I am currently in France visiting family for a little over two weeks. Since my job is also my hobby I took the opportunity of travelling without young children to turn this holiday into an urban planning field trip. Europe is far ahead of North America when it comes to managing population density, resource conservation and the perils of pollution. It’s not a criticism as much as an observation: they addressed those concerns as they emerged, they just emerged earlier than they did in North America..

Yesterday, we travelled from Rouen (in Normandy) to the Ardèche region, a forested mountainous area near the Rhône and within a crow’s flight of the French Alpes’ foothills. It’s in the south-eastern quadrant of the Hexagon.

We travelled most of the way on France’s privatized toll highway system and finished the trip with a short stint on the “Nationale 7” , the historic tree-lined trunk road stretching from Paris to the Italian border. Used by thousands on their way to the Mediterranean, it is known in popular culture as “Route des vacances” (Holiday route) and — more tragically — “Route de la mort” (Death Route). It is comparable in history and popular culture to America’s Route 66. If Route 66 had been built by the Romans.

We drove down the old Nationale 7 along the Rhône River towards the mountains of Ardèche.

Later that evening, we were discussing road safety and how a series of French policies in the 80’s and 90’s had seen a steady decrease in road casualties from 18,000 a year down to 4,000 with an increasing population. My uncle said in passing that it was hard to parse out which policy had had what impact “between alcohol, speed, seatbelts and trees…”

Trees?

My mother said “Oh, these trees killed a lot of people!”

As it turns out, the iconic borders of trees have a storied past. Seen by some as a road safety hazard, they are also part of France’s cultural heritage to be saved and protected:

Avec la vitesse, la conduite en état d’ivresse, les incivilités, les arbres d’alignement en bord de routes sont aujourd’hui considérés comme un danger à éliminer. Et pourtant… Depuis des siècles, nos paysages sont structurés par les alignements qui bordent routes, fossés, canaux et rivières. Les arbres de bord de route, et en particulier les alignements, constituent un patrimoine reconnu, protégé par la loi dans certains pays.

http://www.patrimoine-environnement.fr/les-alignements-darbres-en-danger-partout-en-france/

Believed to be an answer to medieval deforestation and a solution to shipbuilding needs , the trees, called “arbres d’alignement” for the way they delineate the roadway, were mandated by Henri III in 1552.

Roadway tree planting intensified at the beginning of the 19th Century as a mean of reducing the dust caused by vehicular traffic. By 1895, 3 million trees lined 35,000 km of national roads and even more could be found alongside secondary roads and channels.

In the 1940’s the border trees — until then considered a source of shade and cultural identity — became the scapegoat for the death toll brought on by the rise of the automobile. Calls for their systematic removal met cries for their preservation. Accused of causing 10% of roadway deaths, border trees were not even given the grace of mentioning the state or behavior of the drivers before being killed.

Caught in the crosshair of a campaign to reduce road fatalities, border trees received the support of President George Pompidou in 1970 when he wrote an exasperated letter to his Minister of the Interior upon learning of a policy to remove border trees in spite of his express wishes that they be preserved (my translation):

Trees have no other defenders than myself it seems, and even this doesn’t seem to matter. France does not only exist to allow the French to drive around it at will. Regardless of their importance, road safety problems shouldn’t result in the disfiguration of France’s landscape.

Decreasing traffic accidents will only result from educating drivers and establishing simple rules adapted to the configuration of the road instead of the current complexity sought in signalisation as if it was a hobby. It will also result from more stringent rules in matters of drunk driving (…)

In other words, blaming the trees is a little rich when you were soaked as a Christmas cake behind the wheel. (My uncle told me that blood alcohol levels used to be an extenuating circumstance in vehicular manslaughter trials. We laughed but it wasn’t funny).

Ordinances calling for the systematic removal of roadside trees multiplied in the 80’s and 90’s until 2006 when studies of road safety revealed that border trees — or as one urban designer once told me “anything vertical close to the curb” — had a traffic calming effect. Studies of road safety statistics in communes where trees has been completely removed also emerged showing the questionable impact of designing roads to be wide, straight, and devoid of obstacles (spoiler: it makes people drive faster, has an hypnotic effect and contributes to an increase in accidents.)

In 2010, a village near Norfolk, England experimented with the traffic calming effect of the ironically called “French style avenue”. Borders of trees were shown to reduce the average speed upon entering the village by 3-5km/h for a fraction of the cost of buying and maintaining traffic cameras.

England is generally considered to be 30 years ahead of France in matters of traffic safety and yet, despite these positive results, the remaining French border trees have been singled out as part of a wide-ranging safety audit of French departmental roads.

