My Angels and Me is written for all, but particularly for women considering marriage and children. This true story is about the events that occurred during a challenging chapter in Inez McPadden's life that began with her own marriage and only recently concluded some eight years and two sons later. As she worked through that challenging chapter, reluctantly guided by her guardian angel, she found the clarity she had long craved. "This book was written from the heart and meant for the soul! She is indeed convincing" -Rick Johnson Professional Editor and Author

My Angels and Me

By Inez Mc Padden

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2013 Inez Mc Padden
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-6627-6

Contents

Dedication...........................................ixAcknowledgements.....................................xiForeword.............................................xiiiPreface..............................................xvIntroduction.........................................xixHome at Last.........................................1Purpose and Foster Care..............................5Miracles do Happen...................................9More Excitement......................................14One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.....................25Stage 2: St. Peter's Ward............................32Nurse Betty..........................................40Finally Home Again...................................48Epilogue.............................................53

Chapter One

Home at Last

It was heaven to get home to my own bed. Fionn slept all day the first day. After that, I thought he would never sleep again. God it was so tough! I'll never forget it. He was colicky and could cry all day.

Francis was gone at 6 a.m. every morning to beat the traffic and then not home until 7:30 or 8 p.m., which made it hard on me, but it was hard on him too. I asked myself, How on earth does a working mum go to work after being up all night with a baby?

I started to really think about our future and what would be the best scenario for Fionn. We had discussed selling our current home, and building a new home where we had grown up. That way I'd be able to take care of Fionn full time and he wouldn't have to be put in a crèche (nursery). We had always said that if we were going to have kids we would not be handing them over to someone else to raise.

I remember seeing a woman on the train in the morning on her way to the crèche with her baby, who was tiny and fast asleep. I pitied the baby, having to be left with strangers. I thought a mum must have to grow a heart of steel to cope with handing her baby over to strangers so early in its life.

Of course, that is not to say that it was any easier on the doting mum. The baby was in a pouch on her tummy all snug and warm and she was smiling adoringly at him.

One thing about becoming a parent is that you grow up overnight. I definitely grew an identity quickly, which is a necessary component of motherhood. Let's face it, if you don't have a strong sense of who you are and the values you have, how can you give your child a strong sense of self?

When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, we were told what to think, not how to think. So it's no surprise that I didn't know who I was. When you meet someone who knows who they are, you immediately became aware of it and want that for yourself. When you're talking with someone who knows what they stand for, there is no pretence or disguise.

On the other hand, there are people who basically live their lives to be acceptable to the neighbors, their envied associates, friends, or those who pretend to be martyrs.

I had a substantial amount saved and, with the profit we'd make if we sold our home, we figured we could build a new home and be mortgage free. We had the real estate agent come to our house within a few months of Fionn's birth and it sold very quickly thereafter.

We decided to rent close to our building location, so Francis could be close to where we were building and do a lot of the work himself. We were so fortunate to be able to do that, and made the same amount in profit that we had actually paid for the house even after everything was paid back to the bank. We sold at the peak of the boom and never looked back. We knew the housing market was on the way down. I could feel it in my bones.

I definitely believe my guardian angel was guiding us through the sale of our house. If we hadn't sold it when we did there is no way we would have sold it at all, even a few weeks down the line. That was only January, 2007, but the cracks in Ireland's Celtic Tiger economy were totally evident.

I couldn't bear the thought of having to stay in my current location which had a big mortgage, and put my baby in a crèche for twelve hours a day. I would rather not have had him. I believe that when parents work full time and have kids, both miss out. Careers come and go and can be picked up decade after decade, but you get only one chance with your children. While this is my belief, I do not judge other parents, for whatever they choose is right for their family.

I know there are plenty of mums who'd love to be able to stay home full time but don't feel they have a choice in the matter and have to work. All I say to them is, when you feel like you have no choice and life is outright tough, ask God for help and be clear about the help you need. If it's financial help that will enable you to stay home, or whatever it is, ask! And have faith he will get your guardian angel on the case.

Staying home with Fionn was the best gut feeling I ever heeded. I never doubted it was the best thing for him and for my own emotional wellbeing. We have such a close bond. I can read his mind. I know him inside out and upside down. He's very secure and confident in himself and never went through the "terrible twos" or threes. I found that just being with him and talking to him about right and wrong worked very well.

Basically, to get him this far, now aged six, all I needed to do to make him a little gentleman was to give him my time. Because he is growing up so fast I'm grateful for all the time we've spent together and hope, as he matures more every day, that he will continue to keep me close. I give thanks every day that I am able to look after him full time.

I could have spent all day chatting to Fionn and never tire of his hilarious dialogue. I would explain things to him and he would repeat it back to me in a really articulate way that was beyond his years. He completes me!

Purpose and Foster Care

Fionn was nearly two when we decided to have another baby, but as nothing was happening we gave up and decided to foster.

