Prayerfully Expecting: A Nine-Month Novena for Mothers to Be

This beautifully crafted book is a reflection guide, keepsake, and prayer journal that offers inspiration for each month of pregnancy in the tradition of the popular nine-day prayer, the Novena. Your feet are swollen, your hormones are a mess, and you still crave too much ice cream. For every mother-to-be, the nine months of pregnancy can be demanding. Competing with the joy of anticipation is the frustration of bodily pain and limitation. In this intimate book, Donna-Marie Cooper O'Boyle invites pregnant women everywhere to see their pregnancy not as a burden but as a living prayer to God. Connecting the nine months of pregnancy with the nine-part novena prayer tradition known to Catholics everywhere, Donna Marie shows how each month of pregnancy connects the mother to the great Catholic saints and teachers. Alongside the devotional and the catechetical helps are pointed references to the development of the child in the womb as the months of pregnancy progress. Includes a foreword by Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta and an Apostolic Blessing from Pope John Paul II.