A few days back I asked for thoughts on naming our new baby girl Laetare. Thank you for the excellent feedback! We did not go with Laetare, but Zita.  There’s a story that goes with it you might enjoy.  

First I must explain the circumstances of our first daughter’s birth and why it was remarkably meaningful from start to finish.  For one, she only exists because of Catholicism.  We were still planning on waiting a few years before having kids, but while we were in RCIA we became convinced of the Church’s teaching on conception and the family.  We wish we’d had that mindset from the beginning.  Next we chose the name Lilja, the nordic word for Lily.  Eventually I noticed how often St Joseph is depicted with lilies.  While awaiting Lilja, I was desperate for spiritual help to be a good father and husband, and I took up the recommendation of St Theresa of Avila and Fr Don Calloway to seek the intercession of St Joseph.  Devotion to him was a powerful thing in those early days as Catholics, where praying to Saints was still novel.  Anyway, Lilja was due March 7th, which we blew past, and eventually set an induction date for the 21st.  However, my wife began labor on St Patrick’s Day evening and labored all day the 18th.  She started pushing AT MIDNIGHT on the 19th.  Lilja was born at 1:30 am on the Solemnity of St Joseph.  Mere coincidence?  Perhaps.  But I’m rather convinced it was a sign from God, that he hears us, that the Saints are alive, and St Joseph is an extraordinarily powerful intercessor before the throne of Christ.

So I wondered if the arrival of our next child would be similarly saturated in spiritual significance.

Zita was due March 11th.  We were stumped on a name for her. While visiting Cincinnati, touring a play about St Frassati, we attended the TLM at Old Saint Mary’s, where they have a Shrine to Blessed Karl of Austria.  We had never heard of him, but were quite impressed to learn about his brief life as Emperor of Austria, his piety, and beautiful marriage to Empress Zita–who herself is a Servant of God with an open cause for canonization.  Just delightful.  We were taken with them, and with the name Zita, and stuck it in our back pocket.

But the name sat rattling around with a few other options for the rest of the pregnancy.  A week or so before the due date we prayed a novena asking for Blessed Karl and Zita’s intercession for the labor and delivery, and guidance picking a name.

Our second daughter’s birth unfolded much differently from the first.  At a regularly scheduled appointment on March 13th, the doctor noticed a 4-minute heart rate deceleration that made her uncomfortable enough to recommend induction.  Jillian didn’t want to induce, only being 2 days “overdue,” and was worried about how inductions can intensify labor pain and sometimes set off a chain reaction of medical interventions.  But how could she sleep with the possibility of something going suddenly wrong?  We talked through our options pretty somberly, but ultimately took our doctor’s recommendation.  Jillian went straight from the clinic to the hospital and started taking Cytotek.  I went home and scrambled to gather up our supplies, summon the parents to babysit, etc.  Right when I was about to go to the hospital, our firstborn had an accident on the bed our parents were supposed to sleep in.  Jillian meanwhile was trying to keep her spirits up.  She had a lot of confidence and courage going into labor the first time around.  This time, she struggled not to dread it.  On top of this she had a sore throat and chills and would get diagnosed with influenza a few hours after giving birth.  Overall, there was a heaviness and negativity going into this labor that was opposite from the first.

But I do want to note that at all times we were grateful things weren’t worse, because we knew they could be much worse, and we prayed the whole time for suffering mothers and children and people struggling with infertility.  

Things kicked off the next morning and I’m happy to say Jillian mustered a great deal of her old spunk and spark.  At some point in the early afternoon I was applying counterpressure during her contractions, thinking that I hadn’t prayed enough during the whole pregnancy.  And I guess I had been secretly hoping St Joseph would claim my secondborn as plainly as the first–how miraculous would it be if they shared such a birthday?  But there was no epic feast day on the calendar for the 14th.  “Pie Day” is kind of cute… I guess.  And it weighed on me that we hadn’t settled on a perfect name.  I knew I had put off researching Empress Zita to the last minute; if I had done so earlier I might have found the familiarity and confidence to commit to that name.  My secondborn deserved more thoughtfulness than I had given her.  Eventually I snapped out of this thinking, and reminded myself that our secondborn is a precious gift from God that we cherish as much as the first and it doesn’t matter on what day she’s born.  I locked in on Jillian and helped her however I could.

…But then something about the date March 14th DID suddenly sound familiar.  It started to bug me.  Then I thought…maybe?  No… it couldn’t be.  Unless…?

I quickly googled Empress Zita and had to sit down.  She was born on May 9th 1892 and died MARCH 14th 1989.  

Now what I’ve heard is that Empress Zita, if canonized, will share her feast day with Karl and it will be their wedding day.  That is awesome.  Nevertheless, I informed Jillian of this revelation and she replied with a gritted “That’s nice dear,” and agreed that the matter of our daughter’s name was settled.  Baby Zita was born at 2:07 pm.  Jillian performed splendidly, everyone’s healthy, besides Jillian’s flu and Lilja’s potty-training regression which has made the first few days at home a delirious sleepless hell for everyone.

But sitting there in the hospital, mentally retracing our steps: stumbling upon Blessed Karl’s Shrine in a beautiful church in a city we’d never been, being inspired by Karl and Zita’s piety and love for each other and their many children, bringing home a picture of him with a relic attached, keeping it on display in our home and then in the hospital for the delivery, getting surprise induced against our desires and giving birth on March 14th, the date of Zita’s death and likely entrance to Heaven.

Kinda neat.