“The moment she got pregnant she became enormous. And I saw her and I found it monstrous. She told me, ‘No, it’s fine, I’m entitled to relax. I’m entitled to get fat. It’s no big deal,’ et cetera. For us, the French, it’s horrible to say that. We would never say that.” She adds a jab disguised as sociology: “I think the Americans and the Northern Europeans are a lot more relaxed than us, when it comes to aesthetics.”
Everyone takes for granted that pregnant women should battle to keep their figures intact. While my podiatrist is working on my feet, she suddenly announces that I should rub sweet almond oil on my belly to avoid stretch marks. (I do this dutifully, and get none.) Parenting magazines run long features on how to minimize the damage that pregnancy does to your breasts. (Don’t gain too much weight, and take a daily jet of cold water to the chest.)
French doctors treat the weight-gain limits like holy edicts. Anglophones in Paris are routinely shocked when their obstetricians scold them for going even slightly over. “It’s just the French men trying to keep their women slim,” a British woman married to a Frenchman huffed, recalling her prenatal appointments in Paris. Pediatricians feel free to comment on a mother’s postpregnancy belly when she brings her baby for a checkup. (Mine will just cast a worried glance.)
The main reason that pregnant Frenchwomen don’t get fat is that they are very careful not to eat too much. In French pregnancy guides, there are no late-night heapings of egg salad or instructions to eat way past hunger in order to nourish the fetus. Women who are “waiting for a child” are supposed to eat the same balanced meals as any healthy adult. One guide says that if a woman is still hungry, she should add an afternoon snack consisting of, for instance, “a sixth of a baguette,” a piece of cheese, and a glass of water.
In the French view, a pregnant woman’s food cravings are a nuisance to be vanquished. Frenchwomen don’t let themselves believe—as I’ve heard Ame Kvestilrican women claim—that the fetus wants cheesecake. The Guidebook for Mothers to Be, a French pregnancy book, says that instead of caving in to cravings, women should distract their bodies by eating an apple or a raw carrot.
This isn’t all as austere as it sounds. Frenchwomen don’t see pregnancy as a free pass to overeat, in part because they haven’t been denying themselves the foods they love—or secretly binging on those foods—for most of their adult lives. “Too often, American women eat on the sly, and the result is much more guilt than pleasure,” Mireille Guiliano explains in her intelligent book French Women Don’t Get Fat. “Pretending such pleasures don’t exist, or trying to eliminate them from your diet for an extended time, will probably lead to weight gain.”
About halfway through my pregnancy, I find out that there’s a support group in Paris for English-speaking parents. I immediately recognize that these are my people. Members of the group, called Message, can tell you where to find an English-speaking therapist, buy a car with an automatic transmission, or locate a butcher who’ll roast a whole turkey for Thanksgiving. (The birds don’t fit in most French ovens.) Wondering how to bring cases of Kraft macaroni and cheese back from a trip to America? You ditch the elbow noodles, which you can buy in France, and put the cheese packets in your suitcase.
Message members find a lot to like about France. In online forums, they marvel at the fresh bread, the cheap prescription drugs, and at how their own toddlers now demand Camembert at the end of a meal. One member chuckles that her five-year-old plays “labor strike” with his Playmobil figures.
But the group is also a bulwark against what are seen as the darker aspects of French parenting. Members exchange the cell-phone numbers of English-speaking doulas, sell one another breastfeeding pillows, and commiserate about French medicine’s penchant for giving kids suppositories. A member I know was so reluctant to subject her daughter to French public preschool that she enrolled her in a brand-new Montessori, where the little girl was—for quite a while—the only student.
Like me, these women see being pregnant as an excuse to bond, worry, shop, and eat. They fortify each other against the social pressure to lose their baby weight. “At some point I’ll get around to it,” one new mother writes. “I’m not going to waste precious time weighing out lettuce leaves now.”
The most salient dilemma among pregnant Message members and other Anglophones I know is how to give birth. I meet an American in Rome who delivered her baby in an Italian wine vat (filled with water, not Pinot Grigio). A friend in Miami read that the pain of childbirth is a cultural construct, so she trained to birth her twins using only yoga breaths. In our Message-sponsored parenting class, one woman planned to fly home to Sydney for an authentic Australian delivery.
