My inspiration

I have thought about starting a food blog a few times, but never did.

I get it, it's kind of weird that my first article isn't about food. I swear it will come! But let's say that this little angel in the photo is the reason for my motivation to have a project of my own, on which to focus my energy.

I need to occupy my mind and I like to write. This has become obvious to me in the past few weeks.

There is no good way to announce this, I lost my baby boy, Alexandre, five days after he was born. It shouldn't have happened, it happened anyway.

Baby (we didn't know the sex during the pregnancy, I like surprises too much!) was in great health, I had a wonderful pregnancy with moments of stress but without any real complications. I had the natural birth I wanted (although I gave birth in the hospital contrary to the birthing center's original plan and was induced, I will probably come back to this in another article). There was no panic before, everything was going normally, it was when the baby came out that the worst drama of my life began. Baby was in respiratory arrest and we will learn later that he lacked oxygen for so long that his brain was severely damaged, leaving nothing of our little baby. Chance of life, he survived with the good care of the medical team in place and was transferred to Ste-Justine Hospital, where everything was done to preserve his brain function.

I don't know where I would be if I had to live with the terrible shock of his death in childbirth.

Baby Alexandre was strong, he survived for five days. Five days that my boyfriend Michael and I decided to see as gifts. We took advantage of every moment with Alexandre to imprint the image of his little body in our heads, caressing his skin, smelling his baby scent. We were able to holdhim in our arms on day 4, when we had confirmation that there was nothing more to do and that we would have to let him go the next day.

The day of his death was the saddest day in the world but also the most beautiful. That morning was the first time I managed to take the time to have a shower since giving birth. We were getting ready and we just wanted to dress up for our son, for his last day. We were going to ironically celebrate his life through death and I think we succeeded because this day was a beautiful celebration in his honor.

We stuck to him for hours and it’s in his dad's arms that he flew away, peacefully. We were then able to have a specialized photographer who came on site to forever immortalize the images of our beautiful boy, to have memories of his fingerprints, to cuddle him a little more.

I don't know where this strength comes from. Since he left, my heart is literally broken. But at the same time, my boyfriend and I said to each other that we didn't want to let ourselves be plunged into darkness. That we would visit it but that we didn’t want to stay in that mindset. We had lots of projects going on that we wanted to build for our family and now, it's as if Alexandre has become an even greater motivation to set this in motion. I want to draw inspiration from him, from his strength, to accomplish my dreams.

And it starts here, for me, a place to express myself, to share what turns me on, my feelings. But always with the angle of seeing the beauty in life. There's good in every day, even when it's really hard to see it.

Everyday Umami!