied it. I was 39 weeks pregnant, and really nervous about labor for some reason, even though this was my fourth baby. I thought to myself: maybe this prayer will be a good tool to bring into labor. I repeated the first three lines over and over in my mind on the drive home, and over the coming days.

Why was I so nervous about birth? If you’ve read my post on epidurals, you already know a little about my previous three birth experiences. I’d never had a purely unmedicated, all-natural birth. My first was an induction, and even though I didn’t get an epidural, I did get IV pain meds to help me cope (fentanyl, and it didn’t even help much anyway, lol). My second was surgical. My third, my VBAC¹, I had intended to go all-natural, but got discouraged and gave up, and ended up getting an epidural right at transition. So I was haunted by feelings of failure and inferiority, like I was not a real mom somehow.

Was I going to be able to do it this time? Doubt. Maybe I shouldn’t even bother trying. I’d been reading “Made For This” by Mary Haseltine, as well as re-reading Ina May’s guide, and feeling called out and accused by every word on the pages, feeling like a failure as a woman and a Catholic; I was sure that I would end up tapping out again. I couldn’t do it; I already knew that. But, Mary Haseltine suggests embracing that: accepting and admitting that we can’t do it on our own, and totally surrendering to God. I didn’t know if I could do that or not.

The same author also suggested offering up your labor for a specific intention. I figured I could do that, in any case. I read a lot of advice and tried to internalize it all. Basically, I lost a lot of sleep, and said a lot of prayers. I tried to focus on preparing myself mentally. Because I knew that having an all-natural birth would be more of a psychological than physical feat.

I had certain expectations. I expected that I would go into labor on or around my due date, which was the coming Saturday. I expected that it would be very similar to my labor with my third, which began slowly, with very mild contractions that gradually intensified. I expected that it would be slow and grueling. For personal reasons, I did not want to have a baby on Wednesday; that was incredibly important to me, and I’d lost sleep over this too. Any day but Wednesday! (Don’t ask me why.) I’d do anything to avoid having a baby on Wednesday!

Then, Tuesday night, out of nowhere, my water broke.

Well, I say “out of nowhere,” but it wasn’t really. I guess I hadn’t recognized the signs. I’ll describe some of those signs just in case you’re curious.

I had gestational diabetes in this pregnancy, which was easily diet-controlled, and I’d noticed for the past week that my glucose numbers had suddenly dropped a lot. Things that typically spiked my blood sugar no longer did. It was like I could suddenly throw caution to the winds, with food, if I wanted to; I was actually afraid my monitor was broken or something. Apparently, this is a sign that labor is about to start. But I didn’t want to believe it.

Also, I’d been queasy for days, with a very low appetite, experiencing waves of nausea that got a little worse on Tuesday. I thought nothing of this, because I’d had a stomach bug at 38 weeks, which had me incapacitated for two or three days, and after it passed, I simply didn’t fully recover. The nausea stuck around. It was like I was back in the first trimester. I assumed I was just having a hard time shaking the stomach bug.

And I was in an absolutely shitty mood, that Tuesday. I had no patience, snapped at the slightest provocation, was irritable with my kids, and generally a crappy mom. It was like PMS. But, I assumed that it was just fatigue, and the damned stomach bug getting to me.

Despite feeling like crap, I also had this mad wave of productivity on Tuesday afternoon. I had to clean the upstairs. There was going to be a baby sleeping there soon, I needed to clean it! So I went into a cleaning frenzy for a few hours, and got the whole upstairs relatively sparkling (for a house with two toddlers and a kindergartener, that is). I assumed this was just normal third trimester nesting.

So those were the warning signs that I was ignoring. I assumed I had more time. I hadn’t even finished packing my hospital bag! Like I said, I was expecting to have plenty of warning before time to head to the hospital; with my third, I was in early labor for about a day and a half before I even felt uncomfortable. I was waiting to pack stuff until the actual signs of labor showed up.

Well, but then, like I said, at about a quarter to nine, my water broke.

What the hell? What the helly?! This had never happened to me before. With my first, my water didn’t break until I was already having painful contractions, and then it was only a cautious trickle; my third, the OB manually broke my water at seven centimeters, to move things along. I had never before experienced this Hollywood-esque moment of being surprised by a sudden gush of water out of nowhere. And on Tuesday night, of all nights?!

There went my plans! So much for not having a baby on Wednesday. I was GBS positive², so I knew that I had to get to the hospital ASAP, and that there was no way this baby would be arriving any later than a day from now, but also no way they’d be arriving before midnight tonight.

I’d also been hoping that labor might, for once, not happen overnight; I was really hoping it’d start during the day this time, when I was awake and alert, so that I wouldn’t be going into it with zero energy; but alas, here we were again.

It did not bode well. Furthermore, I wasn’t even having painful contractions yet. I knew from reading zillions of birth stories that it was almost never good when water broke without contractions. That generally meant that Pitocin³would be needed to move things along; providers don’t like to wait too long to deliver a baby once water has broken, because of the risk of infection. I’d never had Pitocin in labor before (my previous induction was with Cytotec ⁴), and I wanted to keep it that way. We’ve all heard the horror stories about how painful Pitocin contractions are. I knew that, if I had to suffer through those, I’d probably end up getting an epidural, which would probably slow things down, and the cascade of interventions would begin, and I could very well end up in the OR. (I hated my c-section, and did not want to go through that again.)

So I chucked a few things in my hospital bag (not enough, lol I forgot quite a few things) and we were off, in a mild panic. But my anxiety and dread were balanced out by an even greater excitement. For better or for worse, it was happening; I’d get to meet this baby soon.

But at the hospital, it was kind of a cluster. The nurses couldn’t find their equipment. They accidentally clicked “discharge” on their computer and checked me out of the hospital and had to re-check me in. Then they couldn’t find my vein to start the IV (that’s always fun). Nothing seemed to be going right. It was almost ten, and I still wasn’t having painful contractions. I really had no idea how this was going to go.

So I said a little prayer of surrender, trying to let go of all my personal wants and desires for how the birth would proceed. Then, between interruptions, I prayed the sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary.

Here’s a cool thing. The midwife didn’t check for dilation at this point, and I’m so grateful she did not. What’s the point of all these cervical exams that women are always given during pregnancy? They don’t tell you anything about when baby will come. I wasn’t having painful contractions, so the midwife said she didn’t expect to see dilation yet, and she’d just wait to check me later. Cool! Fine with me! I didn’t need that kind of stress in my life! I was so happy to be working with midwives this time instead of OBs. Nothing against the OBs who’d helped me with my other babies, but I will always recommend midwives over OBs to any low-risk pregnant mom. It’s a world of difference, a whole different philosophy. I only had to endure two cervical exams this entire pregnancy, both of them in active labor (more on that later).

Well, they got me sorted out with the IV block, then moved me from triage to a delivery room. There, they hooked me up to a fetal monitor (this was, after all, a 2VBAC¹), gave me my first dose of penicillin, and then let me be. Still no pain. I remembered the advice of the doula who’d helped me with my third birth: sometimes relaxing actually gets things moving along. So, I took a shower, got in my fuzzy bathrobe and sleep hat, grabbed my teddy bear, and laid down for a rest. The braxton-hicks⁵were starting to feel a little bit more intense, but nothing serious or uncomfortable. I figured I’d rest while I still could. There was a long night ahead of me.

