How Many Children Should I Have

Recently I ran into an old friend that reminded me of this story. It touched her and changed her life as it did mine so I thought I'd share it.

We grew up having a personalized song for each child in our family. Robin's was a cool jazz "When the Red Red Robin comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along." Mine was the theme song to a robot commercial put out by Mattell in the mid sixties. It was bad but not as awful as poor Weston. His song went "Shh- be quite as a mouse/ There's a baby in our house." I couldn't imagine why my mother would chose it. Didn't she realize he would grow up? He wasn't even the youngest in the family. He was a middle child. So one day I asked my mother why she had chosen that one for him and she told me-

When my mother was expecting her sixth child, she had decided it would be her last. With my father travelling so much and a full house already, she thought she was done. She felt this new baby would be a boy and she was going to name him Weston. Well, as she lay on the delivery table all doped up she could hear the voices of a number of children laughing. One said, "Isn't it funny? Mother thinks you are coming and its really me." Shortly after that the doctor placed a beautiful little girl in my mother's arms. She named her Robin.

Because of these events, my mother felt she should have that boy. She got pregnant again and had another girl, Carolyn. Finally three years later Weston was place in her arms and mother gave him the song since he would certainly be her last child and the baby of our family forever. She was done.

But soon after this time, my mother had a dream. She dreamed that a little girl with bright blond hair was crying and crying. The child told my mother that she wanted to be in our family and didn't want to be forgotten or left behind. My mother took the dream seriously. She had another boy, Robert, and another boy, William. Then she finally had a girl with red hair that she named after herself. Jaroldeen Edwards.

Mother thought that maybe she had just gotten the child's hair color wrong in the dream and was thinking that eleven was probably all she would have, but soon after that she had the dream of the little blonde girl again and Patricia was born whose beautiful blonde hair is her trademark.

How grateful I am that my mother listened and had all twelve of us. I can't tell you how wonderful it has been to be part of my fabulous family. But how nice that my mother's story touched someone else into being brave enough to move forward and create their own. I cheer anyone willing to make the huge sacrifice to create a large happy family unit. Such homes are sacred and rare places where the most valiant saints flourish.