Filed under: The Pregnancy Diaries | Tags: alice b toklas, animals pregnant, change, disappointment, first trimester, France, house guests, life, mont blanc tunnel, Pre St. Didier, pregnancy
“I don’t mind that I’m fat. You still get the same money.” Marlon Brando
I went to secondary school in the Highlands of Scotland. My parents were teaching there, I was the youngest child, my siblings were at university, so I went with them. Anyway, a friend of mine from there and then, whom I’ve kept in touch with for over twenty years, came to visit me this last week in France. She had her only child when she was 16 years old, so her daughter is already out of the home and working. I’m three months pregnant with my first child. I’ve been having all these health ‘issues’ around pregnancy and am trying to relax (I feel like Peter Sellers’ character in I Love You Alice B. Toklas when he’s walking down the beach with the hippie guru) so I’m not the best person to hang out with at the moment given my concerns and my relatively ‘clean’ lifestyle, particularly in contrast to my behavior historically.
Even so, I wanted to show her a good time and one day I took her to a wonderful spa in Italy, Pre St. Didier at the base of Mont Blanc. I had to drive through the Mont Blanc tunnel, get lost several times with the Italian exits and directions (she was no help at all, lending credence to the stereotype that women are not concerned with directions), and sign waivers when I went to the spa so that they’re not liable if my baby cooks in my belly like rice in a bag. I was excited to go ‘cause my belly is JUST beginning to show…it’s hard and rounded and low. I find it miraculous. It’s so fundamental and animalistic. I feel like I’m the same as the horse with the foal, the goat with its kids, the cat with her kittens, and the dog down at my local café whose titties are heaving she’s so full of puppies. I’m proud of my little bump and even as I’m fat at the moment, I wanted to show it off. Keep in mind that I went to the spa to show my Scottish friend a nice day out. So we went in, it’s spacious, clean, and rustic yet modern, well organised, relaxed, and has gorgeous views, and a variety of spa activities and pools. However, I spent my day at the footbaths and the leg invigorator (you walk down one side with hot water up to your thighs, turn, go down a few steps, then walk down the other side with cold water up to your thighs). And, contrary to having a remarkable belly, almost all of the Italian women there had the same belly as I do! Not once did my friend crack a smile. When I asked her if she’d had a good time she rather stiffly replied, “Yes, ta.”
Later, upon return home, I had to go into the guest bedroom for something and I saw my friend’s open suitcase and various things splayed about the room. In this array, I saw at least FOUR pairs of different coloured, high, high-heels pumps! What had she imagined I could do when I was three months pregnant? Go dancing and clubbing? (Can I go dancing and clubbing?) I realised at age 17 that I’d be bored out of my mind at a club unless I was ‘mash up’…should I have gone anyway despite the inevitable boredom and the possibility that my child would have been traumatised by Euro dance music in order to entertain her? Dang. A day out at Pre St. Didier must have seem very tame, indeed, for her…
Filed under: The Pregnancy Diaries | Tags: anxiety, France, freaked out, history, hormone levels, misanthrope, practical life, pregnancy, stress, the French, theory
Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it. Lily Tomlin
I read somewhere once that stress is the most debilitating thing that you can do your body. This week, I’m suffering panic attacks because while I love living in France in theory, in practice, I don’t love living here and I’m not convinced it’s the best place for my unborn child.
In theory, I appreciate the history of France: The French Revolution, the Belle Époque, the French Resistance during WWII, the fact that it was a safe haven for misanthropes and those that ‘belonged’ nowhere else in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; I love the literature, Flaubert, Balzac, Colette and those that flocked here, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald; I admire the great philosophers, such as Barthes and Foucault; I love the Cinema du Cahiers’ work, their concept of the ‘auteur’ film, made popular by the likes of Truffaut and Godard; I appreciate that in a world that’s faster and busier, more materialistic and greedy, more individualistic rather than collectively oriented, that the French fight staunchly for their right to long lunches, many holidays, and a work week that does not exceed 35 hours; I love that healthcare has incorporated the best elements of the UK health system (Socialist) with the US health system (privatised attention and one must contribute in order to receive it); I love the cheese; I love the weather (mostly).
