Filed under: The Baby Diaries | Tags: Diptheria, France, HIB, kids in France, Polio, Tetanus, vaccination, Vaccines, Whooping Cough
Vaccines are the tugboats of preventive health. William Foege
Dearest son,
You had your booster immunizations yesterday – five at once – Diptheria, Whooping Cough, Polio, Tetanus, and something called HIB…you were stellar at the doctor’s office, never crying, not when the doctor examined you, placed you on your front, poked and prodded you for your six-month check up (as you’re six months next week) and then gave you your injection. Your father and I had screwed up and placed the patch that would serve to numb the area that you’re ostensibly injected, in the wrong place, so you had to take it “cold” and, as mentioned, other than letting out a bit of a protest (you seem to be chatting and speaking a lot recently, so it seemed more like an ‘awww…”). Luckily, you’ve got really pudgy, lovely big thighs and didn’t seem too bothered. On the way home, you were chuckling and smiling, then suddenly you started crying, then you passed out asleep. The rest of the day you were your normal cheerful self, sleeping, eating, giggling and smiling and you didn’t have a temperature…
But today you’ve been out of sorts – fussy, hard to settle, obviously uncomfortable, not eating as much as you normally do, making us think its affecting you a day later…I went to get my haircut in town (and also got a fresh bouquet of flowers) and you were, according to your father, difficult and didn’t fall asleep for the entire time I was out (and even as you were asleep when I came home). You did watch a few cartoons in earnest and tracked and grabbed your Brio classic bell/cage ball (very impressive) and played with your over-the-head jungle gym, and laughed when I was dancing for you to THE KILLERS. That said, we’ll take your temperature tomorrow and hope that you’re your normal wonderful self. If there’s a temperature, I’ll likely want to take you to the hospital (in Sallanches, where you were born) and let them call me paranoid.
Much love,
Mom
Filed under: The Baby Diaries | Tags: birth certificate, Danish Embassy, Danish passport, social security card, U.S passport, U.S. citizen, U.S. Embassy, U.S. sponsor
I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence. George Bernard Shaw
My son’s Danish passport came faster than a Gap order I placed on the very same day that we made the Danish application. The American passport application process is not straightforward. I can’t simply give them my US passport and birth certificate. I have to “prove” I’m an American. Which prompts the question how easy is it to get a passport or a birth certificate in the first place? And why aren’t they enough for me, then, to prove my citizenship and right to sponsor my son? Is it personal? Some disapproving or disparaging remark I’d made at a party, which may have been overheard? Is it because I’ve been abroad too long? What I do know is that for better or for worse, I want my son to have a passport to my home. Makes me laugh. My British friends are astounded at how Yankee I sound after 15 years abroad.
How to “prove” that I’m American? Hmmm…I made a list, and then I ticked off everything that my mother – the woman on the ground for me stateside – and I collected for the dossier to submit to the US Embassy here:
- My elementary school burned down years ago, so there are no records of my attendance. However, the local newspaper has a picture of me descending the steps of the old school, circa 1978, and my mother knew the principal there (now on his last legs) as well as my music teacher, and was able to get letters of support from them, testifying to my attendance.
- My high school transcripts, a straightforward request, easily attained. I bolstered these with letters from the (then) vice-principal and the librarian there, who are in my mother’s book club.
- My undergraduate transcripts as well as letters from previous professors.
- My employment history in income tax forms, letters from employers, and friends, PLUS Frequent Flier statements that reflected my take-off and return, from the respective American cities I worked from, in order to confirm my living in a given US city at a given moment.
- Dental and medical records from my childhood through secondary school. Thank goodness for small towns and my parents’ being ‘big fish’ there.
- My son’s birth certificate from the US (as I’d already had his French birth certificate translated, and received his American birth certificate from abroad, as well as a social security number for him – how was I able to do this and yet not get him a passport?).
