I really believe that God puts desires on our hearts and then he increases the desire there when it is time to do it. I’ll just tell you right now, no days do I wake up right now wanting to have a baby. I never think about it. I never pull out a pregnancy calculator and go, I wonder if I got pregnant right now. Like when, when I would have the baby. I used to do that when I wanted a baby.

And so, at the moment just have no desire to have another baby. We practice natural family planning. God could give me a baby right now if he wanted to, but I don’t have that desire. So one of my favorite prayers is, Lord, increase the desire of my heart for whatever I’m praying about, but in this instance, a baby, if it is of you, or decrease the desire of my heart. If it is not of you, it’s such a reasonable prayer. 

Like he is a good and loving father. He wants to communicate with you, he wants to speak to you, and he wants you to know his good and holy will for you. So just ask him to be clear.  So that’s your heart and then there’s your husband’s heart. 

And I really like to say that God does not give one spouse the desire for something strongly without giving the other spouse the desire or the openness to that for big life decisions. Maybe you’re going out for lunch and one of you wants Thai food and one of you wants Mexican. That’s not what we’re talking about, okay? I’m talking about the desire to grow your family and have another baby. 

So your husband may not want another baby right now. And again, you’re gonna pray and you’re gonna say, Lord, increase the desire of my heart if this is of you, or decrease the desire of my heart. If it is not of you. If your heart and your desire is increasing, then I want you to trust that he will change the heart of your husband. Just trust it. 

And I’ve seen that with both spouses so many, many, many times where one person does not want another baby and then something just happens and their heart is suddenly open to wanting to have another baby.

So just trust that God is with your husband, and if he wants you to have another baby, he’s gonna open your husband’s heart to that. And he doesn’t even have to open your husband’s heart to like a gushing amount of excitement around having another baby. It just might be that he opens your husband’s heart on a random Wednesday night to rolling the dice. That’s what we call it. 

She rolls the dice, which means both spouses completely know that if they have sex right now, they might get pregnant. Your husband’s heart just has to be opened that much, and I just want you to trust that God is with you and God is with him, and he will put you on the same page. 

Now, let’s say you get pregnant and your husband feels grumpy about that, or he has negative feelings about that, that is okay. You can watch your husband feel disappointed. You can watch your husband grieve the year that he thought he was gonna have.

I remember when we would get those two lines on a pregnancy test and we would have to grapple with what we thought we were going to do for the year, and then now we’re gonna have a baby year is what we would call it.

We are allowed to be humans and to have feelings and to grieve things. It is very difficult to be pregnant, to be married to someone who’s pregnant, to have a baby, and to live through, particularly the 12 weeks postpartum, but really the whole year after having a baby. 

And it’s okay. For him to have some negative feelings about that. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you and it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want the baby, right? Like when the baby comes that he won’t be loving and warm and happy about the baby. 

There were two pregnancies in particular where I was just so mad, so frustrated. I really did not want to be pregnant, and I had to really process a lot of negative feelings about that because it is not what I wanted to do. I had just been pregnant. I didn’t feel like I had healed my body and I was already had so many kids that it was really, really difficult. 

And processing those negative feelings and grappling with them had nothing to do with how insanely in love I was with my baby when the baby came, right? Those are just two totally different things, and so we wanna allow both of you to have your emotional experience around being pregnant and adding another kiddo to your family.

But another question that I often ask women when they say, should I have another baby or not? I’ll say, well, what are your reasons for not having a baby? And there are so many reasons that people don’t wanna have a baby. And I will have them kind of list those reasons. And I’ll say, okay, now let’s look at those reasons. 

Do you like those reasons? Do you like those reasons as a reason not to have another baby? And I can’t answer that for you, but you can look at them and decide, do you wanna be the kind of person who doesn’t have a baby because of these reasons? 

And the women were very clear when I asked them that, for example, for me, I had six kids in eight years. And, let’s just say right after baby number six, if you had said, Sterling, do you wanna have another baby? I would’ve said, no. 

