Our life was a bit crazy, and I'm not sure about you but when our life is a bit crazy, usually the first thing that feels like happens next is it gets a bit crazier! We had just returned from our amazing Disney World Vacation and had only 2 1/2 weeks to finish packing our life up before moving into our new home. The kids did great helping, but I was so exhausted. I would commonly put the kids to bed at night and pack for a few hours after they went to sleep so I thought that my exhaustion was coming from packing and too much going on in life. Yet, it kept getting worse, and on top of that I felt like I was getting sick! Finally, it struck me that maybe I should take a pregnancy test. So I did, and it was negative. I figured that it must be exhaustion from getting ready to move and that maybe I really was getting sick. But that feeling kept lingering that I may be pregnant, so I took another test, which came back still negative!
Finally, the day came for us to close on our new house! The process had been quite stressful, but we were so excited. That morning I woke up around 4:30am naturally and immediately felt sick to my stomach! By this time, having had two negative pregnancy tests I questioned if this was just really bad nerves about the big day or what was going on! I decided to take one last test and this one was positive!
What a life changing day! We found out that God had blessed our marriage and family with another soul to love and we were starting a new journey as a family to a new home! We were so excited and feeling truly blessed. We told our children, our parents, siblings and closest friends about our exciting news that we were blessed with a new baby!
The weeks passing continued to be a whirlwind of packing, moving, contractors, homeschooling and trying to keep up with basic life activities of watching the kids! I continued to not only feel exhausted but also sick and nauseous. This is not common for me in pregnancies but I figured that it hopefully was a good sign. Unfortunately, a few short weeks after we found out that we were having another baby we learned that it was God's plan for our baby to go to Heaven.
Even though we have experienced the loss of a baby through miscarriage before, it was still so different and such a difficult cross to carry. The second that you find out that you are pregnant you get excited, start dreaming and thinking of how this little person will add to your family and life. To find out that God has different plans is tough. To process and move forward takes a giant amount of faith in God's plan.
The strange thing was I couldn't figure out what I wanted to "give up" for my Lenten sacrifice this year. I kept thinking of different ideas and finally prayed to God, "Please show me the way that I can draw closer to you this Lent. Please show me my way of suffering to meet you at the cross." Two days after praying that prayer I found out that I was pregnant and a mere few weeks later I found out that it was God's plan for our baby to go to Heaven.
More than ever I felt God saying, "I love you, bring your suffering to me. Put it at the foot of the cross and feel my love." Of course I would have loved to have time with our sweet baby here on Earth holding and playing with them. Yet, I still feel so blessed that God entrusted my husband and I with another sweet soul to love and to pray for and to have intercede for our family.
Since our pregnancy with this baby was during the month of March, I was initially thinking that we could name our baby Joseph Patrick, after St. Joseph and St Patrick who both have feast days during that time. I brought the idea to my husband but it continued to not sit well with either of us. Finally, we both admitted that why it wasn't sitting well with us is because we both really felt that this baby was a girl. Although our baby went to Heaven before we could truly be sure of the gender of our baby, we have always had a pretty good feeling and are thankful of each child that we are blessed with. Once we prayerfully discussed what we were thinking, the name Frances Josephine came to us pretty quickly.
The name Frances Josephine is pretty gender neutral as Frances can be used as a girl or boy name and Josephine comes from the name Joseph. We also love Saint Francis, St. Frances Cabrini, St. Joseph and St. Josephine Bakhita as wonderful Saints to learn from. The name Frances means "Free One", and Josephine means "God will Increase", which both seem so appropriate for our little one who went to Heaven.
One big difference between our loss of Frances and our loss of Samuel is not being as far along this time around we were not able to properly collect Frances physical body for a proper burial. I was feeling rather guilty about this at first, but after talking with multiple friends, priests and spiritual advisors they helped me accept and understand that the best thing we could do was honor and respect the life that was given to our family. We spoke to our children at length and they already include Frances along with Samuel in their nightly prayers. We had a Mass said in intention for Frances and also included her name at the
Church of the Holy Innocents Book of Life. We also are creating a Serenity Garden at our new home to provide our family a place to pray and remember our little Saints and other loved ones.
St. Frances Josephine, pray for us. We love you and pray for the day that we can be with you in Heaven.