In the meantime, I had also started reading spiritual books and things were really starting to become clear for me. Lorna Byrnes's book, Angels in My Hair, affected me deeply. I started to become obsessed with my "life's purpose" after reading it and was afraid I wasn't doing what I was meant to be doing on this earth.

I did a counseling course through the National Counseling Institute of Ireland in Limerick and really enjoyed it. Then I saw a course advertised entitled "Addictions Studies and Counseling" and thought it sounded interesting so I spent a year at that, and loved it too! I received distinctions in both courses so was really thinking I was meant to be in the helping professions. I even thought that maybe I should look into becoming a psychotherapist.

Women are expected to be so much these days: wives, mothers, cooks, cleaners, and teachers, and to look like glamour models all the while. It's crazy!

Yet, in my heart, I kept getting the message that concentrating on Fionn was all I needed to be doing. It was, after all, the most important job anyone could be doing. And Francis always said that anyone who has kids and is working full time is missing them grow. "And that's a dog's life!"

One common thread among all mothers whether you choose to keep your career or not is that we all do the best we can for our children. Whatever choice you come to, don't feel guilty, as we are not meant to walk the same path in life. If we did we would never learn from each other....

At any rate, one thing always leads to the next. I started looking into fostering and the more I got into it, the more I became passionate about it. Francis wasn't too eager at first but got swept along with my enthusiasm. Soon, he too began to think it would be a lovely thing to do, and would provide company for Fionn.

I really felt I could make a difference to a child's life but, unfortunately, the reality was a little different. Before we knew it we were fostering three children. This was a lot of responsibility in a short space of time.... Of course, no one forced me to do it. On the contrary, I had been adamant I was able for all three.

One of my weaknesses is that when I get an idea into my head I am like a "dog with a bone". I never listen to anyone's advice, I always learn the hard way ...

At one point, I so badly needed a break I took myself off for a weekend with my sister-in-law and we went to see my other sister-in-law in London. We had a great weekend but I felt very bloated and discovered I was bleeding, but not quite like my usual period. Things had been so busy at home I had actually failed to process the fact I had been bleeding for about three weeks.

About four days after returning home from London, my social worker brought a replacement social worker to my home to introduce us. There was the usual chitchat with tea and biscuits. Next thing, I let out a cough and, as I bent over, I noticed my black leggings were saturated with blood! What a shocker! Nothing like that had ever happened to me. Then I noticed blood trickling down my chair. Thank God I was wearing black legging, which hid what was going on.

I excused myself and went upstairs to the bathroom. I was just covered with blood. It was so odd. I immediately thought it must be cervical cancer. After all, who hasn't heard about the same thing happening to Jade Goody?

I cleaned myself and went back downstairs and acted like nothing had happened. I didn't go to the doctor until the next day. A new, junior doctor asked me a million questions and put the information on the computer. If I didn't die of cervical cancer I was going to die of boredom. She finally said she was going to refer me to a gynecologist! I picked up my jacket to go and she said, "Oh, before you go I'll just take a urine sample."

Later, I was standing up, ready to leave when she checked the sample and said, "You are ..." and then stopped talking.

"I am what?"

She looked at the PH stick again and said, "You are ..."

I was ready to floor her when she finally finished the sentence.

"You are pregnant ..." Again, she hesitated, and then went on, "But you're not ... You've had a miscarriage."

I was so shocked I had to sit down or fall down. In I don't know how long, I had totally forgotten about getting pregnant, and now it was happening ... but it wasn't!

Trying to comfort me, the doctor said, "At least you know now you can get pregnant."

Then I remembered a lady who had had a miscarriage once telling me the gory details of a DNC, including scraping the womb. At the time, I thought, God, I'd die if I had a miscarriage and had to go through that.

Immediately, I asked the doctor if I would have to have a DNC and she nodded in the affirmative. A couple of days later, I was booked in to have it done.

Miracles do Happen

My mum can be positive at times when she ought to be negative and negative when she ought to be positive. For instance, when I would go for a walk down a country road when I lived at home, she would always say to me, "You'll meet your Waterloo."

She meant that I could be abducted and murdered. She was hilarious the way she worried but in a completely opposite and truly threatening situation, she would be absolutely positive.

Another of my mum's contradictions is that she can be very religious and follow all the Catholic rules, yet she knows nothing of spirituality. She still doesn't get the fact that God doesn't care what religion we follow. To me, all religions are merely the practice of faith in different ways. Not being a strict adherent of any particular religion does not mean one's relationship with God is at all inferior to that of a deeply religious person who says prayers all day long.

Spirituality is feeling your relationship with God and knowing your life's purpose is solely to do the work you were sent here to do.

When I told my mother what was happening with me and how a friend had said she bled for the first five months of pregnancy, true to form, Mum held onto the slightest bit of hope that the fetus was still alive. She also told me to bless the bleeding with Holy water, which I did, as silly as it sounds.

