On Being Catholic and Infertile

This article concisely and accurately discusses several issues regarding the struggles of infertility and remaining faithful to the beautiful teaching of the Church.

Just thought I'd share.

In Christ Our Hope

Sports Nut

I've come to the realization that I am a sports nut.
Not a fanatic, but certainly a nut.
Especially for a girl.

Certainly my first love was baseball. I have very vivid and happy memories of riding in my Dad's old white work van listening to Herb Carneal and John Gordon. In '91 my older siblings and I all had "homer hankies" and we each picked a player that was "our guy." Mine was Shane Mack. Don't ask me to explain - I'm sure it had something to do with the fact that I was 8, had the third pick, couldn't pronounce Knoblauch, Hrbek or Gagne and Dan Gladden's mullet frightened me.

There is something very nastalgic about listening to a ballgame on the radio, and I still prefere radio over tv or even going to a game - although I do love sitting in the bleachers on a summer day. I'm hoping to add to my stadium tally someday. Currently it's a meager 6: Dome, Target field, Wrigley, Miller Park, Comerica and Rangers Ballpark.
In highscool I started to understand the game more, but it wasn't until college that I realized baseball was a beautiful game - the perfect game. I'll spare you my soliloquay on baseball; sufice it to say it was my first love and is my greatest love. . .
Unless it's football season.

I really like football - a lot.
The scale tips slightly in favor of college, but I certainly look forward to Sunday afternoons during the season. Without a doubt my love of football came about from my highscool years, when my brother played. His senior year the team was really good - made it several rounds in the playoffs - and it was great fun going to the games. Is there anything better than heading out to a highschool or college game on a crisp fall afternoon? Sadly Hillsdale had a miserable team all four years I was there and I gave absolutly no thought to pro football. But after getting married and moving to Texas, football reapeared on my sports radar. If you live in Texas and care anything about sports, football is god. It starts at a young age - small rural highschools have stadiums bigger than a lot of college stadiums! And they sell out every Friday night. Then of course you have the Big 12 - a powerhouse in football, with great rivalries - and finally there are the Cowboys - boo!

Thanks to Texas, my husband and the Pack, there is nothing I prefer more on a Sunday afternoon than a football game.

Unless it's March.

Is there anything more exhilarating than a college basketball game during the tournament? My only contention with college ball is that the tournament falls during Lent. Just when it's possible to watch one great game after another, and another, and another, you enter the season of self-denial and fasting. In many respects it makes finding something to give up for Lent pretty easy - but oh so hard!

In the past there were two sports I detested: pro basketball and hockey. Pro basketball - sloppy, lazy, thug-filled. Enough said. Hockey - just didn't understand the game . . . until 2010 winter olympics. By the time the gold medal game was played I was glued to the TV and talking power plays, penalty shots and shots on goal with Chris. By the time the Stanley cup rolled around, I was a hockey nut.

Recently we were given tickets to a Hawks-Wild game in St. Paul. It was a great game and a really fun outing. I'm pretty sure it's a good thing tickets are expensive, because I'd want to go a lot more often!

Chris and I at "The X"

My team allegiances are a bit odd and mostly have to do with where I was living when my love of the sport developed.

Baseball - Twins and Cubs, Rangers for the fun of it. Can't cheer for - White Sox and Yankees

Football - Packers, Badgers, Nebraska, Notre Dame, anyone playing Texas (OU, OSU, Texas Tech) small schools like TCU and Boise State, and the Bears (for domestic harmony). Can't cheer for - Cowboys, Vikings, Texas, Ohio State.

Basketball - Badgers, Kansas, Coach K. Can't cheer for - Professional basketball.

Hockey - Chicago Hawks.

Upon reflection, and considering I am able to write this lengthy of a post on sports, I'm not sure if "sports nut" is actually accurate. Good thing I gave up sports for Lent!

Pecking Order

A few weeks ago we discovered that one of our hens had been injured. She had a pretty nasty tear across the back of her neck and had clearly been "hen-pecked" since she was cowering in a corner behind the feed bin. Not only do chickens have a clear pecking order, they are also incapable of not pecking at something that is discolored or out of the ordinary. A spot of blood is sure to get pecked. So we brought Henny-Penny inside, cleaned and medicated the wound and made a comfortable pen for her in the warm basement. Within a few days the wound had scabbed over and she was clearly feeling much better - so much better that she prefered roaming through the basement to staying in her nice little pen. Clearly it was time for her return to the coop, but her scab was certainly still too tempting to put her back with the rest of the flock. So we set up the temporary brooder in the coop (portable, small enclosed area with a chicken-wire lid for starting baby chicks) and put Henny in there for the remainder of her convalescence. (Plus, I had read that it was good to keep an injured chicken separated but near the flock so that they remember each other and don't treat her as an outsider when she rejoins them).

