Third-time mom-to-be Alanis Morissette-Treadway sat down with Self magazine writer Nicole Cliffe for an in-depth interview on pregnancy, labor, delivery and achieving motherhood in her 40s after infertility.
She and hubby, Mario “Souleye” Treadway, are parents to 8-year old son, Ever Imre Morissette-Treadway, and almost 3-year old daughter, Onyx Solace Morissette-Treadway, but getting there was not easy.
The “You Outghta Know” singer shared that she had always wanted a family of three but had a rough go at it.
“Between Ever and Onyx there were some false starts,” she said in the interview. “I always wanted to have three kids, and then I’ve had some challenges and some miscarriages so I just didn’t think it was possible.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, 10 to 20 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage and as Cliffe pointed out, “as a society have only recently (so recently!) begun to be more open to discussing miscarriages and reproductive struggles in general,” sharing an email communication where Morisette wrote about her pregnancy losses: “I […] felt so much grief and fear. I chased and prayed for pregnancy and learned so much about my body and biochemistry and immunity and gynecology through the process. It was a torturous learning and loss-filled and persevering process.”
The singer calls herself an overplanner and took over the goal and task to have a family by researching and doing everything possible to make it happen.
“I had done tentacles of investigation on everything, from hormones to physicality, every rabbit hole one could go down to chase answers,” she told Cliffe. “I have different doctors who laugh at the thickness of my files. So, for me I’ve tried every different version from heavily self-medicating, to formal allopathic medications, to now.
“I’m also an over-preparer for those things,” I told her. “I always get that dreaded question, in the first meeting: Do you have a medical background?, at which point I have to be like ‘No, I just want to know.’ I want to know things, I’m curious.”
She gave birth to her first two children at home, with Ever’s lasting 36 hours in total, with 12 hours of intensity. Wowza!
With each, the “You Learn” singer says she suffered from Post Partum Depression:
“For me I would just wake up and feel like I was covered in tar and it wasn’t the first time I’d experienced depression so I just thought Oh, well, this feels familiar, I’m depressed, I think,” she said. “And then simultaneously, my personal history of depression where it was so normalized for me to be in the quicksand, as I call it, or in the tar. It does feel like tar, like everything feels heavy.”
For the remainder of the interview, she opened up about her “birth stories” and motherhood in a fascinating way. READ IT IN ITS ENTIRETY HERE!
Photo: courtesy Self; Steph Wilson. Wardrobe styling by Kirby Marzac. Hair by Dimitri Giannetos at The Wall Group. Makeup by Kayleen McAdams at Starworks. Manicure by Whitney Gibson at Tomlinson. On Alanis: Top by Paco Rabanne. Jeans by Levis. Earrings by Leigh Miller.