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Jumeaux: L’histoire bien ordinaire de deux bébés en santé — L’annonce

~ Veronique ~ Leave a comment

Je n’avais pas planifié de tomber enceinte. Depuis quelques semaines, je manquais d’énergie et je me réveillais parfois la nuit avec des maux de cœur. C’était assez pour me mettre la puce à l’oreille mais pas assez pour me convaincre de passer un test de grossesse. Puis j’ai commencé à être en retard. J’étais nerveuse mais l’anxiété à l’idée d’être à nouveau enceinte m’empêchait d’aller passer un test de grossesse. Après une semaine de retard, je me suis dit que si j’étais effectivement enceinte tout ce que j’allais accomplir en repoussant le test de grossesse était de ne pas avoir de sage-femme. En Ontario, les sage-femmes ne répondent pas à la demande et les listes d’attentes sont longues. Mon mari était en voyage d’affaire. J’ai pris mon courage à deux mains et je me suis arrêtée à la pharmacie en revenant d’être allée conduire les enfants à l’école, avant de partir au travail. J’ai fait ma petite visite à la toilette et voilà, c’était confirmé. J’ai envoyé un texto à mon mari: appelle-moi, ce n’est pas urgent mais c’est important. Il a su tout de suite. J’étais en route pour le travail lorsqu’il a appelé, en train de contourner le monument commémoratif de guerre devant de Château Laurier.

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A life well-lived

~ Veronique ~ 4 Comments

Pour mes lecteurs francophones: cette publication traite du décès récent de Geordie Henry, un jeune garçon atteint de paralysie cérébrale dont la courte vie a touché de nombreuses familles.

 

In 2006 I went back to University to get a Master’s degree in Law with a specialization in biomedical ethics. My Master’s thesis was on informed consent in neonatal intensive care.  I spent some time in NICU, both in Montreal and Ottawa, observing the decision-making process involving severely sick or impaired newborns, their parents and their medical caregivers.It’s never long before any discussion of neonatal bioethics veers into neonatal euthanasia or the killing of severely disabled newborns. After all, Canada’s abortion laws — or absence thereof — allows abortion until the baby is born alive and viable. Some have made the argument that a passage through the birth canal shouldn’t be such a big deal. Parents who would have been allowed to abort their disabled baby until the previous day should be allowed to request euthanasia once their child is born and the disability discovered. Think this argument is far-off? It’s been made in court, at least in the U.S. I couldn’t find a link — can’t remember the name of the case — but parents in the U.S. did sue a hospital to request that life-sustaining treatment be denied to their impaired newborn. Their principal argument was that had they know of their child’s trisomy, they would have requested an abortion and it would have been fine (true enough). Even here in Canada, a recent court decision imposing a suspended infantice sentence to a mother found guilty of killing her newborn son mentioned that:

The fact that Canada has no abortion laws reflects that “while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childrbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support,” she writes.

This “sympathy” for the challenges of motherhood not only informs our tolerance of abortion but furthermore — according to this judge — our tolerance of abortion informs our tolerance of newborn infanticide.

This is a rather long preamble to say that discussions of neonatal euthanasia are never far below the surface of neonatal ethics. There is a sense, no doubt rooted in compassion, that some lives are not worth living, that some infants are better off dead. We have an uneasiness with what we perceive to be lives of suffering and as difference is slowly but surely erased through prenatal screening and abortion, we grow-up and grow-old without the experience of loving and caring for a disabled child (our’s or that of a close one).

All these thoughts came back to me over coffee this morning as I wiped tears reading the obituary for Geordie Henry in the Ottawa Citizen. Geordie’s disability was pervasive:

Geordi, then 12, was born with severe cerebral palsy, scoliosis, microcephaly – an abnormally small skull – and a seizure disorder. Because his muscles were tighter than violin strings and his hips were dislocated, he did not bend.

I’m sure that the medical staff had many discussions about Geordie’s prognosis for an acceptable quality of life. I’m sure that some even thought that he may be better off dead. But his story shows, as so many others do, that even lives of suffering have purpose. The purpose may not be to accomplish great things but to draw others to greatness. Too often the beauty and generosity lay dormant in people until something or someone stirs it up, a little like chocolate syrup at the bottom of a glass of milk. It takes people like Geordie to give purpose not only to their own lives but to so many others!

Thank you Geordie for a life well-lived.

Light Blogging – Ralentissement

~ Veronique ~ Leave a comment

Ralentissement forcé causé par un méchant streptocoque et 5 jours de misère fièvreuse. Fatigue oblige: il fallait que ça arrive. Mais grâce au miracle de la médecine moderne (les antibiotiques) et une bonne dose de chouchoutage par ma maman chérie, je me remets d’aplomb.