You might think I was being overly suspicious and O.C.D. organised, but I swear that each and every document was necessary.
Unlike the Danish embassy, where the official came down the many flights of stairs to help us with our pram (the lift was broken), the American Embassy had a Marine guard on the door and a security detector. My husband and my passports and mobile phones were taken from us for the duration of our visit, and our son’s nappy bag was scanned. I submitted the dossier to a very supercilious official, and we took a seat in a waiting room. It was a beautiful, old Tudor building, but there was no air conditioning. I was nervous in the errant-child way I get anytime there’s a policemen, security guard, priest or politician present. We waited hours and were the last to be interviewed by a Consular Official. He had a file created from my file, which was also three inches thick. Luckily, he was from Cobble Hill in Brooklyn, an area I lived in for several years many years ago (before it became fashionable and expensive), and we chatted about that. He okayed my son’s passport application, gave me his card in case there were any delays or problems, then ominously told me that when my boy’s passport expires in five years, to submit photographs of my son over the years to show how he changes, as continuing evidence that he is, indeed, still, recognizably our son.
My husband has given me nothing but grief about this. He says that he never wants to live in a country that treats its citizens like this. While I can see where he’s coming from, I don’t like anyone bashing my country (certainly when they are not aware of all its merits, which I think only comes after living in a given place for at least a year). I simply told him that the only reason it was easy to get a Danish passport is because no one wants to live there.
Filed under: The Baby Diaries | Tags: Danish, France, infant, Lyon, passport, passport photos, photo, Snappy Snaps
There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo. Erma Bombeck
It’s time to get my son his Danish passport. The American one will be a bit delayed given the dossier I must prepare first, but I’ll tell you about that later.
First we must get a passport photo. One that manages to capture his full face and both ears. Sound easy? Not on a six-month-old who moves constantly – involuntarily and voluntarily. Moreover, there are no “Snappy Snaps” shops or quick photo shops in our provincial French town that are familiar with various countries’ diameters and take photos all day for passports. In fact, there is one shop in town that touts its abilities to do passport photos but which is not a photo shop.
So, my husband, young son and I set out for the store, having carefully printed the specifications for the shop assistant. She was very sweet and helpful, but not competent in photography. There was a tiny little room at the back of the store in which to take the picture. With my husband, me, the baby, and the shop assistant in there, we were literally cheek-to-cheek. We laid the boy on the floor, as he’s unable to sit up completely by himself. I tried to keep his head straight so that she could get a full frontal, but of course my fingers couldn’t be in the picture so his head would only stay direct for a moment or two once I removed my hands. The shop assistant repeatedly tried to get my son’s full face, with both ears showing, and his eyes open (thank god for digital) but she’d fuss with the focus for so long between each-and-every shot, that just at the moment she’d take the picture, he’d move. Very exasperating. Additionally, she had to go and serve clients of the gift shop when they came in. After thirty minutes or so of this (consider that time with an infant is like the Bermuda Triangle in which things seem way longer than they actually are, and we were in a room the size of a small closet), we chose the photo most likely to work for the Danish authorities and she assured us she’d print them and cut them to specifications and have them ready after we went for a coffee.
When we returned, she’d put the four photos in a nice little envelope ready to go. We took them and left, thinking all was well, we’d seen the photos already, but then discovered a major error as soon as we got home. The photos were 4”x4” and even at this grand size, they were literally filled with our boys face. No distance or perspective. No space around his face. No full face with ears in view. Just our boys face filling out the entire, huge photo. A passport page is smaller than one of these photos. We went back the next day and went through the whole palarva again, and again there were no useable photos, but she did manage to cut the ones that might work down to a passport-sized photo. To be on the safe side, we opted to go to a little photo shop similar to “Snappie Snaps,” just outside the Danish Embassy in Lyon. We literally plopped our son on a seat with no back, and the guy took a picture before I’d even wiped my brow, and it was perfect! Wow. Guess there is something to specialising and, after repetitive action, getting your endeavours right. Now just to get the passports for him…
Filed under: The Baby Diaries | Tags: Antoine de Saint-Exupery, assistante maternelle, baby, Balzac, Calvin Coolidge, Chamonix, Colette, creche, Flaubert, France, Godard, kids in France, nanny, nursery, toddler, Truffaut, Victor Hugo, Voltaire
If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you. Calvin Coolidge
After putting my son’s name on the waiting list for the crèche (nursery) when I was four months pregnant with him (almost a year ago), and intermittently popping by to say ‘hello’ to the Directrice of the creche, show her my growing belly, then my new baby, and reiterating my desire for a place when there was one available – we have been given one! Hooray!
