To My Beanie Baby
Being an expectant mother for the first time is an incredible and sometimes overwhelming experience. Even if at the age of 33 I was late in the baby game, I couldn’t bring the wisdom of my years to this new paradigm. Pregnancy can be even more of a challenge when you’re straddling two cultures. This was my scenario when I was pregnant with my first born. I am a Californian living in northeast France, far from the very Americanized expat community that one would find in Paris, and I was feeling kind of lost. So naturally, I set out turn learn about pregnancy and childbirth like any American would: pouring through “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” and clinging onto every word.
Reading a very American-style pregnancy book while expecting in France revealed some interesting differences in attitudes, approaches and most importantly, medical systems. While I was surprised to see buck-naked women in videos during my birthing prep classes (that’s my American puritanism showing) and was annoyed with their pushing epidurals on me (I wanted to try natural childbirth), I totally appreciated the prenatal care I got, especially when it came to the free monthly blood tests to check for toxoplasmosis, which is not done in the USA.
The pregnancy went smoothly, even with those few too many kilos. This was the next bit of culture shock I experienced. A quarter century ago, French women were slim, even during pregnancy. As this wasn’t the case for me, I headed out into town to buy some plus-sized clothes. The double zinger was that not only were the pickings super slim (no pun intended), but larger sizes in the same style were also often more expensive (I guess because of the extra fabric???). The French H & M, Kiabi, had just one rack dedicated to plus-sized women. They now have half a floor- but we’ll save that topic for another time.
In spite of the weight gain, the occasional discomfort and the small sacrifices (I missed my coffee), I loved those nine months. Getting ready for Baby X was fun. I loved going to my sonogram appointments and watching this little bean sprout limbs and start to squirm inside me. I loved my sophrology sessions and checking out the chic baby clothes in town.
We didn’t want to know the sex of our baby- we wanted to be surprised- so we opted for red-and-white gingham for the baby room, cream-colored jammies and neutral toys and accessories. I went crazy prepping for this baby- even the most useless gadgets seemed essential. I wish Ebay had been around then- I would have saved a bundle buying for my bundle of joy.
I tried to stay as active as possible throughout my pregnancy: I played tennis until my belly kept me from performing a two-handed backhand; I tried swimming laps until I got fed up with the other swimmers kicking dangerously close to me; I even went on an epic 70 km bike ride and hiked in the Pyrénées mountains. All this sport could explain why this baby later on would be a super-fit adult 26 years later.
My contractions came on right in the middle of a serious nesting phase. I also somehow had the idea that I would no longer be able to shop or go to the movies. So in between knee-buckling contractions, I managed to fit in a (really bad) movie, some winter sales purchases (two bowls), eat some pizza and clean the house. In spite of my sophrology relaxation courses to prepare for this birth, the contractions reached such intensity that I left for the maternity hospital before my water broke (Yay! No need to drop a pickle jar to mask the leakage!). I ended up caving in to getting an epidural, although in hindsight, I probably could have managed without one. When I arrived, I wasn’t dilated very much, so they told my hubby to come back later. Well, our baby decided to come out hours earlier than what the midwives estimated, and Daddy almost missed out on the delivery. I think I would have jumped off the delivery room table and grabbed him out of the parking lot if I had to. Luckily, he walked in just in time for that magic moment.
Our little girl, Carolyn, was born in the middle of a bitter cold winter during a full moon at midnight on the nose. When she came out, I swear I saw a brilliant flash of light. She was immediately placed on me for bonding, and she fell right back into a comfortable sleep, snoring away. She was then wisked away soon after for her “perfect 10” APGAR, and in her place, I was presented with the fruits of another delivery: my disappointingly small placenta. “Is that all?”, I said, hoping that I could get rid of my baby weight more easily. To give you an idea about my weight gain, I was asked if I was pregnant while I was in the middle of breast-feeding a 6-month-old Carolyn. Harsh!
On a side note, you may be wondering why I call her “Bean” or “Beanie”. Well, first it was because she looked like a little haricot- bean- but later it was to quell the confusion I created by opting for the English spelling of her name while insisting on the French pronunciation. So I told my US family, “It’s Caroleen, like ‘bean’”. Carolyn still isn’t a fan of her nickname, but I think it’s perfect. Perhaps one day she’ll let people other than her folks call her by that name, but I wouldn’t dare try now!
Anyway, I thought that a baby would stop us from living our lives, but Carolyn fit in seamlessly. Breastfeeding meant I could feed her and calm her anywhere, so I was back at the cinema in no time, my little bundle in tow. I took her to the winter sales (this time to buy a few pink things) and flew with her from France to California not just once, but twice in her first 6 months of life. She was an easy baby: even those dreaded night awakenings were quite bearable because I did the unheardable (at least at that time in France)- I took her to our bed. I thought this was a wonderful tip to share, but I freaked a few people out over this.
