Alanis morissette how many children

Maybe she had postpartum depression with her first and is scared it might happen again. Skip to main content. Follow us email facebook twitter pinterest instagram youTube rss. Alanis with her youngest son, Winter. Because people make very different choices around that with home birth. Pushing solo had never been the plan. But then her midwife was delayed, and Alanis had to simultaneously manage her husband and also help him manage her.

Logistics had to be accomplished, the wave had to be ignored, and Souleye still had to go unlock the damn door so the midwife could join them.

And yet, while things got increasingly scary, Alanis felt like she somehow weirdly, beautifully, became her own doula. She spoke to herself like a coach would, reassuring words like "she's coming, you don't have to manipulate anything, the next contraction she's coming out, I guarantee it.

And then, when all else failed and the terror took over, Souleye was able to get on the phone with the midwife and repeat her words to Alanis. Alanis has previously been open about her experiences with postpartum depression, but I wanted to really get at not just the two bouts she had already fought, but also her plan for tackling it when she gives birth again in a few months.

And she did. She waited a long time. Too many people associate PPD uniquely with the latter and dismiss the other manifestations of the illness , allowing it to dig in deeper. For Alanis, it manifested as a familiar heaviness. It does feel like tar, like everything feels heavy. In an instance of truly disastrous timing, Alanis was starting to tour while still in the grips of her struggles post-Ever, which she thought would help snap her out of it, but of course did no such thing.

I know! I have said to my friends, I want you to not necessarily go by the words I'm saying and as best as I can, I'll try to be honest, but I can't personally rely on the degree of honesty if I reference the last two experiences.

I snowed a lot of them as I was snowing myself [the last two times]. As you are no doubt aware, what in a best case scenario happens after bearing a child is signing a few pieces of paper, and then being left with a brand-new human being, with far less guidance than had you just picked up a mutt at the Humane Society.

And if you felt yourself pushed back into the past, or triggered or renewed by the process of pregnancy, parenting a child makes all of that look like a picnic in the park with strawberries and cream.

Sometimes a little of both. Your first child is a great sleeper not because you were a Good Mom, but because your first child was just a good sleeper. Your first two children get along well not because you set them up for success; they just like each other, and if you bring in a third, the whole system may fall apart. Your new career as an unpaid litigator who also needs to remember dentist appointments is not without its stressors. Somewhat surprisingly, Alanis took to the challenge of raising two children with both joy and familiarity.

Our whole philosophy is win-win or there's no deal. Or it's win-win or we're not done. Souleye, Onyx, Ever, and I—all four of us win. And that takes a minute. She said this, and I believe it because she said it, but I also do not believe it is possible in my life—maybe it is in yours? Keep the faith. Maybe we can all win. Alanis spoke of her family as a four-person unit, any conflict resolution requiring full buy-in.

I mean, what else is there? I found myself imagining if I could, or should, incorporate that into my own parenting, or whether I should have spent more time developing an ethos of parenting in the first place, instead of just trying to solve problems as new ones constantly roll down the conveyor belt, like Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory. Alanis also said that she tries to parent her children with their empathy and sensitivity front of mind. Those weren't conversations being had 44 years ago.

What I really wanted to ask, what I want to ask every parent I know, is about the transition from being not-a-parent to being a parent. Alanis said she related to this experience, to a degree. But when I look at them, I just think I'm so responsible for you. Feed, clean, hold. Where does bacon come from? In an ideal world, in a dream world, you would have the ability to carve out for each child an opportunity to feel so safe and present with you, and free of all other activities, and let that space become an organic home for the Big Stuff obviously much easier for affluent, white parents to achieve, as is so much of what we talked about.

For Ever and Alanis, the connection that makes space for the big questions is being outside together. It's my dream. And thus, we come to Souleye, who as a partner has helped build a life with Alanis in which such a dream can be realized. So there's nothing unfamiliar about [our situation for him]. What he does focus on, and what Alanis focuses on, is the concept of provisioning. Can you read your partner well enough to know what you need to provide for them before they have to ask for it?

He's with the kids right now, that's a huge provision. Especially around pregnancy, if I need something at any given time, if at 4 p. Which, of course, led us to the question of Modern Society. And so we're interestingly dissecting that right now, which is no small thing because it's personal but also cultural, it's existential, it's evolutionary.

We have to take in history. How and where? Making sure there's doors that go out behind our house so there's a little area with a little gazebo here Maybe pin-drop silence right now is the key.

Or it might be hey, being pure presence with my daughter right now is the key. Of course, miscarriages are devastating when you want to be pregnant, but unfortunately they happen to so many people. It's so hard to lose one pregnancy after another, as Morisette explains: "We were chasing and just showing up and then [experiencing the] surprises and then devastations and all of it.

But she kept holding on to hope: "I'm an optimist who will get depressed and cry, but at the end of the day, there's still that little light, that little star of Bethlehem keeps dangling over there. And while Morissette and her husband, rapper Mario "Souleye" Treadway, didn't have kids back-to-back, their family dynamics do come with some unexpected bonuses. According to a study out of the University of Notre Dame , a gap of at least two years between children is linked to better academic outcomes for the older siblings.