It worked. I probably only rested for thirty, forty minutes or so, before the contractions picked up. This was around midnight. So I got up and started walking around, moving through them. I wanted to to make progress, and plus, in the early part of active labor, walking or rocking or swaying through the contractions seriously helps.

But I could feel things were moving quickly. At one point my teeth started chattering uncontrollably, which meant the hormones were doing crazy things. Each contraction was a bit more intense than the last. I was feeling lots of nausea, so was pretty much just hanging out in the bathroom, at this point, and I started having to really focus to get through the pain. This was the point at which time becomes weird and you go into this strange primal otherworldly place, mentally. If you’ve ever been in labor you know what I mean.

I will share some things that helped me cope with the pain, in case you’re a pregnant mom reading this and mentally preparing for your own labor like I was.

I kept on praying. I brought out from my little toolbox the Anima Christi prayer, which I’d been dwelling on over the past few days. With each contraction I’d think about one of the first three lines:

“Soul of Christ, sanctify me.

Body of Christ, save me.

Blood of Christ, embolden me.“

It wasn’t even an intentional thing, where I set out to meditate on one of these lines. It just kind of happened. I’d be praying and as the pain picked up my brain would slow to a stop and just kind of linger over one of these lines while I thought about the Passion or remembered my last Holy Communion just four days prior.

And – this bit sounds super uncharacteristic of me, because I’m a very negative and pessimistic person, lol – I guess the other thing that helped was staying positive about it. This was a mind game, I knew. I had to make myself like the pain. I had to be really intentional. Yes, I’d say to myself, yes, this is good. I’m coping with this so well. At one point, I could sense myself starting to get frustrated and mad at the pain, wanting to say to it, “fucking hell!, just leave me alone, stop doing this to my body!” Which created a sensation of fear. So I caught myself, and changed the narrative real quick, because that was the very path that led me to the epidural with my last baby: feeling like a victim of the pain, like the pain was something bad happening to me. This time, I intentionally took ownership of it. It wasn’t happening to me, as they say; it was me. And that actually helped. It’s seriously psychological warfare, in labor.

(A few other little sensory tricks that really help, if you’re curious: movement, vocalization, and squeezing the shit out of wide-toothed wooden combs in each hand. Randomly, I also took a weird comfort in running my hands under the faucet in the bathroom sink.)

Well, by now I was in the zone, and it was about two AM. The midwife came in to check me. She’d said she was going to wait to check me until it was time for the second dose of antibiotics, which wasn’t supposed to be for another hour; but I guess she could see that I had progressed pretty far, and she was probably afraid I’d have the baby on the bathroom floor, lol. I was pretty uncomfortable by now, so I was really hoping that she’d tell me I was at like a six, at least a five.

Imagine my relief when she told me I was at a nine! Thank God! That far already? So I was coping with this pretty well, after all?! That gave me a fresh burst of motivation: it would be over soon. She stayed with me, and directed me into this-that-and-the-other position through the contractions (which, btw, an OB would not have done), and when she checked me again at about 2:30 (all of these time estimates are very approximate, because like I said I was in that zone where everything is spacey and time doesn’t really exist), I was at a ten.

I’ll spare you the details of the next half-hour, not because anything went wrong, but just because this phase is particularly bodily. Suffice it to say that baby was born about thirty minutes later, just before 3 AM, with no interventions or pain meds of any kind.

But then came the biggest surprise of all. We were team green, in this pregnancy, waiting to find out the baby’s gender until birth. I was completely certain, the entire nine months, that it was a girl. I called the baby “she” the whole time, thinking of her as my daughter and calling her by our chosen girl name. I barely ever even considered that it might be a boy; that felt so unlikely as to not even be a real possibility. My intuition had been correct for my other three kids, so I knew, I simply knew, that this was going to be a girl.

But: he was a boy!

A boy, born all natural, only six hours from the time my water broke, only three hours from the onset of actual discomfort. What the helly!

Later that day, recovering in our room in the mother-baby ward, I was lying there watching EWTN on my TV. Daily Mass was on. It was the Novus Ordo Mass, which I generally avoid, but it was a solemn and reverent one – EWTN is great; Mother Angelica, ora pro nobis! – so I watched it anyway. If you’ve ever watched Mass on TV, you know that, when it comes time for Communion, they cut to an Act of Spiritual Communion for the viewers at home who can’t receive physically. On EWTN, they don’t always use the same prayer every single time; it changes day by day, as there are many prayers one can say for this intention.

Guess which prayer they broadcast that day, my son’s birthday, for the Spiritual Communion?

It felt like a small reassurance that Wednesday was the right day for him to be born, after all.

.

.

Footnotes for those who might not be familiar with pregnancy terminology:

1. VBAC: vaginal birth after cesarean. Whenever you give birth the normal way after a prior c-section, there’s a risk (extremely minute) of uterine rupture at the incision site, which is terrifying and life-threatening if it happens. So when you’re in labor after a prior C, they make you wear a fetal monitor the whole time to make sure baby is doing okay. It’s not too bad, because you can still walk around and even get in the water if you want to; you just have a device strapped around your belly. 2VBAC: second VBAC, still treated the same way during labor, even if you’ve already done it once successfully before.

2. Group B strep is a bacteria that we sometimes carry and sometimes don’t. It comes and goes, and isn’t at all harmful to mom (or her husband; it’s not an STI); you can actually test positive for it one week and negative the next. But, if it gets passed to a baby during birth, it can sometimes cause them to get sick, and if that happens it’s deathly serious. So, if you test positive in late pregnancy, they just give you antibiotics during labor: two doses, four hours apart. Normally if your water breaks you don’t necessarily need to rush to the hospital unless you’re having 5-1-1 contractions^A , but, if you are GBS+, they tell you to come to the hospital immediately if your water breaks, because risk of infection goes up.

A. that is, contractions five minutes apart, lasting one minute, for one straight hour.

3. Pitocin is synthetic oxytocin, given through an IV, to induce labor or help it progress when contractions aren’t happening or aren’t strong enough.

4. Cytotec is a different kind of medication, not an IV med, but a tablet that they actually insert into your body to soften the cervix to encourage labor. When I had Cytotec I was already 40 and a half weeks along and only needed one dose, so it barely even felt like an induction, honestly.

5. Braxton-hicks contractions are these random, painless but weird contractions that most moms experience a few times a day in later pregnancy; they’re called “practice contractions,” because they’re how your uterus practices to get ready for labor. Your whole stomach gets really tight and sometimes you can feel a bit breathless, almost like you’re doing a crunch, but they don’t hurt.
Am I a bad mom if my two-year-old is still in diapers?

May 10th, 2025

(Please note that, in this post, I am not talking about special needs or neurodivergent children. I’m aware that they are in a different situation entirely.)

A few years ago, on Writer Twitter, I met a fellow aspiring author, a really cool lady, and we agreed to try being critique partners, and traded the first few chapters of our novels for each other to mark up (which was an absolutely sickeningly terrifying experience, for me, but I was really trying, at that point, to become a Serious Writer, lol). She was a generation or two my senior, but we wrote in the same genre, and I liked and trusted her. She left me a lot of thoughtful feedback — but the comment that jumped out to me the most was on a part where I mentioned a two-year-old child that was wearing a diaper to bed. My critique partner wrote in red: “A two-year-old in diapers?? Really??!”