But in addition to keeping myself on the forefront of the Directrice’s mind, there’s an official process. I quickly had to go to my ‘fixer’ – an Irish woman who knows the French systems of bureaucracy like the back of her hand and gets paid by expatriates to delve into these waters on their behalf. In order to employ the services of the crèche, and an assistante maternelle (nanny), I must show that I earn income and, more importantly, pay taxes to the French government. So, she set me up as an auto-entrepreneur (self-employed). It quickly gets you into the system, which is why there has been a huge amount of criticism in France about this scheme and its supposed abuse by foreigners. But, for the moment, it exists. I must report income every quarter and then pay around 25% of my income, give-or-take.
For the crèche, my husband and I must produce an Avis d’Attestation (official breakdown of earnings) for last year, utility and bank bills proving we live locally, a letter from the doctor declaring our son is fit to be in collective care, as well as an ordinance, or prescription, for Doliprane in case of a fever, proof that we have supplementary healthcare (for that 20-30% not covered by your taxes and the state), official paperwork proving that we have gainful employment (the letters from the organisation that oversees profession liberales, or freelance and contracted workers), and duplicated pages from our boy’s Carnet de Sante (a health book given at birth in France that records all health visits, vaccinations, hospital stays, etc.) proving he’s had his necessary vaccinations. The French love paperwork, but I’m freakishly organised, so compiling this dossier and putting it neatly in a binder is actually fun for me. It’s perverse, but it’s also useful in this country.
Then there’s the adaptation process. It is literally a period in which your child is adapted, or assimilated, into the crèche. If your child does not meet their expectations, for example, not eating and sleeping when they have that scheduled, then your child loses his place in the crèche and you must apply for a place in the following year. I agree with this in theory. I think it’s a great idea to slowly introduce your child into a new environment and its regimens and people and if it doesn’t work for all involved, so be it. But something in it also makes me think of the last person picked for a team during physical education in school. If you’re not accepted, then you’ve not fitted in, and regardless of what one may say about the entity that has rejected you, or the reasons for the rejection, you’ve been rejected.
The first day you go with your baby into the crèche and sit with him there for about an hour. The second day, you sit with him for an hour, and then leave him for an hour. The third day, you leave him for two hours, which coincides with either their eating time or their sleeping time. The fourth day, it’s three hours, which again coincides with their eating or sleeping schedule. The fifth day, he stays half a day. The sixth day, he stays the whole day. I found it exhausting and overwhelming, so I can imagine what my wee one thought. The women seemed nice enough, with the exception of one who was rather shrewish, though all of them would be coquettish with my husband and look me up and down with a cold, polite smile every time I came in. There are two or three women working on a given day, and eleven babies at a given time. I was amused to see that they have a wooden contraption that has four baby seats on it in a row, and they literally feed the babies a mouthful and move down the line at feeding time. The babies sleep on separate cots in a room together. They would let the babies cry rather than going to them- they’ll fall asleep on their own (or they should!). But dang! I was amazed and pleased when my baby came back to me tidier than when he went in – even his nostrils were cleaned!