If you are as interested in the confluence of road safety, traffic calming, environmental preservation, urban design and urban heritage as I am, go and read this 66-page document (with pictures) on road infrastructure and natural landscape from the European Landscape Convention : http://patrimoine-environnement.fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/CEP-CDPATEP-2009-15-TreeAvenues_fr.pdf

In the meantime, here is Charles Trenet singing the praises of Nationale 7:

My new website Fearless Family Life just launched and this is the long awaited official close of this blog. Despite its recent neglect, it’s with a heavy heart that I’m announcing that I won’t be posting here anymore. This website was my training wheels. I made friends and connections through this page and I will always be thankful for my readers’ patience and commitment.

Please follow me at my new website www.fearlessfamilylife.com and follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to never miss a post. I have a lot of good stuff coming up, between my foray into podcasting, my fiction writing and the blog posts I will keep churning. I have a Youtube channel, a Patreon page, a family who loves and supports me and hopefully, my Vie de Cirque amazing readers will follow me in my new Fearless Adventures!

I will continue to publish occasional update posts in French on Vie de Cirque. My French family was among my very first readers and I know that some still come here for updates. All my English writing will move to Fearless Family Life.

To my Vie de Cirque readers, those who encouraged me to start, those who have stuck with me those 5 years, and those who have joined along the way and kept the momentum, thank you. If I ever make it in this sphere, it will be because of you.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

Madison Square Garden can seat 20,000 people for a concert. This blog was viewed about 65,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Madison Square Garden, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

If you are anywhere on pregnancy and parenting-related social media sites, you know that October 15th commemorates pregnancy and infant loss. It is the day when parents who have lost a child to miscarriage or stillbirth replace their profile pictures with a burning candle. It is also a month almost to the day from when I experienced my first significant miscarriage and ended-up in hospital as a result, without my fetus and without most of my blood supply. 

I’m not in a place where I can wax poetic and inspiring about the reality of pregnancy loss but I can wax brutally honest any day of the week so ready or not, here I come. 

How much have my husband and I learned through the last 5 weeks! Miscarriage packs quite the sucker punch. Leaving aside the medical fall-out, it’s like a post-partum hormonal crash minus the baby to cuddle. One minute you think you’re holding-up pretty well, thank you very much, and the next you’re sitting in a puddle. This post is an attempt at expressing the depth of conflicting emotions that grab you when you go through the experience of miscarriage. Maybe you will read it and learn something. But maybe someone will read it and feel normal, this is my hope. 

My new pregnancy happened in my new community and I had to debate whether I would seek the care of my usual midwifery team — which would involve driving into town to deliver in hospital or at the birth center — or to register with the midwifery practice for my area — which would allow me to give birth at home or at my local hospital. I really struggled with this decision. The safe course of action, given that I dilate more-or-less painlessly until 7-8cm, was to stay in my area rather than risk an hour long drive into town in transition. But despite being a rational and rather well-hinged individual, I couldn’t think rationally about it. I did get on a local midwife’s roster but when I miscarried, the lack of emotional support from my midwife was really difficult to cope with. It wasn’t her fault: we had only met once. The scope of practice of Ontario midwives is perfect for normal healthy pregnancies but it it grossly inadequate for not-so-normal pregnancies. When I started bleeding heavily, I paged a midwife I didn’t know, who didn’t know me, and directed me to the emergency department of my local hospital. I never heard again from my midwifery clinic. It’s not their fault: they have clients and jobs and no-longer-pregnant women are not part of it. I had to call to cancel lab appointments, midwifery follow-ups and ultrasounds appointments and never got a single call from my midwife to make sure I was ok. 

The same scenario was repeated the following week when my family doctor asked for an OBGYN referral to the specialist who was on call when I miscarried for an unrelated issue. My family doctor got a fax back from the specialist’s desk saying: “This Patient was seen last week for a miscarriage. Is this referral still needed?” I had to shake my head: why would anyone want to follow-up with a specialist about a miscarriage anyway (insert sarcasm)? You are no longer pregnant. Next caller. 

After all, an entire cast of characters saw you bleed from your private parts, stuck stuff up the same parts (u/s wand, many speculums and some pliers), washed you as if you were an infant and watched you use the bathroom at every bladder or bowel movement to make sure, in their words, that you didn’t “empty out.” I felt like I wanted to meet these people. Face to face. I wanted to show them my living children so they would know me for more than “that great grand multipara who had a miscarriage.” I received superlative and compassionate care from the doctors and nurses I met along the way, from my admittance until my transfusion and my final release from care. It still sits weird with me that these people hold such an important place in my life and memory but I’ll never be more than another patient to them. When I was the head of the students’ legal information clinic in university I used to tell my volunteers “Clients may be one in 20 people you will talk to today but their legal issue is probably occupying  almost 100% of their head space. The contact you have with them might feel like nothing to you but it could be everything to them if they are caught in a difficult situation. Be compassionate and mindful of that rapport.” Now I am living what it is to be at the vulnerable end of a relation of care, where saving your life is just another day at the office. It is a terrifying and humbling vulnerability that I will never forget. 