However, in practice, I do not like living here. The French are the worst consumers: mobile phone service, utilities, products for the home, for the baby, such as prams, beds, car seats, clothes, televisions, furniture, office supplies, you name it, it’s three times as expensive in France as in the UK or the U.S.A.; and service, the possibility of a return, is practically non existent. Closures at lunch, early in the evening and on Sunday, mean that there is a finite time to run necessary errands and conduct necessary business, particularly the loads of paperwork required for most ‘official’ activities here. The international DVD’s (I love Korean and Argentinian films) are either dubbed or sub titled in French; the French movies don’t have English subtitles; and the English films are usually dubbed, even in the cinema. I miss being able to go into a bookstore and get a book that I want, or into a library. The libraries here have strange hours, are closed on Wednesdays when the kids are out of school, and, locally, they are filled with books about mountains and mountaineering. I miss having restaurants that serve food out of the established lunch or dinner hours, and here in Chamonix, many of the restaurants and cafes are only open in the winter and the summer. The concept of ‘joyeux de vivre’ is ironic: there doesn’t seem to be much laughter or ‘letting go’ at a bar when they sip their tiny glass of vin rouge all afternoon; the French are mean, not only to foreigners, but even to each other. The stories that I’ve been told by other mothers regarding the schooling system – that it’s very negative, very rigid (‘colour in the lines’ sort-of-thing) – raises the hair on the back of my neck, even as I think there are other problems elsewhere. Ah, and the weirdest thing, no matter how big the parking lot or how empty it is, the French always seem to park right next to each other, meaning you often have to sidle in sideways to get into your car. So this week I wonder how I can live here ‘forever’ and bring up a child who will be a Frenchman for all intents and purposes.
All this said, I also read somewhere that with the demise of ‘big’ diseases – small pox, rubella, the plague – that allergies and neurosis developed…
Filed under: The Pregnancy Diaries | Tags: animal pregnant, Balzac, bleeding in pregnancy, double womb, France, heart-shaped, life in France, pregnancy, Uteri, Uterus Didelphys
‘There are some women whose pregnancy would make some sly bachelor smile.’ Honore de Balzac
I woke up in the middle of the night the other night and was bleeding. The next morning, I went to my good doctor for a check up and an ultrasound. He told me that I have two uterus’ (called ‘uteri’, really), which may explain the bleeding. The uteri are only apparent now because my womb is getting larger. They’re heart-shaped – my doctor even drew me a picture. There’s a high chance of miscarriage in the second trimester (which could explain my previous two) as well as pre-term birth in the third due to the danger of my cervix shortening and then opening up too soon.
Thank goodness the French are very attentive in their health care for pregnant women. You’re given a schedule of the tests that you’ll have, as well as the visits that you’ll have along the way, and specialists are frequently, and quickly, referred to. One test that both my husband and I are to take, is one that checks our chromosomes and DNA – it’s quite expensive, gets sent to Lyon, and has confidentiality statements attached to the prescriptions – kind of “Big Brother,” but still fascinating. The one that’s coming up for me is a comprehensive ultrasound that looks for the sort of thing that my doctor has just found, and measures the size of the nuchal folds; they’re on the back of the neck of the foetus and if they’re a certain thickness, there’s a good chance of the baby having Downs Syndrome. There’s also a blood test that complements this ultrasound and both happen here between 12-14 weeks. In the states and the UK, these tests are generally regarded as a ‘mid term pregnancy check’ and are done around 16-20 weeks. I believe the scale goes to 10k (as in, 1 in 5k, or 1 in 300 chance of a problem). If you have anything below a 1 in 250 chance of a problem, then you have an amniocentesis and the results come back a few weeks later. If you score higher than 250, then you have to go to another country to have an amniocentesis.