At the end of the adaptation process, the shrewish woman told my husband that my son was ready, but she was not sure if the mother was ready (me!). She didn’t mention that to me when she told me he was accepted. But who cares? He’s in for two days a week (as the lovely Welsh assistante maternelle has agreed to take our boy three days a week!) and hopefully it will be the start of his French education and a great introduction to the best of its culture, to the lessons that have given birth to its auteurs, and its wonderful writers and philosophers, rather than the beginning of his training to be a clerk in a Balzac-ian society.
Filed under: The Baby Diaries | Tags: baby sleep, breastfed, Chamonix, co-sleeper, cot, crib, formula, France, French Alps, infant sleep, nursing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, sleep
There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep. Ralph Waldo Emerson
The sleep situation with my baby boy has caused a lot of strife in our household. When I first came home from the hospital after having a c-section, I was unable to move in bed, and it seemed ‘safe’ and easy to let my baby boy sleep in the crook of my arm, which I laid upon a pillow to keep it level. Every well-meaning woman whom I know told me this was unacceptable and dangerous- my baby could be smothered by me or by my husband in our sleep! Websites confirmed this. But it also seemed as though most of this death-by-smothering was a result of a parent being intoxicated in bed next to them. And almost all of them were a result of the father. For me, it seemed natural, and practically speaking, it seemed to be the only way to get him to sleep.
After many ‘discussions’ with my husband, however, and his dissatisfaction with the sleeping arrangement, we moved the baby onto this little cot that was cut at an angle so that his head was higher up. On each side, there was a little velcro’d buffer to keep him on the wee bed. This little cot fit right in between the pillows where my husband and I rest our heads, and also seemed to work for awhile. I liked having the boy so close, because it allowed me to hear his breathing over the snores of my husband. Even so, my husband expressed repeated dissatisfaction with this arrangement and after many ‘discussions,’ we bought a ‘co-sleeper’ that we put on the side of the bed. To be honest, I never liked this situation because my boy seemed close but very far, too, and it seemed rather pointless to have him on my husband’s side of the bed, but he claimed it made it ‘easier’ for me to sleep. Finally, we put the boy in a crib in the corner of our room and hoped that this would be a fine option. The boy was able to sleep in the crib, but he woke up every couple of hours, anyway, to feed, and going over to the crib, picking him up, bringing him back to the bed with me or sitting in a chair to nurse him seemed tedious and I’d be wide awake afterwards.
The doctor told us that the baby can literally smell the milk of its mother if it’s in the same room, and this is why the baby was frequently waking up throughout the night. Consequently, my husband and I put together a sleeping schedule. Because my husband goes to bed early each night, anyway, I would be the ‘point-person’ to attend to the boy when he cried in the evening and early night while my husband would sleep in the guest-room and get several hours of uninterrupted rest. At about two am, after being awaked for another feeding, I’d nurse the boy, we’d change places, and I’d sleep peacefully until morning, and when our son next woke up, he’d be fed a bottle of formula by his father, the rotation manoeuvre completed!
To be honest, when I was in the room with the boy alone, I’d simply take him back to bed with me and feed him while I was lying down and then doze off at some point till his next revival. I could have gone on like this for a number of months, but my husband has badgered me to put the boy and his crib into a room of his own so that we can sleep in the same bed together like a ‘normal’ couple. Because I can’t think of a logical reason not to, and I’m really too tired to argue, I have complied. The first few nights that the boy was in his own room were hideous. He cried at an ear-splitting pitch and I nearly had to be tied down not to go to him. These last few nights, however, have been blissful. It seems to be true what the doctor said about his smelling me in the room, because he does not wake as frequently as he once did. As a consequence, I am feeling a renewed sense of energy and wakefulness that I have not known since I was seven months pregnant and could still sleep at night!
