Unlikely Diplomat

And now for the final installment of my accouchement story: the part where I talk about the food! Yes, only in France would a story about giving birth include an entire chapter on what I ate during my 4 day sojourn at the hospital.

That’s right: 4 whole days. None of this booting you out the door 5 minutes after the baby comes out crap. No sir. Here they let you rest and relax for half a week, tended to by nurses and midwives and a very sweet butler who brings you meals 3 times a day and doesn’t mind if you’re sitting around in a paper gown and see-through hospital grade mesh underwear.

Or maybe he did mind. But he was nice enough not to say anything about it.

Anyway, this butler (and I call him a butler because he was in fact dressed in a fancy white butler uniform) stopped in to bring this wondrous breakfast tray not long after le bebe was born:
Pastries and jam, fresh squeezed orange juice, tea and a side of pain meds. Just what the doctor ordered.

Then he started going through a laundry list of other offerings: pureed carrots or steamed asparagus? Boeuf bourguignon or lamb chops? Fresh bread or pasta? Camembert or chevre? Chocolate mousse or fromage blanc? It took nearly 5 minutes to make all of my selections, which surely could have covered the rest of my stay. And then he said he’d take my dinner order later.

Oh la la. Speaking of dinner: Do you see that menu close-up? It does in fact say “roasted young guinea fowl with rosemary.” Roasted guinea fowl. From the hospital kitchen. And it was totally delicious!

But before all this talk of hospital luxury totally convinces you that socialized healthcare can indeed be absolutely fabulous, let me remind you that I was at a private hospital that most French citizens would have probably had to pay extra for. Let me also point out that my wonderful private bedroom, complete with cable TV and a hydro-massage shower, did not have air conditioning.

No air conditioning + sweltering mid-afternoon sunshine + sore, sleep-deprived new mother = complete emotional meltdown by day 2 and an utter necessity to lay around in nothing other than the aforementioned mesh underwear while I sweated out what was left of my dignity.

But boy did that guinea fowl taste good…

I’m taking this brief moment of quiet and clarity (thank you 4.5 hours of sleep! Yes, 4.5 hours. I am now grateful for 4.5 hours of sleep. Cripes.) to finish telling you the story of how le bébé made her grande entrance. Please excuse any typos, because I’m most likely typing this with one hand while breast feeding and sleeping. I’m a multi-tasker like that.

So, where did we leave off? I think I had finally arrived at the hospital for the second time, greeted by the laughter of the sage femmes. Hilarity ensued. What type of hilarity, might you ask? Well, mostly the kind that comes with trying to comprehend French when you’re in labor.

Have you ever tried to understand a foreign language during a contraction? After you’ve been having contractions all day long? It sounds something like this: Madame, WAAAAAAHWAAAAAAHWAAH WAH WAHHHHHWAH WAH WAH WAHHHHH. 

All I could grasp was that I still wasn’t dilated and that they wanted me to chill out in my room. Perhaps take a warm shower to help with the pain. So they checked me in, handed me a little capsule of something, said a lot of things in French that I couldn’t fathom and shut the door.

The medicine in my hand looked like a suppository. Wary of taking an unidentified medication (but totally game if it was pain reliever!) I asked Husband if he understood what it was for and, ahem, where it was supposed to go.

“I have no idea.”

“Is it for the pain? Or to speed things up? Wait, did I hear them say “anus”? Oh my god…”

Blank stare. “Dude. I have no idea.”

So there I was, in a Parisian hospital about to give birth, holding a strange foreign medication and wondering which hole I should put it in. Not exactly the birth plan I had in mind.

I would have asked my English-speaking, American doctor what the hell was going on, but she was on vacation. This is the risk you take having a baby in France in August – I’m lucky the hospital was open.

Anyway, let’s just say I figured it out (and my doc confirmed later that it was some miracle, cervix-inducing medication). After that I lost track of space and time for a while, sitting in the shower and then trying to breathe and zone out to an iPod playlist aptly titled “Giving Birth Jams.”

Then they came to check my cervix again and HEEEYYYY OHHHHHHH! also break my water. That was a special surprise that got lost in translation.