When I started bleeding more heavily, I called a friend who had had a miscarriage and asked her to tell me, no punch pulled, what to expect. I had to hang up to call my midwife and head to emerg. The last thing I told my oldest daughter as I left was “try to make my bathroom look not like a crime scene.” I lost so much blood that I was no longer able to inspect every blood clot for my fetus. When I finally had an ultrasound, I was still hoping that they would find a strong heartbeat. The hope that your baby might still be alive will just not die. But not only was my baby not alive, it was not even there. They never saw an embryo, let alone the 12 weeks fetus I was hoping to see and hold in my hand, to make it real. Being seen in a situation of emergency means that health care personnel don’t always have the time or opportunity  to slip-on their kid gloves. From the doctor to the u/s technician, nobody is taking the time to explain very slowly and clearly what is happening. I had to piece it together from things I overheard and caught flying. Just before I passed out from the blood loss I asked my husband to take pictures of anything that they pulled out of me. I have phone pictures of a tiny placenta and sac with a chord extending to nothing. To this day, I’m still unsure exactely how or when I lost my fetus and whether there was ever anything to see. Many women who have experienced miscarriage have asked me if I have named the baby but how can I ? As far as know, it might have been anembryonic. Was there ever someone? Am I only grieving the idea of a baby? Is this all in my head? I still cry when I see my friends’ ultrasound pictures thinking this could be my baby, then I want to slap myself back to reality. There was no baby. Or was there? I have not named my baby. I can’t. It just feels fake.

Friends cautioned me against trying to assign blame (to myself) or find a reason why. The doctor who saw me mentioned that my age and parity were probably the reason I miscarried. But this just makes me angry. I know why I miscarried. I’ve been complaining to my family doctor about hormonal imbalance, progesterone whackiness and thyroid shenanigans since 2012. Now I’m angry. I will be recovering from this miscarriage for the next year or two. I have problems absorbing iron (probably something else that is caused by age and parity — insert even more sarcasm) and now I’m stating from something less than scratch. This could have been prevented. When I asked for a full thyroid panel, I was begrudgingly given a requisition for TSH and thyroid antibodies. When I asked for T3 to be tested as well I was told that since my thyroid dysfunction was probably due to (DRINK!!!) my family size, it was not necessary. Every complaint I take to my doctor — and I moved clinics, saw specialists, this “doctor” is a compendium of several specimen — is explained by my family size. Nobody will listen when I say that I did my Master’s in law at McGill in Montreal, commuting 2 to 3 times a week, getting an A+ average, when I had 5 children, including a 5 month-old breastfed infant. I worked full time in active politics, on Parliament Hill, with 6 children. I trained for half-marathons when I had 6,7,8 children, running 20 to 30 km a week. Suddenly my health goes haywire, I’m depressed, I have no focus, i’m shuffling rather than running, I’m gaining 5-10 lbs a month while dieting, I’m losing my hair, I’m not sleeping even when my baby does, and it’s because I have 9 children? Are you actually kidding me? You went to med school for how long to tell me that? I’ve had a big family since 2006, Bucky! What is ok with 8 that is suddenly making me unhealthy because I have 9? Can someone with a medical background please explain that to me? Because to me it sounds a lot like someone wanted to call it in today and is trying to get me off their examining table before rush hour. Being a woman is such a convenient cop-out, still today. I know that with proper healthcare I might still be pregnant today. I know that if I didn’t have any children at 41 and experienced two losses back-to-back, my doctor would be investigating the causes of the miscarriages. But I have children already, so why should I care? Could it be because the underlying causes of the repeated losses impact my overall health? I’m not trying to catch-up with the Duggars here, I just want to be healthy again. Maybe this is a coping mechanism and yet another sign that I’m just another nutcase great grand multip. But now I’m kicking ass and I’m taking names. I have 9 kids, you can’t scare me. 