Filed under: The Baby Diaries | Tags: airline travel, American doctors, antibiotics for infants, baby illness, coach class, ear infection, Ernest Hemingway, French doctors, health, travel with infants
Never go on trips with anyone you do not love. Ernest Hemingway
When my boy turned six months old we decided that he was old enough to make the big trip to the west coast of the USA for a visit with my family. Life a good Frenchwoman, I utilised the healthcare services before leaving: I took my boy to the doctor to confirm everything was okay, particularly the ears, I have problems with my ears, too; got a few ‘in case’ prescriptions, then went to the chemist and bought saline solution for the boy’s nose, Doliprane for any pain or fever, cortisone cream for any skin irritations, and his regular creams and soaps. Luckily, my husband went to the US with me. I could not have done this trip alone.
Before boarding the plane in Geneva, we cleared the boy’s nose and gave him Paracetimal to help him relax. When the plane descended, I nursed him to help prevent pain in his ears from altitude pressure changes. It was the long-haul flight out of London that was rough. In the first instance, the airline provides either a cot or a little seat for the baby to have on take off and landing. Our boy was too big for the cot and the seat made him sit up and therefore not get comfortable for sleep. All around us babies and toddlers slept, but not our boy. By the end of ten hours, he was fussy and folks on the airplane kept giving us dirty looks as though we were pinching him. By the 12th hour of flying, I was about ready to pull my hair out.
Shortly after arriving in the US and settling into my family home, the boy came down with a fever. He was listless, hot, and clung to me as a baby monkey clings to its mother. We decided to visit a doctor and were only able to see a paediatrician because my nephew has been going to him for ten years and recommended us to him (really). The doctor told us that our boy had had an ear infection before the flight (?), which had worsened during the flight, now necessitating a ten-day round of antibiotics. We followed his instructions. Ten days later, my boy was not much better and we only had another few days before making the flight back to France. Should we cancel? We booked another appointment with the paediatrician who advised that he be given a strong dose of antibiotics shot into each of his little thighs.
The hardest thing for me was that I had gone to the doctor’s office without my mother and without my husband The doctor told me that, as the next level of antibiotic, an injected antibiotic, would be very strong, it would be best if I stayed at his office under supervision for an hour to make sure that there is not an epileptic fit, seizure, or heart attack (?!). I was terrified. I desperately tried to call my husband at my mother’s to consult him, but he was not picking up. I then tried to get my mother’s attention in the car outside where she sat waiting for us to leave, in order to get some advice and encouragement, but the doors to the clinic were closed and she did not see or hear me. I made the decision alone to do it. The two nurses came into the room while he was laying calmly on his back with his little legs in the air. They put on blue plastic gloves and held up the shots. At this moment, he realised something was wrong. They simultaneously gave him the injections in each of his little thighs and he began screaming. Afterwards, I took him to my breast in order to nurse him and calm him down. It was the very first time he bit me, which hurt and caused me to cry out, but I figured it was fair. I sat worried and alone with my little person that whole hour, wondering whether I’d done the right thing. Worried that his body would reject it. Worried that his ears would not be better for the flight back and he’d be in so much pain or he’d go deaf.
The flight back was gruesome. He did not sleep, and I was in a chair that had a broken armrest and video. But we got back to France. My boy did not go deaf. The infection was cured. The French doctors told me that it was best to have given him the injections, that it was not the Americans’ being overzealous about the administration of antibiotics.
It will be a year before I make that trip again.
Filed under: The Baby Diaries | Tags: baby, birth, Chamonix, Erma Bombeck, France health, French Alps, healthcare, infant care, midwife, midwives, sage femme, sage femmes, womb
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died. Erma Bombeck
The sage-femmes (mid-wives) at the hospital were great. Through them, I learned to nurse and to bathe my child, as well as to take his temperature. They were also the ones who would come and relieve me, or check on us during the night, making me feel that my baby boy and I were tended to.