I’m going to take my blood test in Chamonix and then go to an ultrasound specialist in Grenoble next week who will be able to do the scheduled test, confirm or disconfirm that I have uteri, and explore why I might be bleeding. I looked the doctor up online and he’s world class, which calms me. While online, I looked up the two uteri thing to find out if humans get this or if I’m some strange anomaly that’s more closely related to a sheep. It’s called Uterus didelphys (how do I even pronounce that?), or a double womb. It’s not common. That said, a woman might never know that she has two uteri until there’s a complication in pregnancy, such as repeated miscarriages or placenta previa. Researchers aren’t sure what causes it. It’s possible to be pregnant in each of them (I’m not) but the likelihood of one or both of those foetuses’ surviving is unlikely. I looked up mammals that have them. A lot of them do, and even have two vaginas and two sets of fallopian tubes (I don’t).
Right now, my foetus is growing well and has a strong heartbeat. I could see its profile in the ultrasound with nose, forehead, legs and an arm. So, ‘it ain’t over till the fat lady sings’, and I’m not singing. I’m going to try to see just what’s in front of me, to the very next thing, rather than race ahead with worries and fears; simple, but not easy, when neurotic like me and charged up with hormones. My sister emailed me “Just remember to brrrreeaaattthe…”
Filed under: The Pregnancy Diaries | Tags: American families, babies in France, birth, birth rates, France, French families, Ireland, Jean de la Fontaine, life in France, pregnancy, Raising Arizona
“Tall oaks from little acorns grow.” Jean de la Fontaine
The other day, a girlfriend I know in Paris told me that she’s expecting her third child. This surprises me. We knew each other at film school in Los Angeles and she was not the type of woman you’d imagine with a child, let alone three (she was so single-mindedly ambitious and talented). Then, oddly enough, another girlfriend here in Chamonix told me over coffee the other day that she had “finally” convinced her husband to have a third child. I mentioned these bits of news to my husband at breakfast and to my surprise, he suggested we try for three, also! I reminded him that I’m only a couple of months into the present pregnancy, so not a good time to talk about more pregnancies. Also, technically, I’ve had three pregnancies in two years – perhaps this is my allotment? Besides, I said, I never intended to have children at all, so one will be great. At his look of dismay, I joked that he could try for two more with his next wife.
I started to think about the people I know with kids stateside and those I know in France. I’m one of three children – I have a brother and a sister. Aside from my siblings, who each have two children, everyone I know with kids there has just one child. The same is true of my friends in England. Then I got to thinking about the people that I know in Chamonix with kids, which is about a dozen. In fact, I only know a few people here without kids. And, everyone I know here has two or three (after I miscarried the second time, I told my husband that I couldn’t live in Chamonix childless because it’d be too depressing for me). After discussing it with several of these friends with ‘only’ two children here, I discovered that a few of them are intending to have another pregnancy; a couple of them are unable, lamentably, to have a third child; and a couple of them are happy with two.
So I looked into statistics to see if my ring of acquaintances is distorting my perception that folks in France have more children than folks in the states. Much to my surprise, it isn’t. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average number of children to a U.S. family is .94. This makes sense. In addition to the fact that almost everyone I know there has one child, the rest of those I know have none. According to Eurostat, part of the European Commission, France is only second behind Ireland. All jokes about the Catholics and Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal aside, this came as a surprise to me. France is the only other country, besides Ireland, in the European Union to report a fertility rate “in excess” of 2.0 per woman. The lowest fertility rates are in Eastern European countries, such as Latvia and Hungary, with an average of 1.3 per woman.
The reports that I perused said that in the 1970’s through the 1990’s, birth rates – at 3.8 per family post WWII – declined. According to these statisticians, this is attributed to an increased use of birth control, women having careers, higher education in general, and women having children at a later age. Currently, in the U.S. one out of every 12 women who are having their first child are 35 years old plus! In Europe, the age is 29.8. But, if increased birth control, women having careers, higher education in general, and women starting families later are the reason for lower fertility rates, in general, then why are France’s numbers rebounding? Is it the fact of stellar healthcare? But other E.U. countries have great health systems. Is it a reflection of family values? But what about Italy with its notion of the family being of primary importance? Is it a simple trend, here? A ‘Keeping up with the Jones’ sort-of-thing? Perhaps my pregnancy, and the birth of my child, will reveal more?