All was well for the next several days until the weather warmed and I decided to let the chickens outside for a few hours. The brooder sets up in such a way that the small chicken door is inside the brooder portion. In oder to let the chickens outside without leaving the big door open - and any of you familiar with the history of chickens at the farm are well aware of the bloodshed that has occured due to the big door being left open! - as I was saying, to let the chickens out without the big door being left open I needed to take down a portion of the brooder. Henny was looking so good by then that I decided to try it. I let her out with the flock and kept an eye on her while I removed the brooder wall and opened the small chicken door. The chickens burst out into the warm sun and emediatly started pecking at the few spots of grass peaking from the snowy ground. Henny joined in the activity, seemingly accepted by the hens and delighted to be out of confinement. Although a small voice was telling me that chickens are really cruel, cold pecking machines that would turn on Henny the instant I left, I decided to let things be and check back in an hour or so; afterall, how bad could things get in an hour?

Pretty bad.

When I came back to the coop Henny was inside, swaying back and forth with blood streaming down her neck - the wound gaping and worse than the first time.

The unnecessary suffering of an animal is a hard thing to see. But when it's a result of your own carelessness or lack of better judgment, then it's almost sickening. I just wanted to burst into tears at the sight of this little hen in so much pain! Instead, I rushed her inside (again), washed and medicated her wound (again) and made her as comfortable as I could in the basement (again). The only difference about this repeat of events was that her wound was so much worse and required more clean up. Chris held Henny while I investigated.

It was a terrible thing.

A hefty chunk of skin/scar tissue/feathers was dangling down beside her head. It kept tapping her in the face and she'd shake her head to get it out of her eyes, each time splattering us with blood. Clearly the only thing for it was to remove the flap of skin, so I took my sharpest pair of scissors and cut through thick, soft tissue - UGH!

With the flap of skin gone we could see, that though a painful wound, she was certainly going to make it. We attempted to bandage it, but she was not interested in wearing a bonnet, so we just applied some antibiotic ointment and put her back into the make-shift pen in the basement.
We kept her inside a few days longer than before, until is was clear from the smell that she had to get back outside. Henny is currently residing in the brooder, safely segragated from sharp beaks and on her way to a full recovery.

Henny in her basement abode (for the second time)

UPDATE: Henny has recently been joined by another hen who also has a minor wound on her neck - not requiring any medical attention, but bad enough to need separating. The wound was clearly rooster inflicted. The two hens appear to get along just fine and, as of yet, there has been no bloodshed. However, there have been 4 eggs produced by the invalids.

St. Valentines Day Gift

Our first egg arrived on Valentines Day. Since then we've averaged about 5 eggs per day. The first several eggs a hen lays are small and called pullet eggs (a pullet is a young hen that has not started laying yet). According to Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, ". . . pullets lay small eggs when they first start out and they lay one egg every three to four days. By the time a hen is 30 weeks old her eggs reach their normal size and she should lay at least two eggs every three days." Our hens are about 23 weeks - so we should have full-sized eggs by early April.

Lovely brown eggs

Large store egg and a pullet egg

Going Gluten Free (and dairy free and on our way to sugar free)

In late June Chris and I met with a holistic practitioner - Dr. Margaret Christensen. Our journey to finding her and these past 6 months of working with her deserve their own post, so I won't go into that now. Suffice it to say she suspected I had a food allergy and, after 2 month-long cleanses, I was tested for gluten intolerance in October, with a positive result. (What I've learned about gluten intolerance, Celiac disease, the research surrounding testing, etc has been so interesting and also deserves it's own post.)


At this point the only way to deal with the intolerance is to eliminate from your diet items that contain gluten (there is research being done on a pill that would allow people with the allergy to ingest gluten without the nasty side affects, but it's not available yet). Gluten is a protein found in certain grains such as wheat, rye, and barley. Eliminating gluten from your diet obviously means no:

Bread
Crackers
Pretzels
Tortillas
Cookies
Cakes
Muffins
Donuts
Bagels
Cereal
Croutons
Pasta
Breaded fish or chicken
Pizza crust
Pie crust
Beer

However, wheat flour and gluten also show up in thousands of other products that you would never suspect such as:

Lunchmeats
Sausages
Hotdogs
Baked beans
Canned soups
Broths
Gravies
Corn tortillas
Potato chips
Oats
Candy
Gum
Cheap brands of chocolate
Chocolate milk
Hot cocoa
Custard
Pudding
Non-dairy creamer
Ice cream
Syrups
Salad dressings
Soy sauce
Flavoring and spice mixes
Malt vinegar
Mustard
Supplements
Toothpaste
Cosmetics

The items in the second lists usually or often contain gluten, but it is possible to get a gluten-free version, it just requires close label reading.