But the sage-femme assigned to me by the obstetrician for pre-and-post-birth care was useless. Before my boy was born my husband and I went into her office, and sitting before her little desk, waited for several moments to see what she would do because we had no idea what we were to do. She didn’t say a word. Finally, we asked some tentative questions about the care in the hospital that we should expect, which had already been answered by my good doctor, but we wanted to be polite. She would answer them as an adolescent might, with as few words as possible and giving no opportunity for elaboration. It was a struggle and that 15-minute appointment seemed to last an hour.
Post birth, however, one is meant to go to the sage-femme for ten visits in order to properly recuperate. It’s actually prescribed by the paediatrician at the hospital before you leave, and the l’Assurance Medicale, the health bureau, reimburses you for the visits 100%. This is a very good and holistic approach to the birthing process that I highly commend about the French system in theory, but I’ve gone to this sage femme a few times now, and I still find it useless. On one such visit she put a long towel, sheet type-of-thing around my lower back and near my pelvis, and pulled it tightly around the area. I asked what this was for and she told me it would help ‘reshape’ my womb. On another visit, she pulled out an appliance that looked like a combination between an electric razor and a vibrator and proceeded to put it into my vagina. I asked her what this was for and she told me that it sent out electrical currents that would help ‘reshape’ my vagina and womb. On another visit she had me practice getting down and up off of the floor and doing sit ups. I’d ask her questions that I thought she might know that were relevant to me, such as about the blood blisters on the breasts, and the left breast’s drying up, and the lack of sleep, and doctor’s visits, and she was not able to provide any answers. She doesn’t have children. I could be her mother. Oh! I did find the visit in which she took out the stitches from my caesarean very useful.
Perhaps finding a good sage femme is akin to finding a good psychologist? This is very American of me, the land of people who seek to discuss their problems (and why not? I think the world would be a better place if one could unload all their worries and problems on a person they paid to listen to them and to keep quiet about it all, and who then eliminated the need to unload on your friends and family). Anyway. Perhaps it’s like a psychologist in the sense that if you get a bad one, an incompetent one, then it will turn you off of ever going again to one. I would have stopped going to this sage femme, but at the end of every visit I had with her I felt bullied into making the next appointment, so I would make one in order to get out of the room. After several visits, I decided I didn’t want to go anymore and tried to tell her that it just wasn’t ‘my cup of tea’ and it ‘doesn’t seem to be working for me,’ and I don’t want her to ‘waste’ her time on me anymore. She gave me an angry lecture on how irresponsible I am being to my body by giving up the visits before they’re over! I listened to her quietly, and then suggested we call it ten visits, as prescribed, submit it to the relevant authorities for her to be reimbursed, and I’ll give her the co-pay in cash. To her credit, she immediately agreed.
As much as I’ve appreciated other medical care in France, I’ve found my sage femme visits the least helpful. I will presume that she is an anomaly.
Filed under: The Baby Diaries | Tags: babies, baby, baby health, carte vitale, Chamonix, French Alps, French doctors, health in France, healthcare, healthcare in France, infant care, l'Assurance Maladie, Mark Twain
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not. Mark Twain
Today I went to the doctor with my boy for a check-up and we had an interesting conversation. She is a ‘stand-in’ for our regular doctor. Originally from Marseille, she loves the mountains and her husband works for the mountain rescue. Normally, she does research on frostbite for a national study and she’s also six months pregnant (and looks great. Unlike the bulk I was, and remain – I’m still wearing my maternity clothes!).
After she’d checked my boy’s weight, vitals, and head circumference, etc., we got to chatting about life in Southern France (I hold onto the idea that I will live there one day, put perhaps it won’t be until I’m in my 50’s, like Colette). From there, we began talking about the state of French industry. Recently, France has lost two manufacturing company contracts, which were employing/would employ thousands of workers because of inefficiency and the demand for guaranteed lifetime contracts, respectively. After that, we segued into the dire state of the French healthcare system. I’m a great admirer of their system – a winning combination of socialist and capitalist care – and I’ve been the grateful recipient of many medical services in France. Nonetheless, I am aware the system is bankrupt. That it has been so for thirty years. It seems to me that to raise the cost of doctor’s visits, hospital stays, and long term care, SLIGHTLY, would help the system immeasurably. It may even save it. Aren’t the French meant to be collectively oriented? Why isn’t this happening?
