Dad says, ‘having a baby is like winning the lottery’

 

The Gulding family live out their Catholic faith every day. Steven and Kathryn Gulding are the parents of eight children, with the eldest being 19 and the youngest three. “When we were engaged, we never put a number on how many kids we wanted,” Kathryn said.

Something as reverent as praying the rosary together may look a bit messy to an outsider, but the Gulding family gets it done every day. They meet in the prayer room, which also serves as their living room. Anna, their five-year-old, plays quietly with her saint dolls, another daughter will sew, and the three-year-old may appear as a Star Wars character armed with his Nerf gun. “We often take longer than we should, because there are a lot of interruptions or someone’s in the bathroom and needs their bottom wiped – we just keep going,” Kathryn said matter of factly. “It’s not pretty.”

Honoring the saints is another big deal in this family. All the Gulding children are named after saints (even their middle names.) They are Teresa (19), Madeleine (18), Gianna (15), Miriam (12), Bridget (10), Joseph (8), Anna (5), and Matthew (3). In addition to celebrating their birthdays, baptism, and confirmation days, the family celebrates their namesake’s feast day,

“Anna loves the saint dolls, and she lives the saints’ stories through these dolls,” Kathryn said. “Sometimes she’ll play ‘family’ or have a confirmation, where she lines them up in a row like they’re being confirmed, and she does this quietly while we’re praying the rosary and sometimes not so quiet because the three-year-old wants his saint.” 

And they know what it means when they pray the rosary. Anna explained to her Aunt that when they pray the rosary, “Mary takes all their prayers to Jesus.”

They also pray before meals. “When Maddy (Madeleine) was five, she made up a prayer for the souls in purgatory. ‘May the souls in purgatory be blessed into Heaven and talk to Holy Jesus and the saints,’” Steven recalls his daughter’s prayer.

Besides saying their prayers and honoring saints, the family attends Mass as often as they can. Kathryn and the kids go to Mass at least twice a week. All eight of their children are homeschooled, “so it’s different than your traditional school kids -– we might stay up late watching a movie, then get up a little bit later, so we don’t usually make 8 a.m. Mass,” Kathryn said. 

While Kathryn and the children start their day around 9 a.m., Steven gets up earlier to begin his workday as a chemistry professor at Del Mar. When he can, he attends an 8 a.m. Mass during the workweek.

Homeschooling has been a real gift, whatever the sacrifice. “I like my kids. I like hanging out with them,” Kathryn said. They have four Chromebooks and two desktops. The older ones subscribe to the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. She teaches the younger ones and encourages the older ones to work independently. “They work independently with my oversight,” she said.

Another gift of homeschooling is the kids have a relationship with each other. “Our children can socialize vertically,” Steven said, adding, “they can relate to any age group.” 

The Gulding children are involved in their community. Each family member competes in the 4-H Club, and the kids love playing basketball with the Coastal Christian Homeschool Badgers. They are involved locally with the Sewing Guild, and “they can easily converse with older women,” Kathryn said.

Their daily religious education classes are also online. They use the Baltimore Catechism. According to Steven, who teaches religious education to middle school students from St. Helena of the True Cross of Jesus Parish once a week, they learn more about the sacraments and their prayers than taking classes once a week.

“They’re reading scripture every day, and our oldest two children have read the entire Bible. I’ve never done that,” he said. “I think that’s a real blessing for our family. Part of their educational experience has been able to read it, think about it and pray about it. You know, it’s not just something to check off,” he said.

They live in a four-bedroom, three-bathroom home (about a 2400 square foot home), and they have always made use of the space. The breakfast nook is a sewing space, and there is a hodgepodge place for a playroom. They have a prayer room, which is also is their living room with a huge crucifix on the wall, and all six girls are in the master bedroom.

“Honestly, it doesn’t feel crowded, and it often feels like I have to count everybody here just because it doesn’t feel like it. I think it’s a lot easier than having four because you have the older kids help, Kathryn said. “It’s not something I expect of them – they just jump in and help.”