At the time, I had a two-year-old and an almost-one-year-old, both still decidedly in diapers. So, I just laughed in confusion, reading that. I figured my critique partner must not have much experience with kids. I seriously had no idea, at that point, that anyone on earth could consider it at all weird for a two-year-old to be wearing diapers!

But then, some time later, I read somewhere that it’s only in recent decades, since the advent of disposable diapers, that parents have delayed potty training until age two/three. According to this source I read, back in the ‘50s and earlier, kids would be potty training around their first birthday – pretty much as soon as they could walk. So, some parents look down on us modern moms, for whom disposable diapers make it easier to be “lazy.”

A confession: I’m a mom of three, soon to be four, and I do not do cloth diapers. Womp womp. I know that that would be the morally superior, crunchy thing to do. And I did do some research about it and seriously considered it – but honestly, I’m overwhelmed with laundry as it is, and just don’t want to.

I’ve potty trained two girls so far, and am working on it with my son, who’s currently two. I’ve found, thus far, that each kid is extremely different. My eldest was unconventional: she was pooping in the potty every single time by the time she was two years old, but despite all my efforts, refused to pee in the potty until after she was three (and we had a real battle about it). But once it clicked, she never looked back, and has had almost zero accidents since. My second was a bit more normal about it. She was agreeable and a good learner, and fully trained by around two-and-a-half, well before three years old — but is more prone to accidents, even now, at almost four. My third (my only boy) currently hates the potty, doesn’t want anything to do with it, and at this point I’m resorting to rewarding him just for sitting on the thing at all. And my methods and process have been pretty much the same with each of them. I’m not super rigid about it; I start introducing the potty before they’re two, but the training process is more gradual than rigorous. It’s just what works for us.

Is this a moral failing? Do I deserve the harsh judgment of these old-school, early-potty-training moms online? I don’t know.

Maybe if I did cloth diapers, it would compel me to potty train my kids earlier. I know a mom from church who cloth diapers, and is currently potty training her fourteen-month-old because she simply can’t stand the laundry anymore – which, I imagine I’d feel the same way! But I also can’t help feeling like maybe she is the superior mom and human for this.

My family’s pediatrician (who is a “normal” pediatrician, not a crunchy/holistic one) doesn’t start talking about potty training until two years old. When I told her my son was still pretty averse to the potty, at his two-year well check, she was totally unconcerned, and said that was still normal, that it was still early. So I guess this is the norm, in 2025. But just because something is the norm in modern times, certainly doesn’t mean it’s the best! If anything, maybe we should be wary of what’s considered normal in these modern times!

So why don’t I just train my kids earlier, if I’m that concerned about it?: well, basically, because it’s easier.

For one, less cleanup. I hate cleaning up pee. The earlier you train, the more accidents you have. Training my eldest when she was three years old was a pain in its own way, but there were relatively few pee spills to mop up.

For two, it’s easier to instruct a slightly older child. With my two-to-three year old, I was able to have a slightly more rational conversation with her about the potty; and, although we butted heads, I found this approach far more intuitive than trying to teach a one-year-old about it. Maybe this is just because of my personality type. Being ILI in socionics/INTJ in MBTI/LVEF in psychosophy, I have a “logical” way of thinking, and so it makes the most sense for me to solve problems and approach obstacles that way.

So yeah. It’s easier, for me, to potty train at a slightly older age, around two and a half. Parenting is hard, as we all know. I do try to make it easier where I can. Don’t we all?

I do worry that I’m a bad or lazy mom or human for trying to make my life easier this way. Am I doing my kids a disservice somehow? Would they be more confident, and get off to a more self-assured start in life, if I had them out of diapers by age two? I don’t know. Some might say yes. But on the other hand, I worry that the struggle of going through potty training at a very early age might disrupt the peace in our house and end up affecting them negatively. Keeping stress low and moods positive as much as possible is not a luxury, but a necessity, I’ve found, when parenting.

There’s also the argument that all those disposable diapers are wasteful and terrible for the environment. Although, the older I get, the less certain I am that the environment is as big of a concern as we’re made to believe it is (I don’t know, though; I’m on the fence, still) – and if it is, I know for absolute certain that there’s nothing a little person like me can do about it, that no matter how many reusable grocery bags and cloth diapers I use, no matter how much I inconvenience myself, it won’t matter a whit as long as all these big corporations, the air travel industry and meat production industry – the ones who actually have it in their power to change things – continue to not change. So, I’m honestly not super swayed by the whole “waste” argument.

And I haven’t read up a lot on the psychology of potty training earlier vs. later, but, I’m not aware of any compelling evidence that a child is happier or healthier if they potty train earlier. Am I wrong?

I guess in the ’50s and earlier, they were just more used to doing more cleanup. Nowadays, we don’t have to worry that much about that. Certain things are just easier now, because of advancements like disposable diapers. We also have things like washers, dryers, refrigerators, microwaves, all of which make life easier now than it used to be. Is it a moral failing to utilize such things? I can’t imagine that it is.

Like I said, I’m just trying to make our lives easier, because when life is going smoothly, I’m a more patient, happier, and successful mom. Maybe if I were a tougher and stronger type of individual, I’d do cloth diapers instead of disposables. Maybe if I were more resilient and patient in general, I’d potty train at one instead of two.

Maybe these are moral failings. I like to think it’s more like they are imperfections, or even maybe just morally neutral characteristics, of mine that I’m aware of and doing my best to work with, to make sure my family is as happy and mentally healthy as possible. Being flexible and low-stress about the potty is what’s been working for us.

But if you have a really strong argument against potty training at two-three, or in favor of doing it earlier, my inbox is open.
Stop Commenting On Pregnant Women’s Bodies

April 7th, 2025

Let’s stop commenting on people’s body size. Pregnant or not.

As a mom who’s currently 26 weeks and change with my fourth baby, this has become a serious pet peeve of mine. You wouldn’t comment on a woman’s body size in casual conversation if she’s not pregnant (unless you’re a complete asshole); so why do we assume it’s okay to do to a pregnant lady?

The comment I get most frequently – from strangers, acquaintances, and even from doctors and midwives, who you would think would know better – is: “You’re barely showing! You’re so small! You’re tiny!” And, I hate that shit. I don’t know if these people think they’re giving me a compliment, but I wish they’d just stop.

I hate being told I’m tiny and barely showing, because it makes me self-conscious about my general, non-pregnant body size. When someone says “you’re tiny,” what I hear is, “you’re such a fat fucking tank of a person that your body hides the entire pregnancy inside its great bulk, and we can’t even tell, like, compared to a normal, attractive, stick-thin mom with an actual waistline, who would already have a round visible bump at like 8 weeks along.”

