Call me Maman

 Anxiety and depression. Taboos right? Something you don’t talk about. Yet so many suffer from these, me included. I first suffered from anxiety at 11 years old. My dad had just died a couple of months before. I was too young to take “real” medication for it so the doctor gave me antihistamines and I went to see a psychologist once a week. I think I saw her for a year maybe. Years went by. Then after our second son I had postpartum depression. He was born 6 weeks too soon and I had spent 2 weeks laying in the hospital bed because my water broke. It was too much I guess. Our first son was only 20 months old at the time and needed a lot of attention as well. I don’t remember much from this time period, it went by fast and in a fog. I did take for the first time light medication for it but not for long.  We moved to France at one point and I wanted to see an English speaking psychologist. Found one but only went a couple times because it was way too expensive and not refunded by ...

 Say what? I know, when we first heard those words we didn’t understand it either. I said I would tell you more about our only daughter so here it goes. We were overjoyed when we found out that we were going to have a girl. Our first daughter. My husband jumped from his seat to kiss me when the doctor doing the scan said “C’est une fille!”. Amazing, a girl. Finally. Most of you would say it doesn’t matter as long as the baby is healthy. It’s very important yes but we already had 3 boys. That’s a lot of boys.  The doctor said that we would have to come back in few days, that he was having hard time taking all the measurements because of her position. Okay no problem we said. We went home and told the good news to our boys and my mother-in-law. Everyone was expecting a boy. What a miracle.  So we went for a new scan again. Still trouble seeing everything so he suggested we’d come back in few days. But no worries, everything is fine. I got to see my daughter three times inst...

  So I’m 40 years old, have five kids, two dogs (soon three), two cats and a husband. Living in the suburbs of Paris in a HLM. HLM is French for “habitation à loyer modéré”,  basically housing with moderate rent. We walk a cross the street and we are in Paris. Pretty cool right? Well it is, most of the times. If you don’t live in Paris you probably have this idea of Paris, little bit like Netflix’s new series “Emily in Paris”. Well it’s not quite like that. But I still love Paris don’t get me wrong. There is only one Paris. So how long have I been in here? More than 13 years, well at least in this appartement.  40 years old and five kids. I know, you must be thinking WTF who has that many kids nowadays. No, we are not religious and yes they all have the same father. He’s 42 and French. Here you go, now you know why we are in France. Oh but I forgot to tell you that I’m not French. I’m from Espoo, Finland. Yes from the land of Joulupukki ( Santa Claus is you rather) and no...