Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting

by Pamela Druckerman

  “Hanukah is over, we’re not Jewish anymore,” she tells me. She wants to know whether Father Christmas—aka the “Père Noël” she’s been hearing about in school—will be coming to our house. On Christmas Eve, Simon insists on setting out shoes with presents in front of our fireplace. He claims he’s loosely following the Dutch cultural tradition, not the religious one (the Dutch put out shoes on December fifth). Bean is ecstatic when she wakes up and sees the shoes, even though the only thing in them is a cheap yo-yo and some plastic scissors.

  “Père Noël doesn’t usually visit the Jewish children, but he came to our house this year!” she chirps. After that, when I pick her up at school, our conversations usually go something like this:

  Me: What did you do at school today?

  Bean: I ate pork.

  As long as we’re foreign, it’s not a bad idea to be native English speakers. English is, of course, the language du jour in France. Most Parisians under forty can speak it at least passably. Bean’s teacher asks me and a Canadian dad to come in one morning to read some English-language books out loud to the kids in Bean’s class. Several of Bean’s friends take English lessons. Their parents coo about how lucky Bean is to be bilingual.

  But there’s a downside to having foreign parents. Simon always reminds me that, as a child in Holland, he cringed when his parents spoke Dutch in public. I’m reminded of that when, at the year-end concert at Bean’s preschool, parents are invited to join in for a few songs. Most of the other parents know the words. I mumble along, hoping that Bean doesn’t notice.

  It’s clear that I will have to compromise between the American identity I’d like to give Bean and the French one she is quickly absorbing. I get used to her calling Cinderella Cendrillon and Snow White Blanche-Neige. I laugh when she tells me that a boy in her class likes Speederman—complete with a gutteral “r”—instead of Spider-Man. But I draw the line when she claims that the seven dwarfs sing “Hey ho,” as they do in the French voice-over. Some things are sacred.

  Luckily, it turns out that bits of Anglophone culture are irresistibly catchy.

  As I’m walking Bean to school one morning, through the glorious medieval streets of our neighborhood, she suddenly starts singing “The sun’ll come out, tomorrow.” We sing it together all the way to school. My hopefulol.yle MT S little American girl is still in there.

  I finally decide to ask some French adults about this mysterious word, caca boudin. They’re tickled that I’m taking caca boudin so seriously. It turns out that it is a swear word, but one that’s just for little kids. They pick it up from each other around the time that they start learning to use the toilet.

  Saying caca boudin is a little bit of a bêtise. But parents understand that that’s the joy of it. It’s a way for kids to thumb their noses at the world and to transgress. The adults I speak to recognize that since children have so many rules and limits, they need some freedom, too. Caca boudin gives kids power and autonomy. Bean’s former teacher Anne-Marie smiles indulgently when I ask her about caca boudin. “It’s part of the environment,” she explains. “We said it when we were little, too.”

  That doesn’t mean that children can say caca boudin whenever they want. The parenting guide Votre Enfant suggests telling kids they can only say bad words when they’re in the bathroom. Some parents tell me they ban such words from the dinner table. They don’t forbid kids from saying caca boudin; they teach them to wield it appropriately.

  When Bean and I visit a French family in Brittany, she and their little girl, Leonie, stick out their tongues at the little girl’s grandmother. The grandmother immediately sits them down for a talk about when it’s appropriate to do such things.

  “When you’re alone in your room you can. When you’re alone in the bathroom you can . . . You can go barefoot, stick out your tongue, point at someone, say caca boudin. You can do all that, when you’re by yourself. But when you’re at school, non. When you’re at the table, non. When you’re with mommy and daddy, non. In the street, non. C’est la vie. You must understand the difference.”

  Once Simo

  n and I learn more about caca boudin, we decide to lift our moratorium on it. We tell Bean that she can say it, but not too much. We like the philosophy behind it and even occasionally say it ourselves. A curse word just for kids: How quaint! How French!

  In the end, I think the social complexities of caca boudin are too subtle for us to master. When the father of one of Bean’s school friends comes to fetch his daughter at our house one Sunday afternoon after a playdate, he hears Bean shouting caca boudin as she runs down the hall. The father, a banker, looks at me warily. I’m sure he mentions the incident to his wife. His daughter hasn’t been back to our house since.

  Chapter 10

  double entendre

  So I finished msud

  And yet, I’m not.

  Everyone around me is. There seems to be a last gasp of fertility among my friends who are, like me, in their late thirties. Getting pregnant with Bean was a bit like having a pizza delivered. You want one? Phone up and get one! It worked on the first try.

  But this time, there’s no pizza. As the months go by, I feel the age gap between Bean and her theoretical, possibly counterfactual sibling widening. I don’t feel like I have many months to spare. If I don’t have the second baby soon, the third will become physically impossible.

  My doctor tells me that my cycle has become too long. She says the egg shouldn’t be sitting on the shelf so long before it breaks through to reach a possible mate. She prescribes Clomid, which makes me release more eggs, upping the odds that one will stay fit enough. Meanwhile, more friends call me with their wonderful news: they’re pregnant! I’m happy for them. Really, I am.

  After about eight months, I get the name of an acupuncturist specializing in fertility. She has long black hair and a storefront in a low-end Parisian business district. (Most cities have one “Chinatown”; Paris has five or six.) The acupuncturist studies my tongue, sticks some needles in my arms, and asks the length of my cycle.

  “That’s too long,” she says, explaining that the egg is withering on the shelf. She writes me a prescription for a liquid potion that tastes like tree bark. I drink it dutifully. I don’t get pregnant.