Filed under: The Pregnancy Diaries | Tags: Annecy, Colette, France, kitten, pet, pregnancy, pregnancy anxiety, pregnant, tests, Toxoplasmosis
“Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.” Colette
My doctor doesn’t think that anything I’ve done to date will harm this baby – not even smoking. However, he is concerned about the fact that I’ve acquired a kitten. Apparently Toxoplasmosis is common in France – ‘because we eat a lot of raw meat and are dirty,’ he told me. I thought it was something one got from tampons, but apparently not. I’m pleased it gets me out of kitty litter duty, but my doctor is not amused. As a result, I shall be tested for Toxoplasmosis weekly for the first three months, then monthly.
We found this kitten when we purchased a used car from a French mountain guide and his wife. The man had been left alone to care for the mother cat and had let her ‘prowl’ unguarded while she was in heat, so his wife had returned to a pregnant cat. As a result, they were getting rid of the kittens immediately. We drove out to their farm outside Annecy. Their stone house has been in his family for generations. We first saw the kittens as they were nursing from their mother! I asked the farm lady if they were old enough to be taken from their mother? She said that they were eight weeks and that was plenty. I was sceptical, thinking that one of these babies would be parted from the safety of their mother that very day and that me, a mother-to-be, would be the culprit that literally pulled the kitten from its mother’s tit. I told myself that the mother cat would be batting these kittens away in the days to come, wanting her independence again, and I’d give it a good home, but my hormonal heart wept. We sat on the ground in their living room with all five of the kittens playing around us while the woman made a fresh quiche for us from the eggs their chickens had laid that day and her husband smoked incessantly and looked grumpy. My husband wanted one of two particularly feisty tabbies, but there was a wee black one that kept coming up to me, and I knew that this was my kitty; she is brave and independent. We took her from her mother that day and put her in a box with a dirty piece of cloth that her family had been sleeping on in their cellar. She mewed in the car on the hour-plus drive back to our house, her little heart beating so quickly, but she never wet or pooped. How scared she must have been with the sound of the cars motor and the movement. She was so small, then – the size of a teacup. She immediately took to her litter box even as she had to scale its wall and fall into it. It was difficult for her to eat food, so we wet it and she would eat one little nugget at a time. I couldn’t bare the idea of her sleeping alone so I slept on the couch with her for the first several days. She would suckle at my neck when she was getting ready to sleep, which was a little ticklish and a tad uncomfortable, but mostly poignant.
And now my doctor is telling me that my brave kitten is dangerous to my baby. What have I done? No, I will not get ‘rid’ of the creature (either one). We took the kitten to the vet’s to have a check up. I told the vet that my doctor tells me that the kitten is bad for my unborn baby. She was irate and demanded to know who my doctor is. When I told her, she called me a liar (she’s tactless, but a great vet). Then she promptly got on the phone and called his office. After a rapid-fire conversation with him, she told me that I am not to clean the kitty litter, or to sleep with the kitten anymore, and I’m to wash my hands every time I touch it. My doctor hasn’t said anything about the phone call, and he still prescribes the weekly toxoplasmosis test.
Filed under: The Pregnancy Diaries | Tags: babies in France, doctors, immature mother, life in France, mature mother, miscarriages, pregnancy, pregnancy anxiety, pregnant, Victor Hugo
‘He does not weep who does not see’ (Victor Hugo)
When my doctor confirmed that I was pregnant I burst into tears. I’d just returned from a week’s holiday with friends and had drunk my body weight in alcohol. But it’s also the realisation that there is, once again, the possibility of the life-changing reality of a baby. Did I think this through all those times in which my husband and I had been having ovulation sex?
Victoria Jelinek 