For two whole days before the DNC I laid still on the couch because Mum had said I should give the baby the best possible chance. I still felt pregnant, which is weird because I had not felt pregnant two days earlier, and I had just been told I had miscarried.

And then I remembered when I was in London looking at myself in a store window and noticing I had my hands on my belly. I was rubbing it like a pregnant woman and thinking to myself, Why, Inez, are you rubbing your tummy ... wishful thinking?

I had totally missed the signs from the angels that I was pregnant. I've since learned that when you are stressed you are totally out of synch with the universe and that makes the angels' job of helping us very hard, indeed. No matter how many signs you are given, you'll miss them if you are stressed and totally out of synch. And, of course, if you have no spirituality, God and his angels might as well be asleep as try to help you.

On DNC day, a midwife took all the usual details and then Francis and I sat patiently in the waiting room. I was dreading the whole thing but was surprisingly calm. When, finally, a lovely, friendly lady scanned me and said a little heart was beating in there and everything looked normal, we were thrilled! Ecstatic! Shocked even! First thing I did was to get Francis to pop out to the pharmacist and get some pregnacare vitamins.

I returned to the couch where I stayed for the next twelve weeks and then, on Christmas Day, the bleeding stopped. I never bled again for the whole pregnancy.

I love being pregnant, I really feel special knowing I am carrying a little life inside me. I think it's just so amazing.

But the pregnancy wasn't without further stress. We had fostered with an agency and when I was no longer in a position to foster, the social workers became very unsupportive. I couldn't understand why they didn't understand that I was at risk of miscarrying and had to be on the couch for a lot of the pregnancy. It was so stressful ... and crazy!

Fostering is something you do if you're in a position to do it. I wasn't in a position to do it anymore. That was not my fault! No one could have foreseen any of it.

I don't know how many times I tried to justify myself. It was a disgrace to be treated in such a way. I said to my husband, "Why would anyone foster to be treated like this when something you wouldn't wish on anyone (a potential miscarriage) happens and you have reports thrown at you and no compassion for an unforeseen predicament?"

I was so angry and upset but I didn't have the energy to fight them, and Francis believed that if I didn't remove some stress from my life I really would have a miscarriage. It was such a mess. I had many a sleepless night and felt guilty, but we had to let our foster boys go. We decided as best we could to get on with things because we had enough on our minds to deal with.

One of the teenagers ended up staying because he was able to look after himself for the most part. We were able to manage with him and it wouldn't have been fair to move him in his last year of high school. In Ireland, that is called his certification year or "leaving cert" year, and how well a student does in that year pretty much decides whether they get a place in university or not.

Again, I began asking my guardian angel about my life's purpose. I still felt like I didn't want to fall behind in my own career life and was searching for what the big plan was for me. I knew I didn't want to go back to boring finance work and I didn't want to go back to law because that would take up too much time. I had tried fostering but just didn't know if I wanted to go through that again, especially not with older kids.

I hadn't come to a decision on the counseling profession either. Then I saw an advert in the local paper for a course called "Job Club" and decided it would pass a month. I found out through the course, based on my personality and skills, that I was best suited to jobs like social welfare inspector, police officer, etc.

That actually made good sense to me but I had never considered any of the professions suggested to me by the job club computer! Why did I do a degree in legal studies and taxation, then work in finance for over six years when I was completely unsuited to those professions?

Although I think I would have been a force to be reckoned with as a barrister, I only spent four years at law when I started working in finance because the money in hedge and mutual funds was better than in any other profession.

I never waste time and always strike when the iron's hot. That can be a good thing, but sometimes a bad thing if you are not listening to divine guidance.

Straight away, I bought the Garda (police officer) study course and wondered why I hadn't thought of it before. I figured that with a hiring freeze on at the Garda training college I would have the course known inside out by the time the freeze came off. I even did a mock interview in which my interviewer couldn't fault anything. I was feeling so elated that this was my life's purpose. This had to be it!

However, Francis wasn't impressed at all with this new plan. He just didn't feel that it would be a good profession for me, and God knows where I'd be stationed, and what about going to Templemore? Templemore in Tipperary is where the Garda training college is located-about five hours drive from our home.

I said that if I got in, we would cross that bridge then. He said he'd support me. I always manage to sweep him along with my enthusiasm.

I had talked to a friend, who is a guard in Dublin. He strongly advised against it, saying the money was so bad that it was like working for nothing. He wasn't happy at all. However, experience had shown me that you can listen to others' experiences but you have to make your own decisions and learn from your own experiences. We didn't have the debt most young families have so whatever I earned would be going into my pocket and not into a mortgage.

Nevertheless, I knew this was going to be a choice between the new baby and the career and, yes, I was making plans for the future, as I always did. But was I strong enough to leave the baby and forsake an incredible bond that can only be built through time spent together in the initial years? I brushed it out of mind.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from My Angels and Meby Inez Mc Padden Copyright © 2013 by Inez Mc Padden. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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