St. Gerard Majella

Today, we are talking about St. Gerard Majella. I am so thankful because we have a guest post from Kiera, who is sharing an awesome personal story! If you want to learn more about Kiera, check out her mini-bio and blog info at the bottom of this post!

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I was nearing a week overdue with my second child in October of 2011.  I lamented this fact, because I was tired of being pregnant and just wanted this baby of mine to be born. A friend told me to ask St. Gerard to pray for me.  So I did, but in the process of doing so I looked the guy up. Before this, I  had known that he was the patron saint of Mothers, Motherhood, and unborn children, but I didn’t really know much else. The first thing I found was that his feast day was October 16^th, which was a day before my 41 week mark. This was definitely a God moment.

So knowing he was the go to guy for mothers, and those wanting to be mothers, I wanted to know why.  I found out that like most saints, there was a story behind it. 

It was said that in the last days of his life in the later 1700s, Gerard Majella visited a family and left a handkerchief behind with the family.  One of the daughters noticed this and called out to him as he had already left.  He told her to keep it saying she may need it some day.  Years later when the daughter was now married and was having a truly difficult labor where she was on the verge of losing her life, she remembered the handkerchief and went from almost dying to having a healthy birth with a healthy child and mama at the end of it. 

Great story, right?  I thought to myself, and my husband agreed, that this guy seems like a great advocate for life, which is something that we both felt and still feel strongly about.  So we thought, maybe if this child of ours is a boy, we should have Gerard be his middle name.  As you can tell we are the folks that like the surprise moment at birth for the gender of our children. We had a girl and boy name picked out, but this definitely changed our boy name. 

 The next few days, I kept asking St. Gerard to pray for me.  And well lo and behold I had an amazing labor that only lasted a few hours, just 8 days after my EDD.  I was able to keep myself composed and even walked myself through the hospital to the birthing center suite. On the way, we passed a statue of St. Gerard, and I told the attending nurse that if this baby was a boy that Gerard was going to be his middle name.

A mere ten minutes later, with about 3 pushes we had a healthy baby boy.  One, who now for the rest of his hopefully long life, has St. Gerard watching out for him.

You can learn more about St. Gerard and pray some of the prayers associated with him by checking out the St. Gerard website.http://www.saintgerard.com/stgerard.html

St. Gerard Majella

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About Kiera: I am a stay-at-home mom of two boys with a PhD in Chemistry and a Catholic convert who has a passion for building community. I enjoy reading books on my kindle, playing soccer, dancing in the kitchen with my children, hanging out with my husband and just being the over-thinking granola-like person that I am. I blog about my crazy life whenever the kiddos let me get a spare moment over at Contranaut Girl. 

http://contranautgirl.blogspot.com