  

Thank you so much everyone for your love and support in the last few weeks since my miscarriage. I cannot adequately express what it means to me. Strangers have reached out and contacted me through this blog and through social media, shared their stories with me and kept my family in their thoughts and prayers. I know that there is a vulnerability in sharing our stories, often prefaced by “I hope you don’t find this creepy” or “feel free to delete this…” so I would like to speak to that before I dig into what we ate last week. The experience of a miscarriage, I am realizing, is a very unique one. I’m sure that every experience of trauma and loss has the same ring: we are suddenly very alone. Not alone as in lonely, but alone in that the circumstances surrounding a loss are as different as we are. Not two experiences are alike. Not only are circumstances different but our personalities and how we process these circumstances are also unique. We often feel either like no one understands or we feel like impostors. Many of us feel like we have no right to play the grief card. Maybe because we didn’t lose our baby as late as another. Maybe because we didn’t need surgery. Maybe because we were never in danger of death. Maybe because we didn’t even need medical attention. Whichever our circumstances were, we tend to look at someone who had it worst and trash talk our grief into a corner. The sharing of your stories has been immensely helpful to me because it has shown me that whatever your circumstances, you all experienced a similar trajectory of sadness and loss. You have helped me see what is coming next and helped me be better prepared to face it. I haven’t been as blindsided as I would have been without your stories. This is huge for me. As the mother of many, I need to maintain a certain level of functioning. Your stories and testimonies have helped me tremendously in managing my emotions by welcoming them, letting them wash over me and knowing that it is normal. Knowing that I have to get through a difficult passage to get to the other side has made me better able to take the passages instead of trying to get around them. Bridges can be scary, especially rope bridges way up high. But trying to walk down the valley, across the river and back up the other side might prove to be harder, longer and more treacherous. That’s why a bridge was built in the first place. You are the bridge builders. You are the people who have done the crossing before me and are encouraging me to go-ahead, don’t look down, we’ll see you on the other side. Thank you for being there, thank you for your willingness to share your stories and please don’t ever feel like this is creepy or useless. It is not. I’m an optimist and I may look like I am all better but to those who ask me how I am, all I can answer is : “I’m ok. But I’m not ok. And it’s ok.” 

We had a whirlwind week that ended-in two round trips to Kingston, ON where my son is studying. After the first day my father-in-law asked us why we were going home that evening only to come back the next morning (it’s a 130km trip each way.) A little bit of sleep in my bed is better than no sleep in a hotel room with twins and a toddler. Not only that but it’s a pretty drive through the Rideau Lakes area. Stop at the Vanilla Bean’s Cafe and Creamery on your way through Westport: between Kawartha Dairy ice cream and Equator coffee (both local-ish treats) you can’t go wrong. A few steps down toward the water will take you to a gazebo with picnic tables to enjoy your treats. My phone was dead as a doorknob so you’ll have to take my word for it. 

We were in Kingston for the traditional obstacle course that marks the official entry of the first year class into the Cadet Wing at the Royal Military College of Canada. You can see some pictures on my Flikr photostream on the right hand side of my blog. Maybe someday I’ll get around to posting a description of each obstacle. It was very impressive. My phone was still dead as a doorknob so you are spared pictures of the Boston Pizza/Dairy Queen feast that followed. Only one of us had run the obstacle course but we got hungry just watching them. 

 

 

Last week we continued to feast on the generosity of others but as can be expected of the second week of recovery, there is a sense of having been there, done that (the first week) and can we please get on with our lives already? Of course the reality is that I’m still running on hemoglobin light and need to sit my butt down every hour or so. We ate a lot of leftovers, had more than our share of “breakfast for supper” — by which we mean bagels and cream cheese, not crêpes Suzette flambé with maple buttercream — and was too run down to even grab my camera. On Sunday I decided to go whole hog and made pancakes…. Then I had to nap for 3 hours. 

   
 

What? Everyone doesn’t use two pans to make pancakes? These are the delicious apple oatmeal pancakes from Canadian Living. You can find the recipe here: http://m.canadianliving.com/#!/blog-food/apple-oatmeal-pancakes/5f7f8a1569c68f7aa516462f8d4e8dec We eat them topped with plain yogurt and maple syrup. This my friends, is the epitomy of comfort food in my books. 

In the absence of photo evidence, I thought I would share with you some of the meals and treats that friends have brought to us in the last two weeks. 

My friend Sue sent us this chorizo and sweet potatoes skillet and it was delicious. We had leftovers and it’s the kind of recipe that improves with age (until a certain point, don’t go and poison yourself on my account). I’m sure it would work with any kind of sausage meat that tickles your fancy. Or that happens to be on sale. 

My friend Sam brought us a whole bunch of things that are still in my freezer but one thing that didn’t bear to wait were those apple cinnamon muffins. Big hit. Big big hit. I may have eaten 3 in a row warmed-up and slathered with butter. 

(As an aside, if you decide to click on the apple muffins link, am I the only person who can’t stand recipe blog posts that have to post an ode to each ingredient before showing the recipe already? I promise that if I ever post my own recipes — which would involve writing them down and could actually be beneficial — it will only be with a short preamble. Like “this is what I make. My kids don’t hate it.” Bam!)