(Which, is actually not even true of me. Objectively, I’m a medium-sized person with a very “normal” BMI (not that the BMI scale is at all meaningful w/r/t a person’s health or appearance – it’s definitely not, in fact it’s BS, but that’s a rant for another day). I unfortunately just have the sort of wide, sturdy body frame that carries babies really comfortably. Big hands, big feet, no waist, thick ankles: built like a freaking tree trunk. But, on the plus side, I never get serious back pain or groin pain or swelling or anything like that, during pregnancy, and have worked out daily, with relative ease, right up until delivery, every single time. I’ve never needed a pregnancy pillow for my bed or a support band for my belly. I also don’t get stretch marks at all, and bounce back to my normal size pretty much immediately after birth every time. So, you win some, you lose some.)

It’s also triggering because, for many years, I never knew if I’d be able to get pregnant, and always dreamed of being visibly pregnant, so that people would look at me and know. I wanted to need a pregnancy pillow and a support band; I wanted to complain about back pain. And in reality I pretty much don’t get to have that experience – which, I’m lucky that this is the thing I get to complain about; I ended up having no trouble conceiving or giving birth, unlike many women out there, and in the grand scheme of things this is not that big a deal; but, it definitely makes me feel like less of a mom, less of a pregnant woman, less of a woman in general, when people say “you’re due so soon?! But you’re barely showing, I never would have guessed!”

Maybe these people really mean well, with the “you’re barely showing” comments, and it’s just my ED history piping up, making me take their words the wrong way. But even if that’s the case, I don’t think that makes it appropriate at all to comment on someone’s body size.

And I’ve been guilty of this myself, in the past. I hate that. I remember, back before I ever had kids of my own, a coworker of mine was pregnant, and all of us at the salon, including myself, were constantly playfully teasing her like “oh my gosh, you’re huge! You’re only in the second trimester?! Are you sure it’s not twins? How could you possibly get any bigger?!” and other such horrible, insensitive nonsense. I wish I could go back in time and smack myself, and apologize to that poor girl, who was having a hard enough time already.

But then, a couple years later, I had my first pregnancy, and quickly realized how awful it is that suddenly everyone in the world thinks it’s okay to shamelessly judge your body, out loud, in public, as if you’re on freaking America’s Next Top Model or something. It’s hard enough being a female and a mom, in this world. Leave pregnant ladies alone.

The rules are pretty simple. I will spell it out in two steps. If you see a woman who looks pregnant, step one is: don’t assume that she is pregnant! No matter how obvious it seems! She might have painful inflammation, or bloat, or a tumor. You truly do not know. Don’t assume, and don’t ask. Step two is: once she tells you that she is pregnant, there is only one (1) acceptable thing that you can say about her physical appearance, and that is: “you look great!”

Never comment on someone’s body size. This includes complimenting someone’s weight loss. Never compliment someone for losing weight. This is another rule that everyone should live by. I can’t tell you how horrible it was for me, during the days of my active ED, for people to tell me: “wow, you’re so skinny! I wish I looked like you.” “Wow, you’ve really lost weight!” “You’re so lucky you’re skinny.” That absolutely fucked me up, when I was in the thick of it. Even a friendly, innocuous-seeming “congrats, you’ve lost weight, you look great” can make a person think to themselves: “oh, so I looked awful before?” It really feeds a disordered mindset. Also, a person might be losing weight due to depression, a personal crisis, or cancer. You don’t know. Just don’t comment on someone’s body size.

Even if you think you’re giving a compliment and it’s not about weight loss – just don’t comment on someone’s body size! “You’re so thin, I wish I looked like you:” that person might be super insecure about their small body, maybe they were picked on for it as a kid, or maybe they’re very sick. “You’re so pretty, your body is perfect:” that would easily make someone feel objectified, to know that people are looking at their body and rating it on some weird scale. Or worry that if they change anything or gain a single pound or age a few years, they won’t be “perfect” anymore. Just don’t comment on someone’s body size. It’s simple.

“But Mith,” you might be arguing: “not everyone is as oversensitive and paranoid as you are! Most people in the world are normal, and can take a compliment or a benign remark without it causing a whole mental breakdown.”

Maybe so, but I daresay even normies are vulnerable to developing an eating disorder or exercise addiction, if they hear these kinds of comments enough. And even normies would probably be pretty bothered if someone complimented their weight loss and it was the result of their going through a nasty divorce, or losing a loved one, or undergoing major surgery. And, even if “most people” wouldn’t be bothered, that doesn’t mean it’s okay to just disregard that lesser percentage of people who would be injured by such comments. You don’t know if you’re dealing with someone who has an ED or any kind of mental/emotional baggage about their body. If you’re a decent person, you don’t want to risk harming someone.

And it’s not even hard to do. I’m not asking you to do any mental gymnastics or make any great allowances when it comes to interacting with pregnant women. I’m not asking you to go out of your way. It literally requires no additional mental or physical effort on your behalf to simply not comment on someone’s body size or shape.

In conclusion: I will say it again: just don’t comment on someone’s body! It’s seriously not that hard! Thanks for reading.
What if the antivaxxers are right?

March 21st, 2025

As someone with AvPD, I’m honestly not a huge fan of myself. There are not many things about my personality that I’m proud of — but, I think one of my best traits is: I’m open-minded. When I hear any kind of moral claim, I never dismiss it offhand. If someone believes sincerely that something is right or wrong, I take them seriously. I like to actually consider whether they may be right. I have my own convictions, of course, but I’m constantly considering and weighing them (“curating my beliefs,” as I once heard someone in college describe it) and re-examining myself to make sure I’m on what I think is the right track. This trait of mine can make me somewhat neurotic and insecure, but, it is also why I have been able to correct my religious and political beliefs pretty drastically over the years. Some people might think it’s a crazy way to be, but, I think it’s important to not believe everything we think, to take no moral claim at face value, and to not assume that anything is stupid until we really look at it. Just because a lot of people believe something does not make it true.

Which is why, even though I’m pretty pro-vaccine myself, I don’t just dismiss the antivax perspective offhand. I’ve spent a good amount of time and energy wondering about this.

When I say “pretty pro-vaccine,” what I mean is, I take my kids to a “normal” pediatrician, and all of them are up-to-date on all of their routine immunizations as recommended by the AAP. I also get them yearly flu shots, and get flu shots for myself and my husband, and will even get a vaccine during pregnancy, like flu or TDAP, if my doctor recommends it. However, I have qualms about brand new vaccines like the Covid one, and I will not get that one for my kids, nor would I get it for myself today. (Too many sketchy side-effects, and it came out so quickly, etc.)

I’m sure the antivaxxers think I’m an idiot for that. Similarly, most of the pro-vax crowd just dismiss the antivaxxers offhand as idiots. Literally, both sides accuse the other of “not doing their research” and “being mind-controlled by the government” and “falling victim to misinformation.”

This is why, in my opinion, there’s no real point “doing your research” when it comes to whether or not to vaccinate. Because, depending on where you do that research, you’re going to arrive at one of two very different conclusions. It’s just like with global warming. One website presents concrete evidence that it is real; another website presents concrete evidence that it is not. “Just do your research,” both sides scream at you!

But the first thing, the more important thing, is figuring out whom to trust.

For me, the question boils down to: do I trust these doctors? Why or why not? Whom do I trust more: this doctor who’s recommending vaccinations, or these people on the internet who recommend fresh air and a healthy diet?

You can never really know whom to trust. And you have to choose someone. That is one of the scary things about being human.