What she told me was surprising. Particularly from a French person. She said that the French complain about the 23e or 28e they must pay for each doctor’s visit, which is the amount one pays before being partially reimbursed. In reality, only about 10e per visit goes to the doctor. Unlike their American counterparts, for example, doctors here are not getting rich through their vocation. She told me that when the doctor is unable to process a Carte Vitale (one’s personal health card which is registered with the health authorities, is run through a machine at the chemist, the hospital, by doctors at every visit, and then is automatically reimbursed for a given treatment) and must give them a brown form to fill out and send to the l’Assurance Maladie (health office) for reimbursement, instead, the French patients complain about having to pay for the price of a stamp in sending the form in for reimbursement.
She is very pessimistic that anything will change in France, despite the dire state of affairs within the medical arena and the economic problems for the country as a whole. She believes that in general, the French believe that they are “entitled.” They do not care whence their rebates, subsidies, incentives, reimbursements, and retirement plans come from, only that they receive them and pay as little toward them as is possible. She believes that short of a huge philosophical shift in thinking, which is not likely to happen as the general population in France refuses to accept that there is a problem that requires everyone to adapt, the French medical and economic systems are doomed. I want to believe this is not so.
Filed under: The Baby Diaries | Tags: accompagnateur, assistante maternelle, babies, Chamonix, creche, existential struggle, exotic, famille garder, France, motherhood, mountain leader, nanny, nursery, P.J. O'Rourke, toddler
Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.
P.J. O’Rourke
I took my baby boy to the lovely Welsh assistante maternelle today. She’s still undecided about whether she’ll return to being an assistante maternelle after the last three years in which she’s spent under the famille garder while raising her young son. Even so, she’s kindly agreed to watch my boy for a few hours a day, a few days each week, while my husband is away working as an accompagnateur, and I’m grateful.
So today I dropped him off at hers for the first time, went home to write, and attempted to have something to eat at a leisurely pace. But all I could think about was how I really am a different person now that I’ve had my baby boy and this unsettles me. I feel as though I’m more emotionally tender, and consequently more vulnerable than I’ve ever been in my entire life. A little person depends deeply on me now and I am completely responsible for him. I realise, now, that my life has been relatively carefree thus far. I’ve cared about jobs, work, boyfriends, husbands, sure, but ultimately I’ve always been free to do as I wish. To go out to a dinner at midnight. To sleep till 10am. To miss the last train and take the night bus home or stay with friends. To travel to exotic places with my only concern being to get the correct inoculations beforehand. To leave a job or a place or a man because I’m unhappy. To do most personal things on an impromptu basis. To do most things selfishly.
I’d been so cavalier before having my boy about putting him into care as soon as it was possible so I could resume my professional interests. I was so cavalier about taking him with me on travels to places I want to visit and revisit in the second and third worlds. But now that he is in day care and not with me, I find myself feeling nervous, agitated, and I have an enormous, nebulous sense of guilt. As for traveling to obscure locales with him, I think ‘No way!’ I suddenly fear excessive heat, uncomfortable lodgings, bad water, food poisoning, malaria, typhoid and hepatitis!
I’m not the easy-going mother I’d hoped to be, taking my child everywhere with me and not particularly concerned about dangers, and more carefree. I fear I am conventional. That said, maybe things will change with time as he ages and becomes less vulnerable? Although, from what I hear from my elders, one’s child never really seems grown-up even when they are. Maybe as I learn to trust that my boy is happy in care, or at least not unhappy, I will be able to relax and concentrate on other things. Maybe with time I’ll better remember warm days and nights, exotic food, and the stars of the Southern Hemisphere, rather than its heat, poverty, and potential for bad stomachs.
