Belated Birth Announcement

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She's here!  She's been here for a week, having arrived at 11:53pm last Tuesday evening, which was also the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, which is also a solemnity so she'll have Meat Friday birthdays whenever her birthday falls on a Friday.  Sometimes, God's plan just screams to be noticed.

I'm not big into birth stories.

But in a nutshell, after fearing repeats of Jill's 20 hour ordeal, we came into this with a lot of anxiety.  A few weeks of prodromal labor, one wasted trip to the hospital the previous Friday, a thunderstorm, tornado sirens, and less than 4 hours of active labor brought us one brunette baby girl WITHOUT pitocin, or any of the other labor speeding up things we needed last time around.

Also, this time: water birth.  Loved it.

We're all pretty excited she's here.

She's named after lots of people.

This lady hangs in our parish church.  The plaque reads "St. Margaret Mary" but we know her as St. Marguerite Marie Alacoque.

My sister Mary was named Mary Margaret after the same lady.

Patrick and I had a completely different middle name picked out.  Every time I said this other name, Patrick corrected my pronunciation.

Tuesday evening, while walking through the endless hallway to the silver elevators to get to the labor and delivery floor, it occurred to me that my mother and the saint of the day share a name, in French.

Before the beheading, before the Crucifixion, they had some nice times together.

Unlike the previous selection, he needed no convincing.  The real miracle was that she was actually born on Tuesday, or she might have ended up with a name her parents can't agree on how to pronounce.  As it stands, her middle name rhymes with Bean, which is one of many nicknames she bears.

Had she been a boy, her bloggy name would have been Eustace, of course, because Eustace's story is my story, and yours...and it's wonderful.

Her bloggy name could have been Daisy, seeing as how her first name is the name of a variety of daisy, but we're sticking with Clive's characters for the duration.

So we will refer to her in this space as Polly.

Or Sleepy Kitty.

Or Mrs. Eyebright.

Blessings without number.

Deo Gratias.