Priceless Treasures: Happy 16th Birthday to My Beloved Son Nick

The very best gifts can't be bought in any store.

Tomorrow, on March 14^th my son Nick will turn sixteen. What a precious, priceless gift he is!  Nick's  life is of inestimable value, an immortal treasure, a treasure which our unfathomably generous Creator has bestowed upon so many people. 

 

Nick has a very special distinction in our family. 

While he and his older brother and younger sister were very much wanted and eagerly anticipated long before they were even created, something very special happened just before Nick's conception.   

The Lord told me that He was going to create Nick and asked me to accept this child.  

As mothers and fathers are inclined to do when the birthdays of their children draw near, each year I become nostalgic the week of my children's birthdays.  

Do you become nostalgic around the time of your loved one's birthdays, too?  

I just love to tell each one of my children as his/her birthday approaches, and as the anticipation builds, how so many people were waiting for each one to be born, and how much they are loved and valued.

What a magnificent opportunity to express to them the love of God manifest in and through their lives in so many various ways.  So many.

It is also a perfect time to reinforce the value and great dignity of human life, and teach them that it is God's will that life be peacefully defended from natural conception until natural death. 

My late sister Belinda, who entered eternal life in 2011 at age 48,  used to add so many more details than I could remember to the stories of each child's impending arrival.  She was a second mother to my three children, and another priceless gift from God.  

I do remember one particular detail of Nick’s arrival very clearly. The night I dropped off my firstborn son Andre, who was two at the time, at my mother’s before heading to the hospital to deliver Nick, my heart was filled with incredible dread. 

As I said goodbye to Andre and to my mother, it felt like I was going off to my execution. 

 

There was sufficient reason to be so apprehensive and fearful.  When  I was pregnant with Andre, the obstetrician we had searched so hard for and loved so much was keeping something hidden at the time he accepted me as a new patient.  He was preparing to move out of state and did not tell us.  He abruptly left when I was seven months along. 


As a result, when it came time for Andre's birth, the obstetrician that had seemed so caring was gone and I had no doctor to deliver my first baby. 

When Andre was two weeks overdue, I began having frequent contractions;  when they became intolerable (first baby), I insisted on being taken to the hospital.  When we arrived, we discovered that the arm of the obstetrician on call was in a cast.  He wasn't very kind, and so when He sent me back home to suffer longer I wasn't very disappointed to be leaving, but did feel very uncared for. 

   

That night, I rocked myself in the baby's new rocking chair to help manage the pain.  Hours later, when I felt I could no longer stand that next round of contractions, I woke up my sleeping husband and insisted he take me to the hospital to have the baby delivered.  I was wearing out physically from all the contractions, and was well aware that I still had the most significant stages of labor and delivery ahead of me.  

When it was determined that I was dilated enough to have an epidural (no worries about that window of opportunity closing because I was progressing very slowly), the needle was placed in my back.  The procedure was very uncomfortable given the frequent contractions while having to lean forward with a full term baby in the direction I was leaning. However, the prospective benefits far outweighed the pain, discomfort, and the fear.

   

So there I was with the connection to a pain free delivery inserted in my back.  What a relief it was knowing I was receiving some help.  A woman in the next room was crying out in pain, and that  added to my apprehension.  

At some point the nurses determined it was time for the baby to be delivered and they instructed me to push. 

 

Two hours later there was still no baby, but there had been plenty of agony.  I remember the nurses telling me to push every so often, and at one point I told them that I just couldn’t push any more. 

The pain was so severe that for two hours, I closed my eyes and retreated within to mentally cope since no help was available outside of my person.    

Can you just imagine that at one point, a nurse told me to stop grimacing from the pain as I obediently followed their orders to push.  Not one person in the room, not one, found it odd that I had an epidural AND had been in obvious physical agony for two hours. 

Finally, the doctor on call came in to check on me;  there was concern with the baby remaining in the birth canal for so long.  Immediately he assessed what had been taking place:  the nurses had me push while in hard labor for two solid hours while I suffered in agony because a nurse had turned off the medication that was supposed to be flowing into my back and blocking the pain.

 

The doctor took the nurse outside and sternly reprimanded her.  He felt such great pity for me, and ordered that the medication be turned back on.  But it was too late. To end my suffering, he told me that if he made an incision the baby would be out in one push.  I immediately and emphatically said, “Do it!” and since the medicine had not taken effect yet, I felt him slice my flesh open and in one more push, Andre finally appeared. 

What a beautiful moment that was, to finally hold my precious little son.

After that, I had the opportunity to tell the nurse what I thought about her decision to have me suffer.  I was very calm, considering.  Most likely it was because I was so relieved to finally have delivered my baby, and to no longer be neglected and mistreated while in such great need of care and compassion.