Filed under: The Baby Diaries | Tags: assistante maternelle, baby care, child care, creche, feminism, France, French, infant care, nanny, Paje, W.C. Fields
I like children – fried. W.C. Fields
It may be difficult to get a place in the crèche for your child, but it’s even harder to find an assistante maternelle, literally translated as a mother’s assistant, or nanny.
The way the assistante maternelle system works is that she can take from one to three children between the ages of one and three into her home for childcare. At three, the child will ostensibly go to the local ‘maternelle,’ or public nursery school. The assistante maternelle is a person who has been certified and registered by the government to tend to children. The cost of an assistante maternelle is generally about six to ten times more expensive than a place in the local crèche. Being rather enlightened in the way of childcare, however, the French government subsidises the expense of an assistante maternelle for those who pay their taxes. At the end of each month, the employer of the assistante maternelle (that’s the parent of a given child) registers all of the hours, days and ‘indemnities’ the assistante maternelle has charged, on an online system for the entity Paje.fr (the entity that takes care of the subsidies). Shortly thereafter, the Paje partially reimburses the employer based on their taxable earnings and the cost of the given assistante maternelle.
The tricky bit is to find an assistante maternelle. There are ‘x’ amounts of them in a given area, and it is likely that a given child will be in the care of a given assistante maternelle from infancy until they are able to go to the local school. Because the law states an assistante maternelle can only have a few children being cared for in their home at a given time, there is little movement and timing is everything. My husband and I went down to the mairie (mayor’s office) and asked for a list of the registered assistante maternelles in the area. There were about 40. We then marked the nearest to us and called each of them to enquire about a spot for our son in the autumn. Not one had a place. We ended up calling every single assistante maternelle on the list – near and far- and only one had a space available in the autumn or, indeed, at any time over the next year. We went over to her house to meet her. She was French and nice enough, very patient with us as she explained her hours, her holidays, her rights and the time in which one must drop off and collect one’s child. Unlike the stereotype that French women are fit and slender, this one was rather heavy set. I noticed that there was a deep fryer on the counter, which probably meant lots of fatty foods. The assistante maternelle’s husband came in while we were there and he greeted my husband but did not meet my eyes or acknowledge me. I am a mere woman. Later, my husband and I discussed it and to be honest, we didn’t feel the house was very comfortable, and we both felt a little bad that our boy might spend days on end there, but we didn’t know what else was available or what the French households are really like, and we have to work sometimes without our boy and we can’t afford a private nanny. In the end, we rationalised that we liked that the household was French because it would be good for our baby’s assimilation into the culture…and perhaps in a year a place in the crèche would open up? Ultimately, ‘beggars can’t be choosers.’
Or can they? It turns out that there is a woman in my book club who was an assistante maternalle. She’s Welsh and married to a Frenchman who is a fourth generation local. She’s taken three years out to tend to her youngest child, utilising the French system of famille garder, which is a very civilised scheme that allows a woman who has worked and paid her taxes to take up to three years off of work after having a baby and still receive monies from the government. Apparently, her son will be going to school in the autumn and she may then resume her assistante maternelle activities. We phoned her and set up a meeting at her house. She has two little boys, a friendly three-legged dog, chickens, a huge garden, and the parents, grandparents, and cousins all live on plots neighbouring her house and land. She cooks from the garden, believes in organic food and creative compositions, and she speaks both English and French fluently…which is a help, to be honest, as we can then discuss in nitty gritty detail, what happens with our child each day…she’s not sure that she will resume her previous profession, but she’s thinking about it and we’re to contact her shortly. Oh dear, I hope that she decides to return to being an assistante maternalle and, moreover, that she decides to accept our little boy. I know everyone would be happy with that placement…I’ll cross my fingers and hope for the best…
Victoria Jelinek 