Sam also brought us some banana bread and we managed to improve on perfection by smothering it in Martha Stewart’s cream cheese frosting. I don’t have Sam’s banana bread recipe but here’s my personal favorite (in the non-chocolate-chipped category): Serious Eats Banana Oatmeal Bread. This one pairs exceptionally well with cream cheese frosting. When you find something that doesn’t, I’d like to hear about it. 

   

We buy cream cheese by the pallet at Costco, being bagel eaters of the first order. Sadly it means that I always have cream cheese on hand to make frosting. One thing that I never have on hand is confectioners sugar. Sadly, I discovered that sugar is sugar is sugar: put regular white sugar in the Nutribullet and in a whirl you have super fine sugar. Dang. 

  

Et voilà everyone, what we sort of ate last week.  Say cheese!

 

I recently read a beautiful blog post written by a mother of 6 and was inspired to write a similar manifesto of my own large family. I doubt that I can write as well as she does, I love how she includes the beauty of the ordinary in her hopes for her children, not only the great things they could accomplish directly but how simple lives well-lived could also change the world. To read the original before my poor imitation, please follow this link. (Do it!)
 This is my oldest daughter. I was 21 and unmarried when I got pregnant, right out of my first year of Law School. The doctor who confirmed the pregnancy told me that mothers in my situation usually ended-up poor, uneducated and single. My peers told me: “You’re not going going to keep it right?” I told my parents I was pregnant and they still loved me. I told my boyfriend I was pregnant and he still loved me. She was born with the sunrise on a Wednesday morning. I didn’t believe in God back then but when they placed her on my chest, I knew I had touched eternity. She was more than a birth control flub, more than an “it”, she was a person who had been meant from all times to be placed in my arms. A unique and timely mix of the right chromosomes, meeting at the right time, never made before, never to be made again. Clara opened my heart to a love that defied every other kind of love: a love devoid of self-interest, a love of the other for the other’s sake. She gave me a new heart and new eyes. And so I was made a mother and never looked back.
Our second child was conceived when our first was still a baby. Few people plan their children to be that close in age but we did. If we had started young, we would finish young and so he was born, 14 months after his sister, my little breechling. I don’t remember much about his first year beyond the shock of having a normal baby. My first one had prepared me for babies who slept through the night at 3 weeks and napped for 6 hours during the day. I fought him a lot in his early years, trying to make him sleep longer, nurse better, learn some darned independence already! Sleep training, schedules, methods, I read all the books, tried all the tricks. Thankfully this was before the Internet, blogs and social media. Until it hit me like a ton of brick when he was a toddler: he is not a mountain, standing tall and alone; he is a gregarious, engaging, people person. He taught me that “needy” babies are just people babies; and that loyalty, first expressed as a need to be in contact with his tribe, was an adult quality worth nurturing. Colin taught me to look beyond the challenges of early babyhood and use my imagination. And so he made me a better mother and I never looked back.
I was taking a prenatal yoga class when I realized that my third child was raising eyebrows. We were in the changing room when I mentioned my two oldest children and a fellow mother asked me if I had two boys or two girls. “One of each” I replied to which she asked, genuinely puzzled: “You have a boy and a girl and you still wanted a third?” And thus I boldly entered the world of nosy strangers and weird personal questions. “Was it planned?” asked me a stranger at the pharmacy. “After that you’re done, right?” told me countless well-meaning acquaintances. I tried to answer with confidence but deep down I was terrified and full of doubts. It would have been easier had those doubts not been unknowingly confirmed at every turn. She was born at home with the sunrise on a crisp winter morning, an easy and smiling baby who still needed more than I could give. Éloïse taught me that nothing is as easy as it looks and that the picture of perfection can hide deep fears and insecurities. And so she made me a better mother and I never looked back.
Our fourth child came at a time of great personal turmoil. I was struggling badly with 3 children, how could I ever handle a fourth I asked myself in tears one day. I thought I was done after the third. I had tried different kinds of hormonal birth control methods but they had left me suffering unbearable side-effects. After having my IUD removed for cause of blood bath, I had reluctantly embraced Natural Family Planning (NFP). Within a year of trying to learn the sympto-thermal method on my own, I was confused and pregnant. And so snarky comments about NFP joined indiscreet questions about our reproductive life and our intentions. “There’s a name for those who use NFP you know…” She was born quietly and peacefully in the middle of the night on the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God. Her name, Marie, had been chosen years before but she chose her birthday.  She was a beautiful, sensitive baby. Easily overstimulated, she needed peace and quiet to be content and so I became known to myself as the “nap witch” and wondered  if my irrational accesses of anger at every noise my children made would be remembered as the dominant theme of their childhood. I sunk into post-partum depression and self-destruction, turned away from my faith and dove straight for the bottom. Marie taught me that you can love your children fiercely while motherhood chews you up and spits you out. And so she opened my eyes and my heart to the pain of others, made me a better mother, and I never looked back.