Birth, like most everything else, is something we try to customize. My obstetrician says she once received a four-page birth plan from an American patient, instructing her to massage the woman’s clitoris after the delivery. The uterine contractions from the woman’s orgasm were supposed to help expel the placenta. Interestingly, this wo Knglericaman’s birth plan also specified that both of her parents should be allowed in the delivery room. (“I said ‘no way.’ I didn’t want to be arrested,” my doctor recalls.)
In all this talk about giving birth, I never hear anyone mention that the last time the World Health Organization ranked national health-care systems, France’s was first, while America’s was thirty-seventh. Instead, we Anglos focus on how the French system is overmedicalized and hostile to the “natural.” Pregnant Message members fret that French doctors will induce labor, force them to have epidurals, then secretly bottle-feed their newborns so they won’t be able to breast-feed. We’ve all been reading the English-language pregnancy press, which emphasizes the minute risks of epidurals. Those among us who deliver “naturally” strut around like war heroes.
Despite being the birthplace of Dr. Fernand Lamaze, epidurals are now extremely common in France. In Paris’s top maternity hospitals and clinics, about 87 percent of women have epidurals, on average2 (not counting C-sections). In some hospitals it’s 98 or 99 percent.
Very few women make a fuss about this. French moms often ask me where I plan to deliver, but never how. They don’t seem to care. In France, the way you give birth doesn’t situate you within a value system or define the sort of parent you’ll be. It is, for the most part, a way of getting your baby safely from your uterus into your arms.
In French, giving birth without an epidural isn’t called “natural” childbirth. It’s called “giving birth without an epidural” (accouchement sans péridurale). A few French hospitals and maternity clinics now have birthing pools and giant rubber balls for laboring women to hug. But few Frenchwomen use these. That 1 or 2 percent of nonepidural births in Paris are, I’m told, either crazy Americans like me or Frenchwomen who didn’t get to the hospital in time.
The absolute earthiest Frenchwoman I know is Hélène. She takes her three kids on camping trips and breast-fed them all past age two. Hélène also had an epidural at each delivery. For her, there’s no contradiction. She likes some things au naturel and some with a giant dose of drugs.
The difference between France and America crystallizes for me when, through mutual friends, I meet Jennifer and Eric, a couple in their thirties. She’s an American who works for a multinational company in Paris. He’s a Frenchman with a job in advertising. They live just outside Paris with their two daughters. When Jennifer got pregnant for the first time, Eric assumed that they would find a doctor, choose a hospital, and have the baby. But Jennifer brought home a stack of baby books and pressed Eric to study them with her.
Eric still can’t believe how Jennifer wanted to script the delivery. “She wanted to give birth on a balloon, give birth in a bath,” he recalls. He says the doctor told her, “It’s not a zoo here, or a circus. Basically you will give birth like everyone, on your back, legs open. And the reason is that if there is a problem, then I can do something.”
Jennifer also wanted to deliver Kd theiwithout anesthesia, so that she could feel w
hat it was like to give birth. “I’ve never heard of a woman wanting to suffer so much to have a kid,” Eric says.
What stands out for both Eric and Jennifer is what I’ve come to think of as the “Croissant Story.” When Jennifer went into labor, it became clear that all her birthing plans were for naught: she needed a cesarean. The doctor sent Eric into the waiting room. Eventually, Jennifer delivered a healthy baby girl. Afterward, in the recovery room, Eric mentioned to her that he recently ate a croissant.
Three years later, Jennifer’s blood still boils when she thinks about that piece of bread. “Eric wasn’t actually physically present [in the waiting room] during the whole thing. He went out and got a croissant! When they rolled me into the operating room, Eric walks out of the clinic, goes down the street, goes to the bakery, and buys a couple of croissants. He comes back, eats his croissant!”
