It’s the early morning hours on the Saturday following the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, and we’re back in Wisconsin at my in-laws after a chaotic few days.  I’m nursing a bit of a hangover and feeling thankful I passed out while putting our 3 kids to bed, instead of continuing in the revelry with my husband, Tim, and his siblings… As I get up to use the washroom (side note: the bathroom is now called the “washroom” since we moved to Toronto, Ontario about 3 months ago), Tim reminds me to take the pregnancy test.

I’m not really worried that I could actually be pregnant, I mean – it took some significant ovulation tracking and hormones to conceive and carry our last 2 boys, now aged 4 and 1.  But my cycles in the last few years have been sporadic at best, and since moving to Canada and needing to establish new healthcare support locally, I haven’t figured out a good way to sustain my birth control prescription.  And so, I didn’t.

And now I’m here – staring at this test, and there are two pink lines. Two. Freaking. Pink. Lines.  What the hell are we going to do?!  I quietly crawl back into the bed with my husband, careful to not wake the 1-year-old in the pack & play just a few feet away.  I share the news (“Fuck”) and we are both overwhelmed.  When we relocated a few months ago, from our home in Central Wisconsin to urban Toronto with 3 kids and 2 dogs, the concept of adding a 4^th baby was never, ever, a possibility.  We had made this move for my career – and were living in a new city without a support network.  Most days we already felt like we were sinking… and now there was this.  It honestly seemed like more than we could carry.

Briefly we did consider whether we could “carry” it – what would be best for us, our current family?  And so, we said nothing.  To anyone.  Once we made it back to our new home in Toronto, we needed to find a doctor.  We quickly discovered that we had a lot to learn about the new healthcare system in our adopted land.  As it turns out, you can’t get a lab-processed pregnancy test without a doctor.  You also can’t get an OBGYN (or any specialty care) without a referral from your primary care doctor.  And apparently finding a primary care physician who was accepting new patients was somewhat like moving mountains.  I felt desperate to confirm my at-home test… we didn’t even know how far along I might be.

Eventually I drove myself to the walk-in clinic closest to my office.  The nurse practitioner that I saw was very kind and helped explain the Canadian medical system to me… without a primary care physician, she could play that role – at least for now.  She helped give me the lab requisition forms I would need and shortly after called to verify what we already knew… I was pregnant.  It was still very early, only 5-6 weeks.  I had lots of options – if I wanted them. 

But by that point we knew.  While we weren’t sure we were cut out to raise 4 babies – that’s what we were going to do.  A friend of ours from back in Wisconsin had joked about having his third child… he told us that “kids were sort of like bratwurst… 2 wasn’t quite enough, but 3 was WAY too many.”  And now we were staring down a fourth?  Holy hell.  Grab the extra strength TUMS.

By the time we found an OBGYN that was accepting new patients for my estimated delivery month, I was into the second trimester.  The first visit to the OBGYN was another cultural difference between the healthcare environments we were used to in Wisconsin, which included very sterile, organized, quiet offices that were attached to a hospital, in most cases.  This OBGYN operated her practice out of a store front in a low-income strip mall – right next to a Coffee Time (think Dunkin’ Donuts and then take it down about 7 notches), a Value Village (Canada’s equivalent of Goodwill) and a discount grocery store.  My husband met me at the appointment, with Flynn, the 1-year-old, in tow and the tiny waiting room was bananas.  There were expectant moms and their partners and their toddlers everywhere – practically crawling the walls, or at least all over each other.  When we checked in for our appointment, the receptionist explained that, since the doctor had been on call at the hospital yesterday, they had to move all those appointments and so they were dealing with essentially double the volume.

Despite the setting and the chaos – the doctor was great.  Calm and professional.  Throughout the next several months she ordered the tests and the ultrasounds and monitored my progress with the same expertise and thoroughness we’d experienced anywhere.

We made arrangements for an induction as my body tended to hold onto my little ones and seemed to always need a slight nudge.  The hospital where we delivered was new and, in many ways, not dissimilar from where my other 3 children were born.  The main exceptions being:

1. The only station we could get on the TV in the delivery room was CP24 – basically a 24-hour news channel on steroids: with multiple tickers and picture-in-picture. Now the story of the night while I was labouring was about a major fentanyl tragedy which led to multiple deaths in Toronto; and the doctor on call that evening was not at all sympathetic.  Eventually I asked Tim to turn the soundtrack of the TV (and the doctor), OFF.
2. The only cost we would walk away from this entire maternity & birthing experience with was the $10 cable TV bill that we could sign-up for after moving into our recovery suite… a stark contrast to the roughly seven-thousand-dollar bill we received following the birth of Flynn (which was the remaining balance after the coverage from my very good corporate insurance plan). 

Right around 2 am on July 30, Alistair James Burnett – our little Canadian, made his debut.  And he was perfect – all 7 lbs, 9 oz and 20 inches of him.  Another nuance of the Canadian medical system was that circumcisions, being an elective procedure, were not covered by the Provincial Health Plan.  Luckily, that same doctor who delivered Ali (who had been very unsympathetic toward the fentanyl addicts), was quick to offer his services.  He gave me his card and said he performed circumcisions at his practice, recommending that I bring little Ali J there in about 5 days.  He told me to come at 8 am sharp and bring $150 cash.  And so, I did.  But that’s another story…

In the end, our family grew by 1 more member and infinitely more love (and tears), joy (and exhaustion), sibling moments that would melt your heart (and many that would drive you to madness).  While I can’t imagine eating 4 bratwursts… I can say that 4 kids are way too many, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.