And finally, after what seemed like days and days and days, the anesthesiologist arrived! And oddly, at that point I was kind of too exhausted and delirious to even get excited about the epidural. Lost in wave after wave of contractions, I was actually indifferent to pain relief. That man could have punched me in the face instead and I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

But he didn’t punch me. He kindly gave me the epidural and Husband almost passed out.

And just a bit later it was go time. With two sage femmes positioned on either side of me and Husband holding my hand, I tried my hardest to do the unthinkable and push that bebe out into the world. Except apparently my pushing wasn’t cutting it, because I could see the midwives getting frustrated and the doctor looking bored. I kept waiting for some kind of rallying cry or at least a good pep talk, but all I got was a lot of stern talking in French. So I kept trying harder, and they kept looking more annoyed and speaking louder. In French. Until finally my head spun around six times and I shouted “I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU WANT ME TO DO!!!!!!!!”

But just before I could really show them the complete colorful array of my English vocabulary, le bebe popped out. Perfect in every way. With a pain au raisins in her hand, of course.

(next week: 4 days in a French hospital. Three course dinner menu and butler included!) 

Just very, very tired. Deliriously tired. And hungry. This is what happens when a very demanding bébé leaves you just enough free time to make gut wrenching decisions like “should I sleep for 20 minutes or eat lunch?” or “should I risk moving my nearly blood-drained arm and wake the baby? or just suck it up because who needs a left arm anyway?”

The good news is that I have found a few minutes here and there to drink several glasses of wine and eat about 2 tons of stinky cheese. And there’s champagne chilling in the fridge. I’m hoping that next week I’ll be able to gradually reintroduce blogging into my schedule, because I really can’t wait to tell you about L’Accouchement: Part Deux, all the crazy comments we get from friendly French strangers, the pediatrician named Dr. Lovejoy, trying to speak French when you don’t even know what day it is and a very special something called a nipple crevasse.

Ok. Maybe I’ll spare you the details of that last one. But plenty of good blog material is piling up here, and I vow to write about it. Someday. Soon. I hope. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

In the meantime, I wanted to share this amazing essay that pretty much sums up beautifully what’s going on over here chez nous. Enjoy and à bientot!

Well. I should be more careful the next time I start complaining about due dates. Because not long after I posted my gripes about prolonged French gestation times here, I started feeling contractions. Not bad ones, but enough to wake me up and make me think le bébé might be on the move.

That was at 4am. By 7am the idea of contractions was still funny and exciting, and I woke Husband up to tell him the news. We giggled in bed and double checked the hospital bag and googled “when to go to the hospital.” And although I was having those cute little contractions every five minutes like clockwork, it didn’t seem that serious.

So Husband went to work. And I vacuumed the apartment, because it just seemed like the right thing to do (my mom would certainly agree).

By 11am the contractions weren’t as cute as before, but still not alarming, other than their consistent timing. So I called the sage femmes (the midwives at the hospital, literally “wise women”) and let them know we had a situation brewing. They told me it was probably false labor, but to come in anyway.

So I waddled to the taxi stand and rolled up to the hospital, where they took one look at me and said Non, pas de tout! How about you come back on Thursday?

Defeated, I took the bus home. But by the time I got the key in the door, my uterus decided it wasn’t taking that crap and upped the ante. The cute contractions turned into breath-taking, I-mean-business contractions. That were still 5 minutes apart.

That was slightly alarming, but I didn’t want to seem like a wuss. Husband came home just in case and quickly decided that my labor pains didn’t fit the textbook description of active labor. So he watched soccer and I paced around, calling out for him to time each contraction to see if they were fading or getting more urgent.

They got more urgent. I started getting a little panicky. But I didn’t want to go all the way to the hospital again for no reason. And, you know, I didn’t want to be a wuss. Which is not a healthy mindset and something I should probably discuss with a professional. At one point I was hunched over in pain, gripping the arm of the couch and shouting at Husband “DO YOU THINK I’M BEING A WUSS? I SHOULD JUST SUCK IT UP, RIGHT??!”

Which is about when Husband started thinking that this thing might happen for real. But just to confirm, we Skyped my sister-in-law, who’s a nurse. She took one look at my contraction grimace and told us to get our arses to the hospital, NOW.

