French Twist (5 page)

Meanwhile, as a massively pregnant woman I found myself crying on a crowded New York City subway because no one offered me a seat. I remember denouncing all of humanity one day on my commute home from the office, when the only thing that I wanted in the world was to sit down and survive (i.e., not vomit). I was clearly very pregnant and I must have looked green around the gills, yet no one even looked me in the eyes to notice that the tears were welling up, not to mention offer me a seat. I thought maybe this was a behavioral problem unique to the Big Apple, but I’ve had friends from El Paso, Texas, to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, lament the fact that they received no special treatment with pounds and pounds of fetus and fluid attached to their midsections.

For many Americans, the big pregnancy perk is a baby shower. Finally you get some props! And presents! And virgin punch. Oy. Yet, this is something that the French do not enjoy. Take it from my friend Jessie. She was born in France, spent her formative years in California, and then moved back to France as an adult. When Jessie was pregnant
with her first child, she inquired among her French friends about a baby shower—and was instead given “the evil eye.” She discovered that the French find it in very bad taste and highly tacky to expect gifts for a baby that isn’t even born. Maybe this lack of baby showers accounts for the fact that the list of suggested items for a new baby in France is considerably shorter, and ultimately less exasperating, than what’s customary in the States. The French list includes fewer entries than my midweek grocery list.

The first time I looked at a list of suggested items to register for while pregnant, I felt as if I was alone on the receiving end of a full-court press. I remember having to leave Babies“R”Us before I had a panic attack.

To go with my new baby, I would apparently need no less than an additional apartment to house the gear. I told myself that I would not succumb to the pressure, but somehow I ended up with three strollers (one high-quality, one fold-up job for travel, and a jogger, of course), a bassinet, Moses basket, Pack ’N Play, Co-Sleeper, crib, freestanding swing, ExerSaucer, play mat, doorway swing, both regular audio and closed-circuit baby monitors (I live in a stairless apartment!), a BabyBjörn, a sling, a Maya Wrap (which should have come with a distinguished PhD candidate to help decipher the instructions), at least seventeen baby blankets, and, sadly, shamefully, a wipe warmer. A wipe warmer, for those lucky enough not to know, is just what it sounds like: a brick-sized device whose sole purpose is to heat baby wipes to a temperature that will not upset,
alarm, or disturb your infant’s back section in even the slightest way. This creation may be the best proof yet that untethered innovation is not always the answer.

Maybe it is from all of the processed foods in this country, or maybe it is hormones, but something odd happens to the American brain when we start to breed, and our weakness for stuff, stuff, and more stuff gets further inflated. Take my youngest brother, one of the thriftiest people I know. Ben and his wife
shared
a cell-phone for almost five years! They weren’t short on funds, mind you; it’s just that my brother does not like waste—be it water, money, or the latest in telecommunications. (I think he still owns only two pairs of shoes, and one pair is flip-flops.) That is, he was miserly with any and everything—until his wife was with child. I screamed out loud at my computer monitor when I first read that my tightfisted little
frère
had registered for a six-hundred-dollar carriage. Even the strongest among us go soft in the head prepartum. And postpartum too, of course (much more on that later).

Keeping in mind that the French inventory list is rather modest in size, take a look at what is typically recommended for the American mother to stockpile. If you have already lived through this particular brand of torture, I apologize for the recurrence of any post-traumatic stress. All right, if you aren’t sitting already, you may want to. Grab a sandwich. Fluff a pillow under yourself. Get comfy. Here goes:

I swear to you that this isn’t just a list of all of the baby paraphernalia I could think of. I did not want to rely solely on (the faulty) memories of my own pregnancies, so I checked in with a number of folks around the country in the middle of the pre-baby “gathering” period. This is a distillation of what’s happening on today’s baby-registry
circuit. I collapsed toys and left out a few of the more ridiculous entries—
homeopathic teething tablets, cleaning service, night nurse
—because I do have some pride in my people, but you get the idea. We are obsessed! I am not saying less is more, because it’s not—it is less. I am saying that less could very well be a good thing.

Unless you have a boatload of time on your hands, you might want to avoid an Internet search of the words “baby registry.” It will yield not only countless sites devoted to instructing hapless new moms and dads on exactly what they should list but also a slew of posts from unnerved registrants, completely stressed out by the process, as they are not sure of the best bottle, crib-sheet fabric, organic formula, or highly stimulating mobile to sign up for. It is utterly overwhelming and largely unnecessary. As if carrying the baby around in utero is not enough, we pile on the added worry that we aren’t going to get the (many, many, oh, so many) supplies right. It is a nice idea to shower new parents with necessities for an expanding family, but in the process we have created a climate of apprehension, bordering on panic.