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I don’t like vaccinating my kids, tbh. I always worry about it. Especially when they’re tiny. I know the chances of serious complications are very rare, but they’re not nonexistent. With each vaccination, there is a nonzero chance that my child will die as a result. I’ve really considered just not doing it. Which is why I sympathize with the antivaxxers.

I’m not a scientist, but I did pay some attention in school, so I think I have a grasp of the basics. If I understand correctly, a vaccine is basically a tiny dose of a neutralized version of a virus, which, when introduced to your body, causes your body to produce antibodies to that virus, so that, if you encounter the actual virus out in the wild, your body will react to it with stronger defenses, thus preventing you from becoming deathly ill. They don’t prevent sickness entirely, but definitely reduce the severity of infection. It seems like a pretty simple concept to me; I mean, I learned this stuff in middle school. A vaccine is not some strange mystery chemical concocted by the government. It’s pretty basic biology, isn’t it?

Now, you might be arguing that public school is just another mind control agent, and I’ve been brainwashed by politicians. And I guess I can’t prove that that’s not true. But, I like to think that I have a pretty discerning eye about what parts of my public school education were brainwashy (“use condoms,” “the Catholic Church is bad and evil,” “feminism is great,” etc.) and which parts were just non-politically-weighted information (the quadratic formula, the periodic table, the definition of a vaccine, etc.). An antivaxxer might argue that I’m not being discerning enough, that all of the things I was taught were just lies cooked up by the government to turn me into a drone. At this point, we arrive at one of those instances where I have to choose who to trust. The teachers and textbooks and my own brain’s faculty of processing the likelihood of the information presented, or, a stranger telling me none of that is true?

I also have to consider the statistics. It is undeniable that the chances of something bad happening from a vaccine are very, very small. I’ve always had all of mine, as have just about everyone that I personally know, and none of us suffered any adverse effects. (I know this is survivor’s bias, to an extent, and like I said I know this does not negate the fact that there is a nonzero chance of death from a vaccine; I’m just saying it seems much more likely that one will survive.) And I’ve experienced myself that vaccines drastically reduce symptoms of infection (we had our flu shots last fall; this winter, when we got the flu, we only had a pretty mild version of it, with no loss of appetite or chills or body aches or anything). Also, if you trust the historical data, it’s plain to see that, since the advent of vaccines, some preventable diseases have basically become obsolete. (Until recently, that is – this random resurgence of measles in the Midwest, which, you cannot tell me is not the result of antivaxxers’ decisions.) So, stepping away from the internet and all the drama, and simply looking at all of the statistics that I’ve ever been shown, it seems like a wise decision to get vaccinated.

Does this ease my worry about getting my kids vaccinated? Not really. But I have to choose to either do it or not do it, and I guess I just find the science more compelling and convincing than the alternative.

“But don’t you trust God?” an antivaxxer might ask me. “God’s design is perfect. He wouldn’t create something that humans need to ‘improve’ upon with their modern scientific innovations. If we just cooperate with his design, reduce our exposure to toxins, and eat home-grown whole foods instead of all the garbage that people are eating today…”

But then, why did people die of preventable diseases back in the day before processed foods and automobiles, before all of these modern innovations?

I agree that God’s design is perfect. God did not invent sickness or suffering or death. These entered the world as a result of man’s first sin. God suffers these to exist in our world because they are what we chose, and in His great mercy He allows us to have our free will and do the things we want. So, basically, we’re stuck living with the results of sin, and trying to make the best of it. Perhaps “making the best of it” sometimes means using our God-given faculties of reason and scientific deduction to help preserve human life.

Or should we just roll over and die? Should we just accept that sickness and death are the results of our sin, and stop trying to fight them? Is it a bad thing to want to heal the sick or prevent death? – That’s an absurd idea! Christ Himself healed the sick and raised the dead!

On that note, some antivaxxers might argue that, in the face of dire illness, we should just turn to prayer. We should just trust that God will heal whom He wants to heal, and if it is not His will, then someone will not heal, regardless of whether they receive treatment or not.

Is all human intervention bad? On the contrary, isn’t it immoral, if you see someone suffering and have a way to mitigate that suffering, to not do anything? Don’t we believe that sometimes God’s will is carried out on earth through the work of humans?

Some of these crunchy types will claim that “natural” is always better. But, I’m pretty sure that a healthy Catholic POV of “nature” teaches otherwise. Our nature is fallen. Our nature causes us to sin. By nature, we are inclined to selfishness, temptation, and evil. We’re not animals; “natural” doesn’t always necessarily mean “better.” What’s good for us is not what’s natural, but what is supernatural.

Not that modern medicine is supernatural; it’s plainly not. It’s man-made. But is everything man-made always an abomination? Humans have written great works of literature, painted great works of art, designed and built incredible churches and castles, built ships that sail across the ocean – and, yes, have come up with vaccines that all but eradicate deadly diseases. “But Mith, you can’t compare a vaccine, which distorts God’s design, with these other man-made works, which cooperate with and glorify God’s design.” Once again, though – a vaccine isn’t some mystery chemical. It’s pretty basic biology. It’s exposure to a virus, causing your body to do what God in His glorious wisdom designed it to do: produce antibodies to help preserve your life. So really, don’t vaccines cooperate beautifully with God’s perfect design?

All of this is just a little snippet of the back-and-forth that’s gone through my head over the last five or six years since I’ve been raising kids and making important, terrifyingly irreversible decisions about their health.

And this is why I will continue to vaccinate, even though I don’t love it. Medical intervention is scary! No one likes it! Just yesterday, a loved one of mine underwent open-heart surgery to repair a valve, with the aim of preventing future heart attack or stroke. It was a nightmare! For all of us in the family! No one wants to undergo open-heart surgery. It is scary; everything about it seems wrong; a big part of you wants to be like, “no, don’t slice open this person, that’s dangerous! Those organs were never meant to see the light of day, this is unnatural!” But, the alternative is leaving that person with increased vulnerability to heart attack and stroke. Isn’t that worse? God has designed us with brains that can learn about our health and improve upon it. He has designed the human body in such a brilliant way that it can survive surgery, heal, and recover. I think that’s pretty cool.

Surgeries, vaccines, and medical interventions aim at preserving life. How can that be a deviation from God’s design?

Like I said, I’m constantly weighing and considering and re-evaluating my beliefs, so, I can’t promise that I won’t one day become an antivaxxer. (There was a time in my life when I never would have imagined myself a conservative Catholic, yet, here we are.) And if you have a super compelling argument in favor of the antivax position, I’m all ears. But, for right now, this is where I’m at with it. And, to be frank, I’m pretty annoyed that measles has come back, and I’m annoyed that there’s this expectation that all TradCaths have to be antivaxxers who shun modern medicine. Yes, the ways of the world are dangerous, and can lead us astray if we’re not careful; but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Mith’s take on the “17 Diapers”

February 12th, 2025

I know: I am, as usual, late to this story. I have never had TikTok; I am too old for that, so I rely on reposts on Instagram to get my social media news. Over the past few months, I’ve occasionally read up on this “17 diapers” mom’s story, and I find people’s reaction to her pretty troubling.