So back to the hospital we went. And this time, the sage femmes took one look at me bent over and clawing at the door frame and said, See? Now you know what the real contractions feel like!

*     *     *

accouchement (ah-coosh-mehn): childbirth, delivery. As in,

“We arrived at the hospital for the accouchement and learned that our medical vocabulary had severe limitations. Hilarity ensued.” 

So. My American due date has come and gone without much fanfare. Or a baby. I celebrated by waddling over to the Jardin de Tuileries and lounging by the fountains for a while, then waddling (ever so slowly) over to the Marais for some spicy tacos at Candelaria. Neither the waddling nor the sauce piquante seemed to inspire le bébé to make an exit.

Which isn’t very surprising, because my French due date actually isn’t until August 7th. That’s right, French doctors give women a whole extra week of pregnancy. A whole week! So technically, this baby isn’t late yet. And could feasibly stay in there for another whole week after the 7th before anyone starts getting worried.

I have no idea why gestation times are longer here, but a friend said she thought it had something to do with averages – in America, your due date typically falls at a time when 50% of women will have already given birth, and 50% are still waiting. By the French due date, something like 90% of women will have popped that baby out, so it’s more like a final decree: you should have given birth by August 7th.

That theory could be absolutely inaccurate, but it certainly sounds plausible. I like to think that French doctors are just falling in line with the general way of life in France, where everything is longer– longer lunch breaks, longer vacations, longer lines at the post office. Of course you wouldn’t want to rush the birth process either.

Of course. Le sigh.

Remember when Husband got a really sleek French suit last year? Well, after months of complaining about how tight it was in the derriere and how tired he was of all the catcalls on the walk to work in the morning, he found a tailor to let the pants out a little bit. And then he decided to have this tailor go ahead and make him a custom suit, which he jokingly referred to as his “push present.”

Ugh.

Can we banish that term from the English language forever? Especially from the mouths of Husbands who will never know the exquisite pleasure/pain/humiliation of growing a baby human that not only gives you fiery burps and elephant boobs but also plans on exiting through the hoo-hah region? No “present” could ever make up for that, thankyouverymuch.

Anywho, Husband brought the tailor back to the apartment after work on Monday to pick out fabric and take measurements. He was incredibly kind and friendly, and wanted to hear all about le bébé. And when I told him my due date was (hopefully) imminent, his eyes got wide and he said,

“C’est vrai? Mais vous n’êtes pas grosse!” 

Which basically means, “Really? You’re not even fat!”

And I know he meant “fat” and not just “big” or “large” because he proceeded to tell me about how his wife gained so many kilos with each of their children that she cried about her big wobbly arms and thighs.

I’m not sure what else to say about that, other than Wow. And thank you. I think?

I have a lot of nervous energy right now. I’d venture to say that it’s the old proverbial “nesting instinct,” except that I don’t seem to be channeling any of that energy into actual baby preparations. I wish that I had a full time job, or that the apartment needed painting, or that my neighbors needed some wall paper stripped. Because I have an urgent need to do something, preferably manual labor. Anything other than sitting around waiting for le bébé.

Instead I spend a good deal of time paralyzed with anticipation at my computer, pretending that I’m going to use these last few precious days of freedom to write. And when nothing creative comes out of me and I veer toward an hour of celebrity gossip reading, I feel guilty and berate myself for not being more productive. Then I decide to make homemade Butterfingers.

Yes, that block of dark chocolate covered something up there is in fact my first attempt at candy making. And it turned out quite deliciously, especially after I chilled it in the freezer and then crumbled it over vanilla ice cream.

Husband almost whined about it not being milk chocolate, like the real thing. But he quickly reconsidered when I questioned the logic behind crossing a hyperactive pregnant lady who knows how to wield a candy thermometer.

That’s just how insane it’s gotten around here: I have resorted to making candy bars from scratch, just to manage my baby anxiety. I’m afraid by next week you’ll find me freaking out in the kitchen like Jesse Spano on speed. Except instead of caffeine pills, I’ll be gripping recipes for organic Milky Ways and passion fruit Bubbalicious.