Stephen and Kathryn met at the Newman Center at the University of California in Santa Barbara. It was there that Steven began his formation and, in turn, influenced Kathryn. They began praying the rosary, going to Mass and confession regularly.

At the beginning of their marriage, Natural Family Planning classes gave Steven and Kathryn a real awareness of a woman’s body and a suitable method to avoid having children. Ultimately it provided them an excellent plan for having them. Now, when they apply what they learned, it’s always in their minds, and they are open to having more children.

“Stephen says having a baby is like winning a lottery,” Kathryn said, adding, “These kids are a gift, and each one of them has their own personality, and you can see the different gifts that God has given them. Those gifts are just multiplying in our family. We have a photographer, a cook, people who can sew. They’re going to have their own business one day because they’re totally capable of it.”

Also, having a big family has many pluses – especially as the younger ones move into that older age bracket. The house gets cleaned in an hour. They all tend to take on different responsibilities and specialties. “Our third oldest (Gianna) is really strong at cooking and can step in and just make dinner. She has a passion for it. It’s not a chore,” Kathryn explains. “One of her biggest struggles is not to make it so spicy. Sometimes she will tone down on the spices because not everybody in the family likes it spicy. If she doesn’t, though – there’s always sour cream,” she chuckled.

The older children sing with their father in the choir. Sometimes, they make their own jeans and shirts, because they don’t like what’s in the store. 

“Maddie and I made an apron as a birthday present for a five-year-old girl, and it was fun to work with her on a project,” Kathryn said. “We sewed over two hundred masks for the hospitals and staff. “It’s been interesting – I started teaching one of the children to sew, then they kept passing it down to the next kid. I became their support.” Instead of doing most of the sewing, she would find them unique fabrics and patterns. She became their quality control. 

During the first wave of Covid-19, the mandated stay at home order was not that difficult for the Guldings, but the family did have to make some changes. Steven had to teach his college students from home, so they had one less computer to work on, and they watched a YouTube video of their pastor Father Richard Libby celebrating Mass. Although barefooted, the children would dress up for Mass, “which was totally up to them,” recalls Kathryn. They also participated in the Divine Mercy Chaplet and the virtual holy hour.

Their extracurricular activities were canceled, and they were unable to compete in the 4-H Club State Championships in the food and nutrition, photography, clothing and textiles categories. Still, one of the hardest things for Gianna was having her confirmation day delayed and then being confirmed in the parish instead of the cathedral by Bishop Michael Mulvey.

Gianna was later confirmed on Pentecost Sunday by Father Libby, her parish priest, and with her sister Maddie (Madeleine) as her sponsor.

During their first nine years of marriage, the couple lived in Tucson, Arizona, where Kathryn worked as a Blind Rehabilitation Specialist with veterans. Steven was a stay-at-home dad. “We fell outside the norm in many areas like for childbirth – we went with midwives. God would tend to put these people in our path, and we would talk to them at just the right time, and it would lead us in a certain direction. It’s not something that we sought out early on.

“I think a lot of everything we’ve done, started when we got married: praying together, having a foundation of trusting God, and never being afraid to have another kid,” Steven said. 

“And as our family has grown, with prayer as the foundation, we receive the sacraments, and all the gifts the Catholic Church has to give us. They’re just phenomenal. When you become aware of that, it’s just mind-blowing how much God has done to help us. We want to take those gifts, receive them, and allow them to help us. And fortunately, in different challenging situations, God provides opportunities that we didn’t seek out with intention. 

“Our children will have challenges in the world, and we try to pray and trust that they have a strong enough faith, and regardless of what happens, pleasant or painful, God is with us through it all and will give us the grace to respond to whatever situations come up,” Steven said. “We have been very blessed with family support. We do not lack food, clothing or shelter, and we have each other.”   

 
 National Parent’s Day is July 26.