Now, as I said, I am not at all familiar with this influencer, whatever her name is – Nurse So-and-so. From what I’ve heard, she posted a lot of problematic content in addition to the video in question, like for example that she didn’t receive prenatal care during her pregnancy, or that she only changes diapers if they’re poopy, not just wet – both of which are, obviously, major red flags. I know there are also accusations of physical child abuse, based on certain behaviors that people observed in her videos. Which, I didn’t watch the videos, so can’t comment.

But! All that other stuff aside, I just want to focus on the topic that she actually went viral for. The issue of the “17 diapers.” Let’s pretend, for the purposes of this post, that she’s an otherwise harmless mom, and consider this issue in isolation.

In case you’re not familiar: Nurse So-and-so posted a video about her life at home when she was a few days postpartum, with a newborn and a toddler. Her husband had left to go on some kind of trip, abandoning her to solo parent both kids when she was fresh out of the hospital. Needless to say, she was struggling, and the house was a wreck. She posted this video, in which she says something like “let’s see how many used diapers are sitting around my house right now!” and proceeds to walk around her house counting them as she picks them up to take them to the trash for the first time in, presumably, several days. And, she ends up finding: seventeen used diapers. Just laying around her house, on the floor, on tables, in random places, not taken to the trash.

And the internet lost their mind over this. In both directions.

Half responded with: thank God! I can relate! Postpartum is so hard, thanks for being real and vulnerable and sharing, now I don’t feel so alone anymore!

And the other half was like: shame on you!! You have time to be on TikTok but no time to walk a diaper to the trash?! Your kids are going to get sick! This is child abuse, your kids are going to be traumatized, you are disgusting and don’t deserve to be a mom, etc. etc.

And it is this second group of people that really worries me.

Because, to start: how is it that, in 2024-25, people are not aware of how hard postpartum is, for a mom? The internet these days is absolutely obsessed with boasting about “my depression,” “my anxiety,” “my neurodivegence,” “my struggles” to the point where people are competing in some sort of suffering olympics, gatekeeping their “mental illnesses” with such presumptuous accusations as “you’re not really depressed, you don’t know what real depression is! I once stayed in my bed for an entire week, not bathing, not eating, just pissing myself right there in the bed because I was too depressed to go to the bathroom – and if you judge me for that, then you just don’t understand my struggle!” And people wear these types of anecdotes like a badge of honor. Their gold medal in the suffering olympics.

And yet, in the midst of this idiotic internet culture that celebrates mental illness, why is it that a postpartum mom – literally, medically speaking, a person most vulnerable to extreme depression, due to the massive hormonal changes, on top of the lack of sleep, the physical pain that she’s in, and the constant demands on her – why is it that her mental health struggle is invalid? Why is her depression not seen as real?! I’d argue that hers is probably way more real than that of a lot of these attention-hungry kids on social media.

To reiterate: it’s “cool” for some single twentysomething person to be so depressed they can’t leave their bed, and we don’t get to judge them – but, for a newly postpartum, solo-parenting mom to be so depressed that she has to prioritize keeping everyone alive, and doesn’t walk diapers to the trash? Unacceptable!

And also, why are we attacking the mom, and not her husband, who abandoned her at literally less than a week postpartum? Can anyone who doesn’t have kids really understand what a dick move that was? Where is your feminism now, internet?

Make it make sense.

“But, Mith,” you may perhaps be arguing, “of course she deserves more judgment than that single twentysomething rotting in his bed. She chose to have kids. She has a responsibility. It’s not about her anymore. She has to put on her big girl pants and take care of the house, even if it’s hard!”

First of all, yes, it is absolutely true that she has a responsibility. That is why she is up feeding her kids and changing their diapers when she would surely rather be rotting in her bed. I feel like, if you are judging her for not walking to the trash can, you have probably never been in survival mode.

I don’t know about you all, but I have three kids five and under, and our main trash can has to live in the sunroom off the kitchen, behind a door that we can lock, because otherwise they get into it, like little raccoons. And I solo parent most of the time. So yes, there have been occasions, like when I’ve been very sick, or had a rushed morning, when a used diaper gets left on the floor for a few hours before I’m able to walk it out to the trash. So, although my floor diaper count has never reached anywhere close to seventeen (because I married a decent man who would never even think of abandoning me like that!!), I can relate to her video. I’ve had a c section before. I know how painful and crippling postpartum can be. You physically can’t move around and do chores.

Second of all, let’s stop being hard on moms for choosing to have kids. Choosing to have kids should not mean subjecting oneself to judgment from strangers everywhere. Choosing to have kids is natural. It’s the most normal thing an adult in their 20s-30s can do. And it is a good thing, an objectively good thing to do, contrary to what all these sad antinatalists and misguided pro-choicers will try to tell you. Just because a woman chose to have kids, does not mean that she automatically has to be superhuman all of the time. (In fact, this expectation that moms have to be these enlightened superheroes, might be part of the reason why there are so many antinatalists and DINKs these days. Who wants all that judgment from everyone?!)

And furthermore, to get a bit gross, let’s look at the actual issue of the diapers themselves. (Let’s pretend that they’re not all fully loaded poopy diapers, as some have said that they apparently were, which is an issue.) If these were mostly just wet diapers, changed at the stage when a normal parent would normally change them – and, if they were tightly rolled up and taped into one of those neat little diaper balls that seasoned parents know how to make – then, is this seriously a bad enough offense to merit the “abuse” accusations? Obviously, if the diapers were all soiled and left unfastened and open where little hands could reach, then yes, that’s vile and that’s a huge issue; but the mere fact of a closed, wet diaper existing in a room – I don’t think that’s that terrible of an offense. Yes, it’s bad, and icky, but, child abuse? Calling CPS? Really?

Sometimes, I really think the internet just hates moms. Hates parents, hates babies, hates families – hates life. It’s a dark place.

“You’re probably really gross, then, Mith, if you’re defending this situation. I sure wouldn’t want to come to your house! Anyone who doesn’t think it’s always a terrible crime to leave used diapers out, is simply a disgusting person.”

We do have a moral obligation to keep our homes clean, especially if we have children. But the reason why we have that obligation is because we need to keep our families healthy and happy. We must take care of our families. Sometimes, in survival mode, taking care of our families means prioritizing the bare necessities: feeding, changing, clothing, washing. Cleanliness is important, but it’s not the be-all, end-all; it is not the deciding factor. You can have a clean house and still be a bad parent, just as you can have a dirty house sometimes and still be a good parent. Cleanliness of the house is only one of many things that factors into the quality of parenting.

(And, btw, is my house sparkling clean? No. Do I have any used diapers on the floor right now? Also no. I clean daily, and my kids are healthy and happy, thanks for your concern.)

And also: let’s not forget what this mom was actually doing, in her video. She was cleaning! Yes, it had been a few days, and she’s not pretending that’s okay. The thing is, just as soon as she was able, she cleaned up! It would of course be an issue if a mom left diapers around all the time, as a rule, and thought it wasn’t an issue. That would be really bad. But sometimes, a good, well-meaning mom goes through a hard time, and lets some things go; but, as soon as she’s able, she gets back up and improves things. She doesn’t let it become a pattern. The 17 diapers mom was not letting this become a pattern.