This is not what Jennifer had envisioned. “My husband needs to be sitting there biting his nails, thinking, ‘Oh, will it be a boy or a girl?’” she says. She mentions that there was a vending machine near the waiting room. He could have bought a bag of peanuts.
When Eric tells his own version of the Croissant Story, he gets mad, too. Yes, there was a vending machine. But “it was very stressful; I needed some sugar,” he says. “I was sure there was a bakery just at the corner, and the bakery ended up being a bit far away. But they took her at seven. I knew that they had one hour of preparation and things like that, and I think she came back at eleven. So in all this time, yes, I spent at least fifteen minutes going to get some food.”
At first, I see the Croissant Story as a classic men-are-from-Mars tale. But I eventually realize that it’s a Franco-American parable. For Jennifer, Eric’s selfish pursuit of the croissant signaled that he wouldn’t sacrifice his own comfort for the sake of his family and the new baby. She worried that he wasn’t sufficiently invested in the project of parenting.
For Eric, it signaled no such thing. He felt thoroughly invested in the birth and is an extremely involved father. But at that moment, he was also calm, detached, and self-interested enough to walk down the street. He wanted to be a dad, but he also wanted a croissant. “In the U.S. sometimes I have the feeling that if it’s not difficult for you, you have to feel bad about that,” he says.
I’d like to think I’m the sort of wife who wouldn’t be bothered by the croissant, or at least that Simon is the sort of husband who would hide the crumbs. I do submit a PG-rated birth plan, stating that under no circumstances should Simon be permitted to cut the umbilical cord. But since I tend to scream when I get my legs waxed, I don’t think I’m a great candidate for natural childbirth. I suspect I’ll have trouble viewing the pain as a cultural construct.
I’m more concerned about getting to the hospital in time. Following a friend’s advice, I’ve registered to give birth at a hospital all the way across town. If the baby makes a break for it during rush hour, there could be trouble.
And that’s if I can get a taxi. The rumor among Paris’s Anglophones (who, being here temporarily, tend not to have cars) is that French taxi drivers refuse to pick up women in labor for fear that they’ll end up scraping placenta off their seats. A backseat delivery wouldn’t be ideal for other reasons. Simon is too spooked to even read the instructions for emergency home deliveries in What to Expect.
My contractions begin around eight o’clock at night. That means I can’t eat the steaming Thai food we’ve just picked up. (I will fantasize about pad thai from my hospital bed.) But at least the streets are clear. Simon calls a taxi, and I’m quiet while getting in. Let the driver—a mustachioed man in his fifties—try to pry me out.
I needn’t have worried. As soon as we’re on the road and he hears my yelps from the backseat, the driver becomes ecstatic. He says he’s been waiting his whole career as a chauffeur for this cinematic event.
As we cross Paris in the dark, I open my seatbelt and slide to the floor of the taxi, moaning from the mounting pain. This is no leg wax. I ditch my faux fantasies of a natural childbirth. Simon opens the windows, either to give me some air or to cover the sounds I’m making.
Meanwhile, the driver speeds up. I can see the street lamps zipping past overhead. He begins loudly reciting the story of his own son’s birth twenty-five years earlier. “Slower, please!” I plead from the floor, between contractions. Simon is silent and pale, staring straight ahead.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask him.
“Dutch football,” he says.
When we arrive at the hospital, the driver pulls up at the emergency entrance, jumps out of the car, and sprints inside. It seems he’s expecting to join us for the birth. Moments later he’s back, sweaty and panting. “They’re expecting you!” he shouts.
I lurch into the building, leaving Simon to pay the fare and persuade the driver to leave. The moment I see a midwife, I declare in my clearest French: “Je voudrais une péridurale!” (I would like an epidural). If I’d had a wad of cash I would have waved it at her.
It turns out that despite the French passion for epidurals, they don’t just perform them on demand. The midwife takes me into an examining room to check my cervix, then looks up at me with a bemused smile. I’m barely three centimeters dilated, out of a possible ten. Women don’t usually ask for epidurals this early on, she says. She won’t summon the anesthetist from his pad thai for this.