Valerie, a mom friend from Brittany, pointed out to me how much expecting moms count on the French government to make their baby-carrying time not just bearable but even almost pleasurable (again, some American moms may like being preggers—not me). She told me that it is “really important to consider how people are cared for in general by the government here. The state gives all pregnant women a subsidy of one hundred fifty euros [about
two hundred dollars] a month starting at the fourth month of pregnancy if she visits her doctor (absolutely free through childbirth, including a hospital stay for up to a week) once a month during the pregnancy. This subsidy continues until the child turns eighteen if the mother has more than one child. This is true for all women, no matter their income. Women also have sixteen full weeks of paid maternity leave by law for the first child and more for successive children. I have two children, fourteen and seventeen, and I still receive monthly ‘family benefits.’ So, in the end, perhaps baby showers would be superfluous.”

Touché.

Amid the atmosphere of angst here in the United States, it is also no wonder that we Americans tend to approach the baby’s arrival with overblown trepidation.

Here I’ll admit that I was utterly terrified. The frequent peeing in my pants was due not only to the extra weight on my bladder but to everything I imagined might go wrong.
What if we forget to bring our birth plan? What if they give me drugs? What if they don’t give me drugs? Should I go for the water birth? But if I do, what if the baby drowns?
The worries never ended. And then there was the constant mental torment about what would happen after the baby was born. This is what scores of expecting mothers and I do with our energy.

This massive anxiety, so common, has led many American mothers-to-be to draft “instructions” on how they would like their families and friends to behave in the early days after a baby’s birth. I came across one blog post that was so overwrought and jumpy—including everything from the use of antibacterial to what kind of comments directed at baby and mother were acceptable—that my own knuckles were white after reading it. This poor first-time mom was already severely chafed, weeks before her child was due—and I don’t mean the kind of thing that any Lansinoh nipple cream can soothe (although I am betting she had a few tubes—it’s a popular registry item). By worrying about everything from germs to breast exposure to the fact that her baby might be funny-looking to her future emotionally fragile state, she had done a bang-up job of taking the fun out of things. Let me lean on my pal
Pernoud one more time here, because in
J’attends un enfant
she advises her minions of French moms not to talk about giving birth with any friends who have gone through it and to save such conversations for the doctor. Although I am not in total agreement, we could tone it down a little. Sometimes I worry that my mom friends and I do little more than scare one another. For instance, at one point I was utterly petrified that Oona was going to have inferior peripheral vision because she would not tolerate “tummy time” as an infant. I had latched on to something a friend told me she’d read and then successfully turned myself into a nervous wreck. It wasn’t until I thought to consult Dr. Cohen that I calmed down. Incidentally, Dr. Cohen points out that it is normal for babies to reject being placed on their bellies, as, to ward off SIDS, they are always on their backs. He very calmly advises, “Since there is no need to strengthen any specific muscle group, I advise you not to act as Lucy’s [any female baby in Cohen-speak] personal trainer. Skip the tummy time, and tickle her tummy so she’ll exercise her giggling muscles instead.” Ah—so much better than being terrified to the point of insomnia.

Speaking of horror movies, consider the $250 million industry born from the cord-blood controversy. Do not avert your eyes! The instant I went public with my pregnancy, I began to receive all kinds of brochures and emails about saving my newborn’s cord blood. Every time I turned around, I was bombarded with information, and pressure, from the cord-blood banking companies. The marketing campaigns are not subtle, suggesting that if parents do not
choose to retrieve their newborn’s cord blood and store it at these facilities for years to come, they
just might
be dooming one of their children who
just might
develop a crappy disease in the future that
just might
be treatable with the stockpiled cord blood. There is so much fear and guilt involved with these advertisements, it’s impossible to escape them without completely freaking out. I should know—I didn’t. I was not in a financial position to sign up for the service, but I felt like a terrible mother crossed with an ogre (a mogre?) at the thought of not freezing my innocent little baby’s umbilical blood. Additionally, every time I saw one of those cord-blood flyers I was newly petrified by the thought of all those awful diseases that might attack my child. Leukemia, polio, gout, hemorrhoids, clubfoot, Chicago Cubs fandom: You name it and I was in fear. Yet, in the end, we didn’t go for it. When my pregnant friends came to me in hysteria over their own cord-blood-banking decisions, I didn’t know what to tell them—that is, until I discovered that private cord-blood banking is illegal in France for anyone not at risk, and pregnant French women are never terrorized over the matter.