“But, if she had time to be on TikTok, then clearly she had time to pick up diapers!!”

This might be the most inane comment of them all, lol, and anyone commenting this immediately outs themselves as someone who has never met a newborn. A newborn wants one thing, and that is to lay on its mom, to snuggle with its mom 24/7. A mom with a new baby is, typically, couchbound, especially in the very early days – as she should be, as even the smoothest of births leaves a massive open wound inside your body and needs a lengthy recovery. What’s a new mom in 2024-5 going to do, while nap-trapped or nursing on the couch? Probably scroll her phone. It’s not that she’s loafing around when she could be cleaning. She cannot clean right now, so she’s scrolling to entertain herself while holding the baby. Which is also not a crime, and we all do it.

As I was saying, I’m aware that, in the specific case of Nurse So-and-so, there was more going on. Most of the responses to the viral video didn’t go into all that, though – the main shock factor was simply the “17 diapers” themselves, so that’s all I wanted to address here. And that issue, in and of itself, does not merit the harsh reactions that some people out there were having. The internet needs to leave moms alone.
Is NFP birth control, and is its use ever justified?

February 6th, 2025

Revised April 2025

Is NFP birth control? I’ve already touched on this question in another post, but am feeling a need to delve into it more specifically.

You’ll see a lot of folks, especially the more modern-leaning, Christopher West-informed Catholics, who believe that using NFP to avoid counts as being open to life. It’s perfectly fine to avoid pregnancy for serious reasons, they say, as long as you use NFP. Because that way you’re still having sex the appropriate way (i.e. no birth control or “pull-out” or anything like that).

But are you really being open to life?

Some of the “rad trad” types believe that controlling your fertility at all — that trying to avoid (TTA) ever — is always wrong. Because approaching sex in such a way that you are trying to avoid conception, is, in fact, having a contraceptive mindset. It is corrupting the true purpose of marriage, not to mention, it shows a lack of faith in God.

Is NFP birth control? As far as I can see, yes, it definitely is.

Because it seems pretty obvious that you’re not being “open to life” if you’re intentionally avoiding using fertile days. To say that TTA using NFP constitutes being open to life, is literally the same as saying that using condoms or any other birth control method is “being open to life,” because these methods are also never 100% guaranteed!

In fact, NFP instructors trying to sell their method will boast of its effectiveness: “more effective than birth control when done correctly!” And this is true. Personally, if I were really seriously TTA for some extreme, life or death reason, I’d absolutely prefer to use NFP rather than contraceptives, because it’s more reliable! It is more effective! If you use a condom on a fertile day and it breaks… yikes, vs., if you simply avoid the days when there is any possibility of conceiving, you literally cannot get pregnant. People really struggle to understand that, that biology works that way. People tend to think that, because ejaculation occurs inside of a vagina, there is always a chance of pregnancy. (This stupid misinformation is drilled into our heads in public school health class, as well as by most healthcare providers.) But, literally, that is only the case 5 or 6 days out of the month. NFP is extremely reliable when done correctly.

But that’s the catch: correctly.

You hear that NFP babies are super common, and that scares some avoiders off of NFP. People will always say “oh but I got pregnant using NFP” or “my sister got pregnant twice using NFP” – well, that is because you were doing it wrong. You either made a mistake somewhere, or you are not being honest with yourself about how thorough you were. No shame in this. I’ve been there. Doing NFP correctly is hard. It is a cross to bear. People mess it up either because they don’t have the patience to track accurately, or they don’t have the willpower to abstain during fertile days. Or, they are not being entirely honest with themselves (I like to think I’m pretty honest with myself, but, the temptation to be like “oh, surely this isn’t really a fertile day” is real, sometimes). NFP is also highly unnatural. Everything about it is contrary to a healthy, happy marriage. That’s why it’s so easy to mess up.

People who claim to be “open to life” while using NFP probably say that because what they mean is, if a slip-up were to happen, they would still keep that baby no matter what. But, if they’re really working hard to prevent slip-ups… I don’t know if they can properly call themselves “open to life,” at least not to the extent that someone who does not practice NFP is open.

What level of openness are we required to practice? Are we required to be radically open? Or are we allowed to plan, but required to accept God’s “veto” of our plans, if He chooses to do that? I’m honestly not sure about this one, which is why I’m writing this post.

All of that being a tangent to say that NFP is extremely effective, so much so that I think it actually is birth control.

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NFP is birth control. That much is pretty plain. But, on to part two of this post. Is use of NFP ever justified? Some say yes, it’s absolutely fine. Others say no, never.

“Grave reasons” or “serious reasons” is typically what you hear. If you have a “grave” or “serious” reason to avoid, then use NFP. But, IMO, the instructions from Rome are really, really vague regarding what a grave or serious reason actually is. They allude to financial or health reasons (although some other sources say financial reasons are actually not valid), but, they don’t really elaborate. I guess, to be fair, it would be hard to do that, since each family is so unique. I will do my best to thoroughly consider potential financial and health-related reasons below.

Financial reasons

In a perfect world, all married couples would be able to freely trust God with their fertility. But let’s be real. Life in this part of the world today is simply not what it was pre-industrial revolution. Lifestyle, for most people, is very different than it was two hundred years ago. We don’t live in synch with nature like we used to (and many of us simply don’t have that option). We have things like student debt, cars, car payments, mortgages, credit scores. The whole health care and insurance situation is fucked. Self-sufficiency is not the norm, it’s a luxury for those who can afford land and livestock. Living by today’s standards (with electricity and running water and climate control) costs a lot. It would probably be different if you lived like the Amish, but in our world, for most of us, it seems pretty unrealistic, and even unwise, to throw caution completely to the winds w/r/t conceiving children.

And society expects us to provide certain things for our kids, beyond just education, food, and shelter. We are also expected to provide them with material comfort, security, opportunities, and enrichment. People will go so far as to accuse you of child abuse if you cannot afford such things as family vacations, a college savings fund, or one whole bedroom per child.

Is there any weight to these accusations? Is it actually unethical to have kids if they’re going to have to share a bedroom, or never go on vacation, or have to work a job to save for college?

Personally, I’m a minimalist about these kinds of things. Vacations, to me, are fun but unnecessary. I don’t really feel I need a lot, materially – I did not grow up financially comfortable by any means, but my childhood was happy and not lacking. I always think it is so bizarre and alien when someone feels a college savings account is a life or death necessity. Yes, it would be awfully nice to have, sure – but, is my life worthless because I have student debt? Would I be better off never having been born? I don’t think any good Catholic will agree with that take!

Perhaps it’s not fair to generalize from my own experience. Just because I don’t require nice things, doesn’t mean all kids don’t… or don’t they? Does anyone really require those kinds of things?

Our modern society thinks life is meaningless if it’s not comfortable. That you’re better off dead if you don’t have nice things, if you have to struggle. A pretty twisted and sick mindset, IMO.

So, in general, I personally really don’t think finances are a pressing enough reason to avoid having a baby. In general.

But, when it comes to finances: I think there actually is a really pressing reason why use of NFP might be not only justified, but necessary. And that is: debt. If the parents have debts that they’re truly unable to pay, that’s a serious problem. Not debts that they are making timely payments on— I think it’s totally fine to go ahead and be open to life, if you’re able to manage your debts responsibly — but if you’re drowning in debt and have no way to start paying those debts off, then probably don’t have another kid.