Light blogging ahead due to a mean streptococcus and 5 days of febrile misery. Fatigue does take its toll. But thanks to the miracle of modern medicine (antibiotics) and a strong dose of mothering from my own very best mother, I am getting back on my feet.

Accommodements festifs

~ Veronique ~ Leave a comment

J’ai terminé mon magasinage des Fêtes aujourd’hui et j’aimerais célébrer cette occasion importante en partageant quelques réflexions de circonstance. J’espère que je pourrai le faire avec clareté. Que voulez-vous? On ne peut pas manquer de sommeil pendant trois mois sans que le cerveau y passe. J’ai démoli le rétroviseur de ma van en reculant trop près d’une colonne de béton. Au moins, mal écrire ne coûte rien. (devinez ce que je vais recevoir pour Noël? J’ai donné la permission à mon mari d’emballer le rétroviseur.)

L’approche des Fête apporte avec elle deux phénomènes contemporains à la fois complémentaires et mutuellement exclusifs: les appels à la tolérance et à l’intolérance religieuse, accompagnés de myopie institutionelle de saison. D’un côté on appelle à la co-existence, prouvant son progressisme par des directives aussi inutiles que mal avisées. De l’autre on envoie le bras d’honneur aux immigrants en leur disant de retourner chez-eux s’ils ne sont pas capable de voir un sapin de Noël (Vous pensez que j’exagère? Merci Facebook pour les status copié-et-recollé-si-vous-êtes-d’accord-et -que-vous-connaissez-quelqu’un-qui-est-vivant-aujourd’hui-parceque-vous-êtes-trop-pauvre-pour-engager-un-tueur-à-gage). La magie de Noël est graduellement remplacée par la stupidité de Noël, et la descente s’accélère à chaque année. Allez lire et relire “Mon beau sapin” de Pierre Foglia, ça vous mettra dans l’ambiance.

Mettons une chose au clair. Les immigrants et les minorités religieuses (ce par quoi je désigne ceux qui ne sont ni rien du tout, ni d’origine vaguement judéo-chrétienne) n’ont rien à voir avec les sensibilités politiquement correctes des adeptes de la Tolérance. Ce ne sont pas des musulmans qui se plaignent des sapins de Noël à Service Canada. Les directrices d’école qui annulent les spectacles de Noël dans les écoles publiques ne sont pas juives observantes. Les fonctionnaires du Ministère de la Famille qui interdisent le symbolisme religieux dans les garderies à 5$ ne sont pas des extrêmistes religieux. Ce serait plutôt le contraire: regardez autour de vous, parmis vos connaissances, sur votre page Facebook, dans votre compte Twitter. Les gens qui s’indignent qu’on leur souhaite joyeux Noël et qui montent religieusement leur sapin festif, se sont des  canadiens de souche qui ont tourné le dos à la religion de leurs parents et qui démontrent par leur indignation leur manque de tolérance et de compréhension envers leurs propres traditions. Seulement, ç’a l’air moins hargneux quand on le fait enveloppé dans le drapeau de la tolérance.

Bien que canadienne et blanche, je crois pouvoir parler au nom de ceux qui pratiquent les rituels et enseignements de leur foi. J’ai 8 enfants. Je crois que la vie commence à la conception. Je considère que ma fertilité est une chose positive et non une maladie qui doit être éliminée à l’aide de médicaments et d’appareils. J’ai en apparence plus en commun avec une femme musulmane couverte des pieds à la tête qu’avec la plupart des femmes de mon âge. Je vis au Canada où je suis heureuse de pouvoir vivre librement de manière aussi rétrograde que je le désire (quoique je ne me trouve pas rétrograde… en fait, je me trouve plutôt avant-gardiste. C’est comme les prénoms: ça devient tellement vieux que ça revient à la mode!). Bref, je crois que les minorités culturelles et religieuses au Canada et particulièrement les immigrants, sont heureuses de pouvoir pratiquer en paix. Je serais surprise d’apprendre que le sapin de Noël, aujourd’hui plus associé aux excès de surconsommation qu’au bébé Jésus, les menace d’une manière ou d’une autre. Ce ne sont pas les immigrants qui ont sortis Jésus de la crèche, on l’a fait nous-mêmes.

