She does?

The following post references the CSPP hardline at length. Cheerio.

Hilarious message in the CSPP inbox this week: where do we stand on contraception? I told the emailer that maybe our subtext has gotten a little too subtle. The contraception thing is what landed the three of us where we are, so I'm sorry if that's been unclear to the curious. Wait, that's still pretty unclear, so let me try again: at CSPP, contraception is out, what a girl [thinks she] wants or is good at is irrelevant, and casuistry is for Winkels (which is to say, none of us have time for lengthy comment wars).

Back at the original conversion point, it was the pain in the pride and the pain in the neck that made me not like the looks of CSPP. Well, the pride is still there, but it has reshaped itself to destroy things other than my vocational impulse. The pain in the neck is also reshaped. Having older kids has cheered me up, and not just because I'm an aspiring slaver. They're fun. We like them. We'd rather hang out with them than most other people. Bring on the kids.

Alas--that's kids, not babies. Now it is just plain pain that makes me dig in my heels. Cultural inertia still gets most women to at least two babies. But that business about forgetting the pain that we all heard about this past Sunday? That handy little dominical illustration is harder for me to swallow than almost anything else in Scripture. Five kids in, the marks are becoming more noticeable. Fear does not diminish with additional pregnancies, because every single one of them can go bad. Advanced Maternal Age is not getting farther away, and yet there may still be many years before my retirement (and that's if everything goes RIGHT). God help me, I deplore pain. And the pregnancy/delivery/postpartum cycle is nothing if not very, very painful. (You know you're CSPP when months of breastfeeding feel like a tropical vacation.)

But but but but but. A child is born into the world. And since we're on the topic, I might as well mention that he's freakishly cute and baptized for all he's worth. So, self, forget. Forget the pain, because life is pain. Or if you can't forget the pain, forget thinking that deploring it or feeling terribly sorry for yourself or throwing a big fit will get you out of it. Forget that other people don't have to have to spend their whole dang lives getting pregnant and unpregnant. Try not to ruin your marriage and your children and your life by being fleshy and selfish and uselessly afraid. Sorry there's no pep talk for you here, but it turns out you're a big, disobedient, sin-loving crybaby so you don't get one. Buck up, you miserable wimp. Do your job. You're going to hurt more, a lot more. Deal with it. And come back and read this post often since you won't listen to anyone but you, you arrogant B.