It’s pretty simple, after all, isn’t it? We have an ethical duty to pay our debts. It is a sin not to do that. Having children in this day and age, unfortunately, costs a lot of money: you have to pay the hospital or midwife, you have to pay the pediatrician, and you have to feed them and educate them, all of which cost money if you’re doing it right. Intentionally having another child when you know full well that it would make you unable to pay your debts, might even be a sin — right? (Even if those debts are stupid; because it should not cost this much to have a kid, or to get basic health care: unfortunately, those are the circumstances that we’re in, and stamping our feet and wishful thinking will not change that.)

And we know that in Catholic moral philosophy, the ends do not justify the means. Even such a very good end as having a child does not justify the means of committing a sin. We’re looking for “grave reasons” to avoid here, and nothing is more grave than sin, right? Not financial insecurity, not even physical health. I’d have to check with a priest about this, but this seems to make sense to me.

Living in hardship is not an ethical failing. Your kids sharing a bedroom is not an ethical failing. Not being able to afford vacations, horseback riding lessons, a college savings plan — none of those are reasons not to have kids, IMO. But failing to pay debts is a sin, and sin is a pressing matter. (Now, if someone conceived on accident, and it was an honest mistake, that’s a different story, and the life of that child is obviously more important than any financial debt. I’m talking about intentionally conceiving, or being irresponsible and allowing it to happen when you know you ought not to.)

Health reasons

And so but what about health reasons? Are those serious? Obviously, if someone has life-or-death physical health reasons, such as cancer treatments or whatever, that is a good time to TTA using NFP. I think that goes without saying. Yes, there are cases of healthy babies being born in such situations, but it’s risky, and I think we have a responsibility to protect our own health.

Or, if a mom has a c-section for one baby, and wants to allow her body the recommended eighteen months-two years to heal so that she can plan for a natural birth for subsequent pregnancies (because, after all, if she can have natural births, her body will be better able to handle many pregnancies and births!) — isn’t that a valid reason? Or, should that mom just accept that, if she has another baby in the near future, she’s going to be a c-section mom forever?

What about if pregnancy is really hard on a mom, physically? Maybe she has hyperemesis gravidarum, or some other nasty symptom that makes pregnancy really hard on her, and takes away from her ability to care for her existing children or accomplish her daily tasks. Is she still required to keep being open?

I know that, personally, I used to feel like NFP was never, ever justifiable. Now, being pregnant with my fourth at 35, while I have a 5, 3, and 2 year old to take care of, as well as a house, and my nausea and fatigue have been harder this time around — I really begin to see why some feel the need to TTA. I was basically incapacitated for three months, and my kids suffered because of it. I don’t have a “village” around me to really help out, so it’s all on me. I admit, for months, my kids watched TV literally morning to night, ate no home-cooked meals, only processed snacks, and only had a bath every three or four days, while the house around us went to absolute shit and we had to wade through clutter everywhere we went. I did what I could, but I had no help. Pregnancy sickness is real.

Should I keep on doing this again and again, forcing my kids to miss out on months of their life? Does the good of having another sibling outweigh the bad of that lost time? Which responsibility is more pressing, my responsibility to take care of my kids and home (beyond just the bare basics, that is), or my responsibility to trust God and “be fruitful and multiply”? I really, honestly don’t know.

It’s hard.

Which brings me to mental health reasons. What about mental health? God made people with different personalities, different energy levels, different capacities for expending vs. conserving energy. Someone who is an introvert and requires a certain amount of quiet and “conservation” time, simply would not thrive with more than five or six kids!

Or, could they? Wouldn’t God grant them the grace to make it work, if they trusted Him? After all, kids get older and more self-sufficient. Not that they don’t still require attention, but, as they grow up it does get easier on Mom, strictly physically speaking. She will have more opportunities for “me time” when her kids grow up, no matter how many of them she has, right? It’s just a brief period of her life, when her kids are little; shouldn’t she sacrifice her peace, for the good of bringing kids into the world? Maybe some would say yes. After all, worldly happiness isn’t everything, right?

Personally, I’m a slow-moving type of person who requires a lot of time with my own thoughts. I can’t just rush around accomplishing tasks all the time nonstop. If you’re not of this personality type, you might just say I’m “lazy,” but that’s not it, because I’m actually pretty disciplined and productive. I simply need to plan for periods of time during the day when I can sit still and read or write or whatever, like I’m doing right now. My mental health suffers if I never get to pause. My mood suffers, and I become unpleasant and eventually snap. Is this a valid reason to stop having kids? I honestly don’t know. If I were holier and more saintly, I guess I wouldn’t require “me time.” But, I’m not that advanced.

Or what about those women who suffer from debilitating postpartum depression? Or, God forbid, postpartum psychosis? For some women this is incredibly real and even dangerous. I can’t see how God would be offended if such a mom avoided or at least postponed pregnancy — right?

Or maybe there are family reasons. Maybe one spouse wants to keep having kids, but the other doesn’t. We can’t just disregard the feelings of our spouse, even if we think they are wrong. Sometimes, in marriage, we have to sacrifice our vision of the picture-perfect, most morally-unimpeachable family life, to accommodate our spouse’s feelings (because it’s not really a perfect or ethical family life if you disregard your spouse’s feelings, is it).

Maybe some couples are more spiritually advanced to the point where they truly aren’t bothered by any worldly concerns at all. They don’t care if they don’t have free time; they get all the mental health support they need from the Sacraments. They are basically saints already. That’s awesome! God has been generous to them, and they should absolutely return that generosity by having lots of kids.

But, not everyone is that spiritually advanced. Some of us are just doing our best. We shouldn’t pretend to be further along than we are. We have to accept and be at peace with the degree of sanctity that God has permitted us to reach. If we simply don’t have the emotional/spiritual/mental capacity to be good parents to lots and lots of kids, then, isn’t it prudent and responsible to avoid having more of them?

I’m inclined to think that yes, in such cases, it is actually good and necessary to TTA. I’m not sure about this, but it seems to make the most sense to me.

I am sure of at least one thing: no couple who has the privilege of financial abundance, freedom from debt, great physical and mental health, and a “village” around them to make family life easier, should ever look down their nose at NFP users who are doing their earnest best. You are in that position because you are lucky. (True, maybe you worked hard to get to this point, but, Who gave you the grace to be able to work that hard? Nothing that we have comes from us, after all. We’re not all built the same, and you truly don’t know what it’s like inside someone else’s head, or to have their life.) Being lucky and blessed does not make you morally superior to anyone else.

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So, as you can see, I’m still conflicted, but I do believe that there are sometimes pressing reasons to use NFP. Even though it’s birth control and not “open to life,” NFP is definitely superior to other methods of birth control, because, like I said earlier, it doesn’t corrupt the sexual act itself in any way. You’re not mutilating your body or messing with your hormones or placing a barrier between you and your spouse. It still sucks (it really sucks), but, you can see why the Church does OK its usage in certain scenarios.

But I’m definitely open to having my mind changed on this (believe me, I’d love to have more kids!), so if you have a strong argument to the contrary, please, send it my way!