Et pendant qu’on angoisse sur les sapins chez Service Canada et les crèches dans les garderies, un père à l’honneur blessé envoie la moitié de sa famille, incluant sa première épouse dans un mariage polygame et abusif, au fond des écluses à Kingston Taliban-style. Un long dossier d’abus et de peur tel que rapporté aux autorités par les trois jeunes victimes est clos prématurément et sans explication. On spécule aujourd’hui que c’était par sensibilité à la différence culturelle.

Est-ce qu’on peut se sortir le nez des guirlandes et s’occuper des vrais problèmes?

Yoga pants

~ Veronique ~ 1 Comment

My oldest daughter is 15. Last weekend, her school band teacher organized a music retreat complete with master classes, section sessions and the dreaded sleepover. Her band teacher is excellent. The music program at her school is top notch. When I go to their concerts I always get all choked-up:  I have excellent memories of high school music class. We also had a few “music retreats” although there wasn’t much music during our nuit blanche. They were strictly a team building exercise where much nerdy fun was had. In my days, only the nerds played music. Now it’s cool. At bed time we would pull blue mats out of the gymnasium’s storage unit and crash all co-ed on the floor. Two male teachers, music and English, would sleep over and we would all head to the greasy spoon next door first thing in the morning for some bacon and eggs. I’m sure the teachers had some coffee too.

(Open parenthesis: weren’t those the days eh? When two male teachers could supervise a mixed sleepover party at school? Now, at my kids’ elementary school a few years ago, the custodian was the only male staff. Everyone else was female. My 2nd-grader would come home literally groaning in pain from needing to go pee day after day. One day on the drive home I told him: “Why don’t you go pee just before the end of class? This way you can make it home”. He answered that he never went to the toilet at school because the stalls didn’t lock properly and the older kids would barge in and pull you out as you did your business. Nice. I went and talked to someone about it and was told that this was going on in the male bathroom and there was no male staff to enforce discipline in the male bathroom. In other words, unless the custodian was handy, those kids could have been snorting cocaine in the boys bathroom, no female teacher would dare walk in there and chance a disciplinary hearing. That’s brat power for you. Close parenthesis)

As far as team-building goes, this may sound self-serving in light of what’s coming later in this post, the sleepovers were fun but nothing more. Massed bands concerts and band competitions, when we got to work, anticipate and sweat together were far more instrumental in building team spirit than watching scary movies and eating chips late in the night in band class. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter whether this was the be-all-end-all of team building because our family has a strict rule against sleepovers in any way, shape or form. Our daughter was going to participate in the music retreat but be excused from the sleeping part. I’ll let you guess how this went over.

I will not replay the (many) conversations we had with our daughter on the subject but they replayed themselves on a call-in show following the decision by a local high school to — as it was reported — ban yoga pants as part of the school’s dress code.

One of my daughter’s complaint on the unfairness of the sleepover rule was that parents would be supervising the retreat and that everybody else was allowing it. A local call-in show was asking parents what they thought of the yoga pants ban and spray-painted-on apparel. One after the other, parents were repeating variations of the same platitudes about how “Teens are gonna do what teens are gonna do” and “We did the same thing at their age”. In other words, there is nothing we can do about it. Girls are going to wear inappropriate, revealing, clothing and boys are going to be turned-on by it and that’s the way the world goes round. Banning yoga pants is not going to change anything so why bother? And I’m supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy that some of these similar-themed parents are supervising the sleepover retreat? So when Jimmy and Jessica decide to go find  a quiet spot somewhere will they brush it off as “Teens are gonna do what teens are gonna do” and “We did the same thing at their age”?

Being a teenager is not an end-state. It’s a transition to adulthood. I often joke that toddlers and teenagers are surprisingly similar: self-centered with poor impulse-control, an unrefined sense of fairness and a complete unawareness of their limitations. Teenagers have one foot still firmly set into childhood and the other in their future. Teens will challenge and push limits, this is their job. But if pushing is the defining feature of teenage-hood we are not helping them by removing what they are pushing against. Growing into adulthood and responsibilities is not learning to live without limits but learning to manage them. As a parent, my job is to form and to educate and this is achieved by giving teenagers something to push against, like a tutor on a tomato plant. And of course, as teenagers grow in age and wisdom and as they show their judgement to be trustworthy, limits gradually evolve. Some of them are removed, others morph into something else. And others will remain for the rest of their lives, hopefully.

I am not raising teens. I am raising adults. It takes a lot of work, self-awareness and constant re-evaluation. Some days I suck at it.  But this is the game of parenthood. Play ball.

Such a Chore Part 2: Getting kids there

~ Veronique ~ Leave a comment

I promised a series in a few parts on kids and chores. This second part on how to get kids to perform their assigned chores should come with two caveat.