The real difficulty of eliminating gluten from your diet is actually being able to identify it. By law a product must identify "wheat" on it's label; however, other substances containing gluten, like barley, rye and oats and their derivatives are considered "natural foods" and can be listed under a myriad of different names, most of which give no clue that they contain gluten:

Hydrolyzed vegetable protein
Emulsifiers
Bran
Malt
Malt flavoring
Modified food starch
Monosodium Glutimate (MSG)
"Natural" flavor
Brewers yeast
Fillers
Thickeners
Stabilizers
Binders
Textured vegetable protein

Combine those three lists and you're left with a very small amount of processed, prepared, or prepackaged foods to choose from. Which, in one sense makes going gluten-free a blessing, since it eliminates food that probably isn't very healthy anyway and makes it pretty necessary to move to a whole food diet (e.g. Nourishing Traditions and Weston Price). But it does leave one longing for a simple piece of bread!

Thankfully, as more people have identified their symptoms as being gluten related and gluten intolerance awareness increases, the number and availability of gluten free products has also increased. It is now possible to get gluten-free crackers, chips, pizza crust and even bread and bread mixes from the average grocery store! And the availability of alternative flours has made gluten free baking quite simple.

Gluten free baking is certainly more involved than normal baking, but not too much more. Instead of the simple all-purpose flour, the gluten-free baker needs 3 or 4 different flours and additives. Once you've stocked your pantry with these items and have a reliable cookbook you can produce delicious, delectable dainties to rival any gluten filled bakery!


As the title of this post says, I am also going dairy free and attempting to go sugar free (or will be attempting after the holidays). In brief, the reason for going dairy free is that the protein in dairy (casin) is structurally similar to gluten and often, especially right at first when the body is attempting to heal from years of exposure to an allergen, the milk protein can be just as hard on the body. The reasons for going sugar free are many, but mainly have to do with allowing my body (i.e. GI tract) the chance to return to a healthy balance. (Here is Dr. Christensen's quick overview of GI health)

In an attempt to continue baking with these narrow parameters I recently purchased The Allergen-Free Bakers Handbook and Sugar Free Gluten Free Baking and Desserts. Together they provide a great resource for our kitchen. I am still learning the ropes of sugar substitutes (all natural substitutes, mind you, like agave nectar and stevia), but it's coming. For now I am learning about wheat flour substitutes and finding myself so thankful that they exist! The results of a gluten, dairy and (mostly) sugar free diet have been nothing but good, and in some cases seemly miraculous after years of living with the symptoms. More on that later.

Cheers

St. Andrew Christmas Novena

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment

in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary,

at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold.

In that hour, vouchsafe, O my God,

to hear my prayer and grant my desires,

through the merits of our Savior Jesus Christ,

and of His Blessed Mother. Amen

Our good friends Andy and Amanda Wegryzn gave me a St. Andrew Chaplet for my birthday. I have never actually consistently prayed a novena, since they always seemed to me to lean towards "bargaining" - "if you do this then God will do this" sort of thing. But, like I learned with the Rosary, a novena can be a beautiful way of offering our prayer and focusing our hearts on God. Elizabeth Foss comments on this particular novena here and expresses beautifully how a novena turns our eyes from ourselves to Christ.
Christmastime has been very hard for me the past few years. I feel the emptiness of our home and the barrenness of my womb more acutely during the holidays. After all, what we celebrate is a birth - a conception, 9 months of waiting, gestation, and finally, the arrival of a long awaited child . . . A long awaited child.
This year it was a bit easier. I was reminded every time I fingered the little beads that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. The baby we welcome is the Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, God with us. Who can comprehend such Love? Hail and blessed be that moment - the moment in which the Son of God emptied himself (not considering equality with God something to be grasped) and came in the form of a helpless babe to save and redeem us from the curse.
It was also easier because every day, for a few minutes, I offered up a prayer, a cry of utter dependence, like a child. It's one thing to cry out in occasional moments of pain or desperation; it's another thing to lift one's voice every day, consistently, obediently, realizing one has nothing to bring - no bargaining power whatsoever - just a cry of dependence. "Through the merits of Our Savior, Jesus Christ, and of his Blessed Mother." It helps dispose the heart towards trust and a simpler faith. Also, St. Andrew is the patron of those trying to conceive. It was a comfort asking him daily to intercede on our behalf.

Thanks for the gift Andy and Amanda!

It's been a while

I know . . . it's been a long time since the last post. I've thought about posting quite a bit - but in the blogging world the thought really doesn't count. It's possible that the thought may get transcribed into an actual post one of these days, but for now I just wanted to share someone else's post and comments.