Alas, our pediatrician was not the understanding type, either. I knew better not to mention the co-sleeping, but I didn’t expect him to be outraged at my breastfeeding. 26 years ago in France, many women wanted to get back into shape right after childbirth, so bottle feeding was the norm. As a result, there were few support networks to deal with questions about how to increase output or breastfeeding with mastitis. Then there was the issue of pumping milk when I went back to teaching part-time after my two-month maternity leave. The national health system covers electric pump rentals, but the apparatus looked like something from the Middle Ages- it was cumbersome, noisy and painful.
The fact that Carolyn wasn’t a very big baby didn’t garner much support. Still, I managed to breastfeed Carolyn for about a year, or until her curiosity of the world had her ripping away from my nipple at the slightest rustling around her.
Then there was the antibiotics issue. French pediatricians would give them to babies for the slightest runny nose. Carolyn got a cold with every new tooth, and the pediatrician would give her one round after another of antibiotics. On the other hand, when Carolyn had a long-running stomach flu in the States, the outrageously expensive American pediatrician completely misdiagnosed her and gave her a potent codeine-based drug. At one point, we got fed up with the meds. Luckily, a friend introduced us to an amazing homepathic doctor, who got not only Carolyn, but the rest of the family back to better health. It’s a real shame that since then, the French national health system has all but killed off this necessary practice.
Small in size, but big in brains, Carolyn was a joy to teach. My friend and fellow English teacher, Lesley, had a daughter about the same age as Carolyn, so we decided to swap doing English educational play dates. This went on until they reached middle school. As a result, both girls are amazingly articulate, even when compared to their full-on native peers. That isn’t to say that being bi-lingual is a bowl of cherries in France. There were several times that I locked horns with pre-school teachers who believed that Carolyn’s bi-lingualism was hindering her progress. For any of you raising bilingual or multilingual kids, you might have experienced delays in speech as they appropriate their languages. Carolyn’s very first word was “shoe” (from mommy’s shopping ventures?). Then is was “chaussure”(“shoe” in French). Then she got creative with a new mashed-up word: “chausshoe”. The funny thing is that we as a family speak in “Franglais”, flowing back and forth between French and English- often in the same sentence- and people now think that’s cool.
Alas, there were other linguistic tribulations, notably when my justice-seeking little girl defended a boy in her 6th grade class who had given a correct definition of “awesome”- the one he had probably heard on MTV: “cool”. Her native French English teacher, stuck in the 19th century, thought the only definition was “inspiring reverence”. This horrible woman made sure that Carolyn would be punished for having corrected her in front of the class: from that moment onwards, she severely and unfairly marked Carolyn’s papers and was generally rude to her. There would be other times that Carolyn got the short shrift for being bi-lingual (suspicions that she actually wrote her own papers, being graded extra hard…), but she persevered. She was the square peg that refused to be hammered into French Education’s round hole.
Carolyn’s early struggles with a rigid school system were hard on me as well, yet they helped me forge a new path in my career as an English teacher. I learned what shouldn’t be done, and that has inspired me to look into all the ways English can be taught.
Whatever Carolyn takes on, she does so with gusto and skill, be it cooking, cheerleading (not pompom shaking, but hard core acrobatics), budget traveling, spouting trivia, collecting tea or painting. However, none of these pursuits equals her greatest passion: reading. My nightly bedtime stories, book-of-the-month subscriptions and library reading challenges moulded her into a mighty bookworm. She devours books. How many 14-year-olds do you know who can read Ken Follet’s “Pillars of the Earth” (1104 pages) in less than a month? She tore through the entire Harry Potter series in both English and French. She alone is a sound argument to continue funding public libraries.
One piece of advice that I now give to all my students is that if they want to improve their writing, then they need to read. A lot. Carolyn is an excellent writer, and while some retort that she had an unfair advantage having an English teacher as a mother, I can’t take much credit. In fact, she was no longer interested in me teaching her by the time she reached middle school. Reading gave her an excellent command of English which not only served her well in her ongoing academic pursuits (a Bachelor’s degree and two Master’s degrees to date), it also got her gigs at an investment bank and at the Carter Center.
While it’s easy to see why Carolyn grew to be so bookish, there have been other aspects of her evolution that were quite unexpected. I remember her as a kindergartner frozen in fear trying to crawl across a jungle-gym ladder a couple of meters above ground. Never would I imagined that this child would end up jumping out of planes or being tossed high in the air.
I’m proud to say that I was responsible for one of Carolyn’s more arcane habits: sock collecting. It started when I was looking for a quick gift for her at the airport on my way back from a weekend in Oslo. The only thing that seemed interesting was a pair of troll socks. That became the first of dozens of pairs that I have picked up during my travels. Family, friends and even Carolyn herself have added to the bounty, adorning her feet with color and whimsy. If you are so inclined, send a pair for her birthday!