My fifth child wasn’t supposed to be. I had proven my inability to climb past the highest mountain. I had run headlong into the wall of parenting  and smashed myself to smithereens. As a girl, I had dreamed of having five children but four would be all I could take. And yet, that fifth child was haunting me. One day we were walking on a snow covered sidewalk, my four children walking ahead of me in a single file, when the hole left by the missing fifth child engulfed me. I could never shake that image and the following summer, we conceived. There is a four year gap between our fourth and our fifth. That pregnancy worried those who knew me. It was too fast, not the right time, was I back on my feet, could my marriage take it? Most people doubted it. But in my own insecurities and fears, I was happy and serene. He was born between lunch and dinner on a beautiful spring afternoon. From my bedroom window I could see the sun shining and I could hear the birds sing and the snow melting off the roof. David thought me that you can stand taller than your fears, that you don’t have to listen to the little demon on your shoulder telling you that you can’t. He taught me that the first step, taken in vulnerability, is the most heroic but that the journey is healing. And so he made me a better mother and I never looked back.
I call my sixth child the undoing of all my pride. She ushered us in the realm of “real” big families, the crazies, those who reproduce to please a demanding God. “Are you doing this for spiritual reasons?” the lady behind the counter at the license bureau asked with unveiled curiosity, as if I could give a short answer as I held up the line with my fidgety children. “Are you Catholics?” strangers would ask with the tone reserved to heaping scorn. “My cousin is Catholic and she had her tubes tied” they would invariably add, as if I needed to be reminded that living the Church’s teachings on the theology of the body was a radical decision even amongst Catholics.  She was born with the sunrise but I never saw it, the curtains of the hospital room were shut tight as a crowd of medical personnel attended her difficult birth. From infancy, she was “more” than everyone else. She stretched me in every direction, made me a thinner, more flexible version of myself. We tried everything to make her sleep better, longer nights. Read all the books. Tried all the sleep training methods, including every cry-it-out method. And she cried but she never gave-up. And we cried. And we broke down. Sarah taught me that some children are just “more” of everything. We stopped trying to train her and started simply loving her as best we could. Nothing will ever be easy with Sarah but accepting her is half the battle. And so she taught me humility and acceptance and made me a better mother and I never looked back.
Our seventh and eighth children arrived as a combo. An earth-shattering twin tornado. One of my dear friends who has 10 children, including a pair of twins, has a knack for telling me things I don’t understand until later. Upon learning that we were expecting twins she exclaimed enthusiastically: “This is awesome! This will really make you put family first!” I was mildly offended: was she suggesting that as a mother of 6 I wasn’t putting family first already? Her words came back to me with their weight of wisdom after the twins were born. If we thought we were placing family first before, nothing had prepared us for the life-changing momentum the twins brought with them. As high functioning individuals, my husband and I are not often placed in front of our limits but suddenly, at 24 weeks when I was placed on bed rest, we were. We had to ask for help. We had to limit our commitments. We had to start saying no and knowing when to stop. Suddenly the futility and the long term risks of our affluent, debt-fueled lifestyle hit us like a ton of brick. We sold our house, paid-off our suffocating mortgage and our significant consumer debt-load and moved into a rental house to live according to our means. We eventually moved to the country and started homeschooling, two decisions made in their own right to slow down the pace, to focus on the essential. Lucas and Ève taught me that I only have one kick at the can in this lifetime and I have to make it worthwhile.
By the time I had given birth to the twins, the friends I had made when my oldest children were little had long stopped having children. When we made arrangements to meet for coffee, they would glance at my double stroller, my toddler and my preschooler and say: “Oh, you brought everyone…” like they had forgotten what life with little children was. “Better you than me” some would add with relief tinted with an appreciable amount of what-were-you-thinking. I found a new community of mommy-friends, young and old mothers, mothers who had children the age of my little ones, mothers of twins. I found a new village of contemporary parents who introduced me to peaceful, gentle parenting. Lucas and Ève taught me to always remember and honour where I came from but to be open to change. And so they made me a better mother and I never looked back.
Our baby number 9 existed as an idea long before we heard the first murmurs of his tiny life. He was “the baby after the twins”. “Imagine,” I told my husband, “having a baby just to laugh at how easy it is. Because we didn’t know how easy a singleton was until we had twins!” My friend, the mother of 10 who has a knack for telling me things I only understand in hindsight told me, just before I told her I was indeed pregnant: “Consider having another one. It will shift the focus off of the twins as this big life-changing event. It will make your life normal again.” And she was right. My family was worried about my health and my age but with the help of a naturopathic doctor and the attentive care of my midwife, my healthiest pregnancy welcomed me into my forties. Our ninth child was  born at home after lunch on Easter’s eve, peacefully, in the caul, after a short and easy labour. My midwife tucked me in and left me in the care of my family before going home to share an Easter meal with her family. Beauty and joy seeped all around us and joyfulness became our baby’s banner. He was the glue that held our family together through a difficult year of transition. Damien has brought me to a place of pure joy and delight in the beauty of my family. Seeing him put a smile on everyone’s face is the highlight of my days. He has taught me to see the beauty in the chaos, the calm in the eye of the storm. And so he made me a better mother and I never looked back.
Who was this little person, only as big as a grain of rice? When I started writing this post, it was meant to be an announcement for our Baby Number 10, due with the spring of 2016. Shortly before posting, I started to bleed and lost our baby at 12 weeks of gestation. The ultrasound showed only the remains of a 5-week embryo, the size of a grain of rice. Here’s what I had written:

“Even among large families, we’re getting larger than average. If you have a large family and you are tired of nosy questions and inappropriate comments, just get to 10: the news leaves people sufficiently aghast to allow for a quick escape. Still… “Exactly how many children do you want?” is a question I already heard several times, as if a family was a number you committed to . Exactly how much love is enough? I want to reply. Because now that I know how much I will love this new person, how can I say no? How can I close the door on someone who will stretch my horizon even wider? How much delight is too much? How much humility and hard work do I still need to become the best possible version of myself? Now that I am approaching my 42nd birthday and that my cycles are slowing down, my reproductive years are counted. I look forward to find out how this little person will weave itself into the fabric of our family, seamlessly yet uniquely. A new journey of self-discovery awaits and so he or she will make me a better mother and I won’t look back.”

Today, as I lay recovering from a very scary miscarriage and hemorrhage, I am reflecting on the journey of self-discovery that I thought awaited me and the real journey that lies ahead. Baby number 10 has ushered me into the community of mothers who have lost a little one to miscarriage, an unfortunately large community. It is a journey that I enter at my weakest. Empty-handed, empty-wombed, receiving someone else’s blood to keep me going. Stripped of my new identity as a mother of ten and half of my blood supply. I am battling conflicting emotions, exhaustion and trying to keep grief at bay. I know that I will need to let it wash over me at some point but not now, not when I am so weak. How will this tiny life I held for such a little time change me? I can’t even begin to imagine, but I know it will.

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Published on the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. 

“When the hand of death is laid upon those whom you love and your heart seems torn in two, climb to the Hill of Calvary to be consoled by the Mother of Sorrows who is also the Cause of Our Joy.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Man for All Media)

 

 

Answer Me This is the internet’s favorite virtual cocktail party where we all answer the same six random questions and get to know each other a little better. Originally hosted by Kendra at Catholic All Year, I invite you to post your answers in the comments or publish them on your own blog and post the link in the comments. Unless you just want to sit back, relax and read. That’s ok too. 
  
1. What’s currently on your To Do list?

I  not a list person. The only thing on my to-do list is to write a to-do list because the lack of sleep and exercise is finally getting to my brain. Sitting down to write a to-do list is the best way to obliterate any memory of what I need to do. Clean slate. If I manage to jot a few things down, I’ll forget I even have a to-do list. 