Parenting advice often come through a bit condescending and when written by parents with real-life children, it often makes the children look perfect. My children are not perfect and they do not enjoy chores more than I do. They sometimes resist or completely ignore my requests. On a bad day, I may even get attitude. I don’t live in chores Wonderland.

The second caveat is, as with every parenting advice, your mileage may vary. Different families have different dynamics and different personalities. No parenting advice is a slam-dunk. Ever. You should read this post as a testimony more than a road-map. This is how I get my toilets cleaned once a week with 8 children and no cleaning service.

(Oh, and I was asked to specify that I would be nothing without my husband. I am neither a neat-freak nor a well-organized person. Paul is the list-maker and the task-assigner and the brain-thrust behind that whole chore business. )

Chores come in different brands and flavours. Some must be performed daily, others weekly. In our family, daily chores include pet maintenance, waste management, meals-related chores such as setting the table and emptying the dishwashers. I should also add “baby-chase” which is the chore that befalls the child responsible for following Sarah’s every step and preventing any inspired-by-Sarah chaos. I won’t get into the kind of trouble Sarah gets into, that would be a post in and of itself (and you wouldn’t believe me anyway). I am not including as chores personal hygiene, lunch-making and any other self-serving tasks that the kids have to perform whether they like it or not. I define chores as “family work”: tasks that must be performed for the family or as part of making the family work.

1. The Set-Up: We (meaning Paul but we’re really big on parental unity here so bear with me.) “We” have a list of daily and weekly chores printed and posted where everyone can see it.

Now it’s been there so long that nobody sees it anymore but whenever a child needs a reminder, we refer  to the list. We also have a trusted white board that has given me much grief and aggravation at work because once you start working with a white board you just. can’t. stop. I have a really nice white board at work and people visit my office just to write stuff on it. On Saturday morning, we <cough> write down the chores list for the day on the white board.

2. The Assignment: Try to choose chores that match your child’s personality and interests. Much has been written about choosing age-appropriate chores but you can also increase your chances of success by asigning chores wisely. For instance, my oldest daughter has more interest in looking after the animals than her brother. It may not always be possible: computer maintenance and upgrade does not need to happen every week and my son has no natural interest in taking out the trash daily. And yet…

2. The Warm-up: Manage your expectations. Children do not see dirt and chaos like we adults do.  If you are only starting to put your children at contribution around the house, you will be disappointed to realize that getting tangible results requires a time investment equal or superior to performing the task yourself, plus some added aggravation and mental strain. You may also be disappointed to realize that children are not born knowing how to sanitize a toilet. “Thorough cleaning” is in the eye of the beholder.

3. The Execution: 3.1 Show them how it’s done. Children are not born knowing how to clean a toilet or operate a washing machine. We often tend to leave children with a chore (clean-up the bathroom) without telling them what it means. If you expect your 12 year-old son to know he must wipe the inside of the toilet seat, you will be sorely disappointed. When I introduce a new chore, I do it once or twice with the children. Then they do it once or twice with me. Then I write it down and post it. Some children don’t need the list, others have fights over it (“It says clean tub before clean sink!!!”; “It doesn’t matter as long as we don’t clean the toilet first!!!”; “We can clean the toilet first if we don’t re-use the rag to clean the sink!” ; “I cleaned the toilet with your toothbrush!!!”) but it does the job.

3.2 Don’t do it for them but make sure they do it. Children are masters of passive resistance.  They also have a knack for finding the shortest route between A and B. Add the two, multiply by the number of children and you’ve got yourself doing your children’s chores for them (or dealing with a public health disaster).

3.3 Make them come back to finish it. That’s important so they know you mean it. It seals it for the next time and makes sure there is no erosion of quality over time: kids, especially teenagers, will naturally revert to the path of least resistance. So make sure you apply resistance consistently.

3.4 Nothing happens until the chores are done. This is counter-intuitive for busy women because whether we are a stay-at-home mom or a working-for-a-paycheque mom, we are constantly reminded by advice columns to take time for ourselves and that work won’t run away. But your children need to learn how to work before they can learn how to take a break. This may take more discipline from the parent than the children. Case in point: my daughters needed to go to the shopping centre to pick-up a birthday gift for a birthday party later that day. We warned them that chores had to be finished before we could leave the house. As the morning went by, it became increasingly likely that they would have to go to the birthday party gift-less. Now, do I want to be the mom whose kids show-up at a birthday party empty-handed? No. I really had to sit on my hands that day. But the chores were done and we had time to pick-up a gift.

Family is where children learn work ethics and the value of a job well-done. Chores are one way to get them there.