And then you would’ve said, what are your reasons? My reason was I just had six kids in eight years. I need some space for my mental health, for my body, for the sake of these other kids. And I really liked those reasons. I would’ve liked those reasons. I would’ve said, yeah, I feel really solid about those reasons.

And I can’t even tell you what are some negative reasons or not good reasons to not have a baby. Because it’s so personal. It’s so personal, it’s not moral. Now, it is a moral decision to use contraception to space, the babies,

So I would say the Catholic Church says you may not use the pill or an IUD or a vasectomy or a condom or pulling out. You may not use any of those methods to space the kids. But if you’re not doing any of those things, your reasons, we can’t say objectively or not that they are moral or not. You have to take them to the Lord. 

I’ll use the example of money, right? If someone were to say, we don’t have enough money. I don’t feel like it’s prudent to have another baby. I can’t roll in and say that’s true or not. It’s a gray area. You have to take it to the Lord. You have to take it to the Lord, and you have to ask yourself, do you think in your present financial situation sitting with the Lord that is a good reason not to have another baby or not?

I know that there are some people where the answer is yes, that is a good enough reason given their finances and what they’ve got going on in their lives. And I know that there are some people where God is saying, Hey, that’s not actually a good reason. You have plenty of money. You’re just living in a spirit of fear, which does not come from me. It’s not a good reason.

But do you see how, I, Sterling can’t know the difference for you? So getting clear on is God giving you this desire of your heart? And then if you’re scared, what are the reasons that you’re scared? Do you like those reasons or not? 

For example, just I liked my reason of wanting to heal myself after having so many kids in such a short period of time. But you might look at your reasons and go, actually, no, I don’t like those reasons. And then tell your husband, God has given me a desire for another baby. Can you open your heart to that? Will you pray about this? 

And then the last thing that I will say, and I don’t wanna open this too much in this video, is that sometimes a woman has a strong desire for a baby and then struggles with primary or secondary infertility, and that is very confusing.

But I want you to open yourself up to what the Lord is really giving you a desire for. I have walked that journey with so many women, which is delicate of me because I have so many kids, but it is the same thing. I always say infertility is rooted in the same thing as hyper fertility. 

Someone with hyper fertility is getting pregnant when they don’t want to get pregnant, and someone with infertility is not getting pregnant when they want to be. But both of them are rooted in a woman’s desire, strong desire for something that the Lord is saying no to.

And so we wanna sit with that. We wanna go to the Lord and say, all right, Lord, what is my real desire for here? And our real desire at the end of the day is for sainthood. And we wanna sit with him and say, all right, what is my path to sainthood? 

And if you have a desire to grow your family, what other ways could God create that? Maybe you want to feel more love in your heart, and you think having another child will create more love in your heart? Well, he will show you ways right now to do that. 

So speak more plainly to the Lord and ask him open-ended questions. How do you want me to be living right now? What do you want me to have a desire for? Or what is this desire for? Maybe you are mislabeling it.

But get clear on your desire. Ask him to grow it if it is of him, and to decrease it if it is not of him, to clarify if you are not discerning it clearly, and then trust that your husband will have his heart opened, that the desires are both fulfilled. Because I do not believe that God gives one spouse a holy desire without the other spouse having it. And so it’s often just a matter of timing. 

And listen, that’s a hard thing to sit with. But at the end of the day, what we do all truly want is to do what God wants us to do. And I do think that he gives us desires and then the best way to live is to match the desires that he’s given us to the way that we live.

But sometimes we have to wait or sometimes we have to clarify again. Maybe you have a desire to multiply love in your heart and you think another baby is the way to do that. But he’s calling you to a slightly different flavor of growing love in your heart or in your home. But God does not give us a spirit of fear. 

So I want you to come back down to trust and love and peace and believe that He’s with you and want you to believe that he is with your husband. The Holy Spirit lives inside your husband’s body. And just pray for your husband and pray that God puts you guys on the same page, that the desires that you have will put you on the same page. And I always believe that they will, even if it just takes time for one spouse to change their heart. 

All right, my friends, I am praying for you. Please pray for me and have a blessed day.