...and his name is John-Paul Padraig Neumann. He was born on May 28, 2010, weighing in at a rugged 8 pounds 11 ounces, measuring a towering 20.75 inches, and instantaneously stealing hearts and becoming the son of the proudest papa in the world and THE proudest member of the Fightin' Texas Aggie Class of 2032! Whoop!
No, he's not named after the silly Beatles, and no, his brother's name will NOT be George Ringo...
He's named after Blessed John Paul II, soon to be Saint John Paul the Great. And if you thought that Padraig was just added because I liked the name and wouldn't shut up about it...well, you're kinda right, but it also very nicely gives our wonderful son the initials JPP, or JP2. And we honestly did not know his name long ago, deciding to keep it secret from the world for months on end...his name only came up for the first time about 2 weeks before his birth, and only hours before he was born did we decide that we would be blessed with such a wonderful name for our firstborn.
The entire process was INCREDIBLE. Ali was amazing, offering up more pain and striving to draw closer to Christ in His Passion than I am sure I could have. And then God blessed us with the decision to get an epidural, which I truly believe brought our son safely into the world. The tension with each contraction was so great that I think any dilation was becoming impeded, and once the medication too effect at about 4 PM Ali became so relaxed that John-Paul was born within 90 minutes. Had that not taken place, I'm fairly sure the dilation would have halted and we would have had a C-section on our hands. What a blessing and proof that God has a plan for everything.
And why should Ali and I have ever had any reason to think otherwise? When Ali and I began preparing for marriage, we knew that God had called us to take Natural Family Planning (NFP) classes so that we could trust HIM with His plan for our family. Little did we know that when we did so, we would have a teacher who would suggest that in addition to the method we were learning, Ali should take her basal body temperature (BBT) each morning. Further, we were blessed later with the need to visit an endocrinologist before our wedding because of some things we discovered using NFP.
Well, fast forward to September of last year, when Ali's BBT was up for about two weeks straight. Three pregnancy tests later, we were calling an OB to schedule an appointment, who told us not to worry for the first two months and to call back then. Maternally inspired, Ali simply called our endocrinologist just to see if he had any suggestions. Sure enough, he brought us in, ran some tests, and noticed that Ali's progesterone was FAR too low. He put her on these awful tasting progesterone lozenges, which Ali needed to prevent losing the baby. So had God not called us to NFP, we never would have known we needed to take our temperature each morning, we never would have gone to see an endocrinologist who ended up truly being our first amazing obstetrician, we never would have been given those awful lozenges, and....
...this amazing little guy might never have brought such joy and peace to our world.:-)
You too were an NFP baby. Thank God for Father Tom, Humanae Vitae, and of course your Mom.
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