2. Better type of superhero: magic/radioactive powers? Or trauma/gadgets/hard work?

I am not well-versed in the world of Superheroes. In fact, I don’t really know any. I don’t watch TV, I rarely go to the movies, it’s just not my cup of tea. But from what I heard, I think I prefer the magic/radioactive powers. There is a scene in the movie Frozen — I know, not a superhero movie but bear with me — when Elsa and Anna’s parents bring the girls to the trolls after their games with Elsa’s magical powers turn deadly. The chief troll asks the parents: “Born or cursed?” meaning “was she born with her powers or did they come as the result of a curse?” I think that we all have gifts that sometimes feel like curses. Or gifts that we misuse and turn into curses. I am an introvert who moves slowly. I process my feelings inwardly and I abhor conflict. My husband is the quintessential “type A” personality. He can do more in 5 hours that I can do in 5 days. He is driven, energetic and decisive. I am mellow, consciensous and ambivalent. For many years, I saw him as a model to emulate. I felt inferior, I didn’t see my phlegmatic personality as a gift but a liability. I was unable to appreciate what it brought to the equilibrium of our family. It took me a long time to see that my temperament was a complement to my husband’s. That slowing him down was not a bad thing. That tempering the drive with a little human touch was creating a much more pleasant mix than pure unadulterated energy. The born or cursed superhero has to learn to use his gifts wisely, for the service of the good. Like us, he didn’t choose to be that way. In that, his struggle is a lot more relatable than that of the whiz kid superhero who tinkers his way to greatness. I often encourage mothers who are feeling inadequate because they are not able to keep the children entertained while keeping the fridge stocked and the house clean on their way to a volunteer board meeting. I tell them: “What if your gift was not to be supermom? What if it was not to run a successful business with 7 kids dressed to the nines and a pitch perfect Instagram account? What if it was to curl-up on the couch, read stories, forage for wild berries and look for weird spiders in the backyard?” What if you have an illness or your children have special needs and you are showing the world fortitude and and perseverance just by getting up? Can you make way cheerfully to the needs of others? Are you able to put people before things or accomplishments? These abilities  are gifts. If you don’t believe me, just ask the grown children of successful entrepreneurs and neat freaks, they’ll tell you. The trauma/gadget/ hard work superhero personifies one of today’s most popular attitude: the idea that all your dreams are within your reach if you only dream hard enough. This not only false, it’s not even that good an idea. If we all followed our dreams, there would be only artists and organic farmers and no one to pick-up the trash. The magic/radioactive powers superhero must choose to put his powers to good use, regardless of his dreams and aspirations. How much suffering would not have been relieved had Robin Hood been working at dreaming to be Superman? Not everyone was made for great things. Some of us were made to achieve little things with great love. And that’s ok too. 

  

3. Finding out if baby is a boy or a girl before birth: Good idea? Bad idea?

As a rule, we don’t find out. With exceptions. When my first four were little, we had 3 girls and a boy. My son once asked me:

– I’d really like if God would make you pregnant. Because I really want a baby brother. 

I answered: “You know, if I got pregnant it could be another girl.” To which he replied, incredulous:

– Why would God do *that*? 

When I did get pregnant, Colin wanted to know so badly that we indulged and found out. It was a very happy moment and I didn’t regret finding out. But I still prefer the surprise at birth. 

 

 
I also found out with the twins. The pregnancy was a big, shocking surprise. Finding out at 15 weeks that I was having twins was a big, shocking surprise. I was all surprised-out for 2011. I just wanted to know. 

With Damien, I found out by accident 2 days before he was born. I had an ultrasound and the technician, who knew I didn’t want to know, let it slip. She said: “He is going to be surrounded by so much love…” Then caught herself and said: “I mean he, like “the baby”…” I would never have noticed her slip had she not caught herself because the noun “baby” in French is a masculine noun (nouns have gender in French, did you know that?) but I left thinking “I think I’m having a boy.” I didn’t tell anyone else so my husband and children were still surprised. When Damien was born, my husband whispered “It’s a little boy!” in my ear and I thought “yup!” 

Two of my friends expecting twins kept the surprise. I really admired their self-control — because there are so many opportunities to ask when you have weekly ultrasounds! 

 

 
4. Have you ever appeared on a stadium jumbotron?

I haven’t but my oldest son has. When he was about 8 we went to Parliament Hill on Canada Day and he got the idea of seeking out the Jumbotron camera dude. That’s when we realized that he had a bit of a showman personality. It was all downhill from there (in a good way!).

5. Are you more book smart or more street smart?

That’s a funny question because I am a book-smartie who married a street-smartie. Almost 20 years later, I am more street-smart by association than I ever thought I could be. Still, my situational awareness is legendary, in the wrong sense. My husband recently moved the camping trailer we used as a base of operations during our house construction. It was located in the field immediately in front of our front door. I didn’t notice, even though I had been asking him to remove that eyesore from my field of view. I think I’m still more book-smartish. 

6. Have you had that baby yet? (Feel free to skip this one if it’s not applicable to you.)

Well, no. I’m not even pregnant. We hope to have some good news to share soon but that old body of mine seems to be closing shop early after 20 very intense years. I was chatting with my healthcare provider after an early loss last month (what they call a chemical pregnancy: peed on a stick, saw a faint line, got my periods 2h later). She was asking me if I wanted to do anything about it, specifically look into supplemental progesterone. And upon thinking about it, I decided that accepting not conceiving was the flip side of accepting unplanned pregnancies. Also, being unable to conceive when you are 41 and tandem breastfeeding your 8th and 9th children might actually be a wise thing. As in: my body might be telling me something. And I’m willing to listen.

 

 
Ya think getting pregnant could wait?