Odette's Separate Peace

Odette grew up in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, a French Canadian town on the Maine border.  She recalls hearing very specific counsel from the pulpit and very memorable talk among grown women:  a woman should never refuse her husband lest he be tempted to stray; the man should not withdraw, catching his discharge in a hankie or the bed sheet; each baby should be accepted gladly, not to do so is cheating a gift from God.  She feels the Church was motivated to produce more babies to swell the Catholic population.  In spite of breastfeeding, her mother had three babies in the first three years of marriage.  The family lived on a farm, the young husband gone for many months at a time in the woods.  Then the priest on his yearly visit told Odette’s mother that she needn’t go on to have a baby every year.  He told her there were times of the month when she was fertile and times when she wasn’t.  To Odette’s mother, who grew up without a mother to counsel her and had no notion of ovulation, this was all news.  She began using rhythm and went five and one half years before having another child.

What the priest told Odette’s mother, Odette never heard from the pulpit.  The priest was a holy man and what he said was law.  Women did not get together to discuss these things over coffee.  Any rebellion was secretive.  The midwife herself had 16 children.  Large families were the norm.

When Odette got married her mother told her, “When we were young, we had big families, but I can’t see it today.”  Odette says her mother considered that she had a good life.  She had eleven live births and three miscarriages.  After the first three babies, the others were three to four years apart.

Soon after the Pill came in, Odette’s mother’s doctor prescribed it for her.  She had had a baby in the hospital and nearly bled to death.  She started on the Pill, but reported to her doctor that it gave her headaches.  “That’s your conscience talking,” the doctor said.  “Take an aspirin.”  She did go on eventually to have three more children; so perhaps she stopped taking the Pill.

Or maybe the Pill didn’t work.  Odette’s aunt had seven children, all while using birth control.  “If she’s ovulating you can’t stay away from her,” her husband said.  “If she’s wearing a brown dress, look out!”

Some women, of course, are not designed to have a baby every year.  One of Odette’s sisters had two kids, didn’t use birth control and never got pregnant again.

After Odette’s first baby was born, and after talking the matter over with her sisters, she got fitted for a diaphragm.  She did not tell her husband until afterwards.  When the baby was ten months old, they had to leave him overnight in the hospital.  This made them feel they wanted another child and Odette abandoned the diaphragm.  After the second baby they used condoms.  After one broke and Odette found it necessary to douche in the middle of the night, she started using the Pill.  First she went to confession.  “Father,” she said, “This is Odette.  I am going to start taking the pill.”

“I can’t give you permission to do that,” the priest said.  “Rome and the Pope don’t allow it.” 

Odette noticed that he hadn’t actually forbidden her.  If he had, she says now, she would have stayed away from Church rather than have a third baby right away.  "I told my confessor that the Pope should stay out of my bedroom now that we were married. I felt they (the Church or the Pope)  had enough restrictions over  us during our courting and dating lives that if we couldn't shape our own intimacy after marriage, what was the point?  I further volunteered to speak to our teenage members and to hear their perceptions of what to expect after marriage."   

The priest made no more comment and gave her three Hail Mary’s for her penance.  Odette remained active in the Church community.  She built a support group for young mothers, but did not share with them that she was on the Pill.  Birth control was not a topic of their conversation.