While working on this story before the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord revealed that it was the devil's inspiration in the delivery room that caused everyone in the room but the mostly absent new doctor to care for me so poorly.

Mother and unborn son were already on our adversary's radar, and since he could not get the child's parents to abort the baby he was going to wreak havoc any way he could.  By the time Andre's beautiful little sister was delivered four years later, the devil had succeeded with his plan of destruction.  My marriage was over and my husband left the delivery room to be somewhere else.

But God always has the upper hand, and by God's grace, our family certainly is not lacking in sacrificial love and caring.  We are incredibly close, and the Holy Spirit has been of tremendous comfort to me throughout the years.  He is the champion of caring parents. Once, when I was mourning the fact that my children would have no other siblings, the Lord said that all things had happened in accordance to His will.  He also has said that He has an eternity to punish the guilty.

Rest assured, God makes great good come out of what seems to us like the worst catastrophes, when we unify our wills with His.  Love is a force far stronger than hate.  When the Lord allows the devil to tempt us and strike us, it is always so that greater good will result and we must trust in Him and place great confidence in His love for us.
  

So you can understand how when it came time for Nick’s delivery, I was afraid and mistrustful of the people who would be caring for me.  I was more prepared with the delivery of my second baby to be my own advocate, as sad as that sounds.  And I was.  When I was dilated to three, a very caring  anesthesiologist visited my bedside. He listened to my fears with compassion, and told me that he was prepared to give me an epidural right then and there.  I looked at the kind man with such relief and said to him, “I am going to pray for you for the rest of my life.”  I have made good on that promise.

Nick’s birth was without pain and he was born in half a push.  He came so fast that the doctor told me mid-push to stop pushing, because he was still suiting up and wasn’t in position to catch the baby!

I was absolutely thrilled to have my second little boy.  I was so grateful that our family was so  blessed by God, that Andre had a little brother and a forever friend.  I was so happy to have received compassionate care when it was so greatly needed.  I was so happy to welcome Nick into a family that valued him, and enjoyed it when they all came to the hospital to visit, meet him for the first time, hold him, and celebrate God’s incredible generosity. 

Nick is now a sophomore in high school.  I am so grateful to have had the opportunity through the years to have been able to drive him and his brother and sister to school each day and send my children off with love.  Amazingly, it is considered a luxury by so many today, and also an option, but I am so grateful to God for making it possible that despite such tremendous opposition by the devil, I was able to pick them up from school and be there with them and for them.

Unlike most modern families, we always did things together because we enjoy being with each other, and because splitting up when there is only one parent in the house just wasn't an option.  I am very, very grateful for that wonderful benefit of single parenting, because the worldly demand so much of good people and insist we all be incredibly busy, constantly preoccupied, and very unhappy like them. As for me and my house, we resist the absurdity.  

Things haven't always been sunny, though;  as a single parent with significant health problems there has been plenty of intense struggle and suffering all along the way of sacrificial love, but I thank God that my children had a full time mother through it all.  Our family is united and very, very strong, and the Lord remains our strength and our hope.  

The time we are given with our children while they are growing up is incredibly precious.  It passes so quickly.  Wise and happy are the parents who love their children sacrificially.

Nick is a very intelligent young man who is so good with younger children.  He understands that being a good leader means that one has to lead with love, kindness, and gentleness.  He is a fine defender of the faith, and doesn’t allow people to push him or others around.  He already has more wisdom than many adults of my generation.  Children sure to have a keen sense of right and wrong, and that is why I just love being around them.  

 

Nick is constantly delighting us by his sharp wit that comes from an intellect blessed by the very Hand of God.  He has a special purpose for this child whose arrival was announced in advance.   

Andre, Nick, and Alyssa Bottesi sending a pro-life book 

they helped write to the designer

This past February, my Aunt gave me a beautiful ring for my birthday.  It has a large blue center stone that is surrounded by many white stones.  As my children and I celebrated the occasion at a favorite restaurant in town, we opened the present and I tried it on.  It did not fit on my finger;  it was too small.  We passed the ring around and it was too big for Alyssa, too small for Andre, but it fit Nick just right!

We laughed and laughed at the parallels with the Cinderella and the glass slipper story, already having determined that the blue ring was symbolic of our devotion to Blessed Mother and a reminder of her presence among us.  The ring fit Nick, and we called Aunt Laura and told her the story.  We said, in jest but perhaps partly not in jest, that the “Bishop’s Ring” fit our Nick. 

Nick reviews a manuscript in a hospital waiting room 

after bringing Jesus in the Eucharist to a friend.

No doubt, the Lord will continue to accomplish beautiful things through Nick during the time He is granted in this life. 

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Thank You, most loving and generous God, for creating Nick and placing Him in our family.

Happy 16^th Birthday, Nick!  

 You are a priceless treasure to us, and we love you forever.