She does put on the most soothing music I’ve ever heard—a sort of Tibetan lullaby—and rigs me up to a drip that softens the pain. Eventually, exhausted, I fall asleep.
I’ll spare you the details of my very medicated, very pleasant birth. Thanks to the epidural, pushing the baby out h Khe td"as the precision and intensity of a yoga move, without the discomfort. I’m so focused that I don’t even mind when my obstetrician’s teenage daughter, who lives around the corner, pops in after the delivery to ask her mom for some cash.
As it happens, the anesthesiologist, midwife, and doctor are all women. (Simon, stationed far from the business end, is there too.) The baby comes out as the sun is rising.
I’ve read that babies look like their fathers when they’re born, to assure the dads of their paternity and motivate them to go out hunting (or investment banking) for the family. My first thought when our daughter comes out is that she doesn’t merely resemble Simon; she has his face.
We cuddle with her for a while. Then they dress her in a chicly understated French outfit supplied by the hospital, complete with an ecru-colored beanie on her head. We do give her a proper name. But thanks to the hat, we mostly just call her Bean.
I stay in the hospital for six days, which is standard French practice. I see no reason to leave. There is fresh-baked bread with every meal (no need to leave for a croissant) and a sun-dappled garden where I steal away for walks. The extensive in-room wine list includes champagne. On day three, I can’t stop saying to Bean, “You weren’t born yesterday!” Simon doesn’t even pretend this is funny.
As if to emphasize that there are universal parenting principles in France, babies born here come with instructions. Each newborn is issued a white softcover book called a carnet de santé, which follows the child until age eighteen. Doctors record every checkup and vaccination in this book, and plot the child’s height, weight, and head size. It also has commonsense basics on what to feed babies, how to bathe them, when to go for checkups, and how to spot medical problems.
The book doesn’t prepare me for Bean’s transformation. For the first month or so, she continues to look just like Simon, with dark brown eyes and hair. She even has his dimples. If anything’s in doubt, it’s her maternity. My fair-haired, fair-eyed genes seem to have lost to his swarthy Mediterranean ones in a first-round knockout.
But at about two months old, Bean has a metamorphosis. Her hair turns blond, and her brown eyes morph improbably into blue. Our little Mediterranean baby suddenly looks like a Swede.
Technically, Bean is American. (She can request French citizenship when she’s older.) Bu
t I suspect that her French will surpass m
ine within a few months. I’m not sure whether we’re going to raise a little American girl or a little French one. We might not have a choice.
Chapter 3
doing her nights
A few weeks after we bring Bean home, neighbors on our little courtyard Nhe tdh="0 begin asking, “Is she doing her nights?” (Elle fait ses nuits?)
This is the first time I hear the French formulation of “Is she sleeping through the night?” At first I find it comforting. If they’re her nights, then she’ll inevitably claim them. Whereas if they’re just the nights, she might not.
But I soon find the question irritating. Of course she’s not “doing her nights.” She’s two months old (and then three months, and then four). Everyone knows that tiny babies sleep badly. I know a few Americans who—by sheer luck—have babies that age who go down at nine P.M. and wake up at seven. But most parents I know don’t get an uninterrupted night’s sleep until their kids are around a year old. Heck, I know four-year-olds who still wander into their parents’ rooms at night.
My Anglophone friends and family appreciate this. They tend to ask the more open-ended question, “How is she sleeping?” And even that isn’t really a request for information; it’s a chance for the exhausted parents to vent.
For us, babies are automatically associated with sleep deprivation. A headline in the British Daily Mail declares: “Parents of Newborns Miss Out on SIX MONTHS Worth of Sleep in Their Child’s First Two Years,” citing a study commissioned by a bed company. The article seems credible to readers. “Sadly this is true,” one comments. “Our one year old daughter hasn’t slept a single night in twelve months, and if we have four hours sleep it’s a good night.” A poll by the National Sleep Foundation in the United States found that 46 percent of toddlers wake up during the night, but just 11 percent of parents believed that their child had a sleep problem. A toddler’s T-shirt I see in Ft. Lauderdale says simply, “Party tonight at my crib 3 A.M.”
Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting Page 4