  Simon says he’d be happy with just one kid. Out of respect for him, I consider this possibility for about four seconds. Something primal is driving me. It doesn’t feel Darwinian. It feels like a carbohydrate high. I want more pizza. I go back to my doctor and tell her I’m ready to up the ante. What else has she got?

  She doesn’t think we need to go all the way to in vitro fertilization. (France’s national insurance pays for up to six rounds of IVF for women under age forty-three.) Instead, she teaches me to inject myself in the thigh with a drug that will force me to ovulate earlier in my cycle, so the egg won’t have time to wither. For this to work, I have to take the shot on day fourteen. And in a primitive twist, just after taking the shot, I must have sex.

  It turns out that at the next fourteen-day point, Simon will be in Amsterdam for work. For me, there’s no question of waiting another month. I book a babysitter for Bean, and arrange to meet Simon in Brussels, which is about halfway between Amsterdam and Paris. We plan to have a leisurely dinner and then retire to our hotel room. At the very least, it’ll be a nice escape. He’ll return to Amsterdam the next morning.

  On day fourteen, there’s a massive storm and a freak rail-service breakdown in western Holland. Just as I arrive at the Brussels train station around six P.M.1">ve , Simon calls to say that his train has been halted in Rotterdam. It’s unclear which trains—if any—will leave from there. He might not get to Brussels tonight. He’ll call me back. As if on cue, it starts to rain.

  I’ve carried the injection in a portable cooler with a cold pack that lasts only a few hours. What if I get caught in a hot train? I dash into a convenience store at the station, buy a bag of frozen peas, and shove them inside the cooler.

  Simon calls bac
k to say there’s a train leaving Rotterdam for Antwerp. Can I meet him in Antwerp? On the giant overhead screen I see that there’s a train leaving Brussels for Antwerp in a few minutes. In a scene where The Bourne Identity meets Sex and the City, I grab my pea-wrapped syringe and bolt up to the platform.

  I’m in the rain, about to board the train to Antwerp, when Simon calls again. “Don’t get on!” he shouts. He’s on a train bound for Brussels.

  I take a taxi to our hotel, which is cozy and warm and decked out for Christmas with a giant tree. I should be grateful just to be there, but the first room the bellhop brings me to doesn’t quite have the conception vibe I’m looking for. He leads me to another room on the top floor, with a slanted ceiling. This one seems like a good place to procreate.

  While I wait for Simon to arrive I take a bath, put on a robe, then calmly jab myself with the syringe. I realize I wouldn’t make a bad junkie. I hope, however, that I’ll make an even better mother of two.

  A few weeks later, I’m in London for work. I buy a pregnancy test at a pharmacy. Then I buy a bagel at a deli, for the sole purpose of using its dingy basement bathroom to take the test. (Okay, I also eat the bagel.) To my amazement, the test is positive. I call Simon while I’m pulling my suitcase to a meeting. He immediately starts choosing nicknames. Since the baby was conceived in Brussels, maybe we’ll call him “Sprout”?

  Simon comes with me to an ultrasound a month later. I lie back on the table watching the screen. The baby looks wonderful: heartbeat, head, legs. Then I notice a dark spot off to the side.

  “What’s that?” I ask the doctor. She moves the wand over a bit. Suddenly another little body pops onto the screen, with its own heartbeat, head, and legs.

  “Twins,” she says.

  This is one of the best moments of my life. I feel like I’ve been given an enormous gift: two pizzas. It also seems like a very efficient way for a woman in her late thirties to breed.

  When I turn to look at Simon, I realize that the best moment of my life may be the worst moment of his. He appears to be in shock. For once, I don’t want to know what he’s thinking. I’m giddy from the idea of twins. He’s blown over by the enormity of it.

  “I’ll never be able to go to ablef t café again,” he says. Already he foresees the end of his free time.

  “You could get one of those home espresso makers,” the doctor suggests.

  My French friends and neighbors congratulate us on the news. They treat the reason I’m having twins as none of their business. The Anglophones I know are generally less discreet.

  “Were you surprised?” a mother in my playgroup asks, when I announce the news. When I offer an unrevealing “yes,” she tries again: “Well, was your doctor surprised?”

  I’m too busy to be bothered. Simon and I have decided that what we really need isn’t a better coffee maker, it’s a larger apartment. (Our current one has just two small bedrooms.) This seems even more urgent when we discover that the babies are both boys.

  I trek out to see several dozen apartments, all of which are either too dark, too expensive, or have long, scary hallways leading to tiny kitchens. (Apparently in the nineteenth century, it wasn’t chic to smell food while the servants were cooking it.) The real-estate agents always boast that the place I’m about to see is “very calm.” This seems to be a prized quality in both French apartments and French children.

  All the focus on real estate keeps me from worrying too much about the pregnancy. I think I’ve also absorbed the French idea that there’s no need to track the formation of each fetal eyebrow. (Though there are quite a few eyebrows in there to worry about.) I do briefly indulge in some twin-specific angst, like about the babies being born prematurely. But mostly the health system does the worrying for me. Because it’s twins, I get extra doctor’s visits and sonograms. At each visit, the handsome radiologist points out “Baby A” and “Baby B” on the screen, then makes the same bad joke: you’re not obliged to keep those names. I flash him my best microsmile.

  This time around, it’s Simon who’s anxious—about himself, not the babies. He treats each cheese plate as if it’s his last. I revel in all the attention. Despite the free IVF, twins are still a novelty in Paris. (I’m told that doctors often implant just one or two embryos.) Within a few weeks, I’m visibly pregnant. By six months, it looks like I’m about to deliver. Even some maternity clothes are too tight. Soon it’s clear even to young children that there’s more than one baby in there.

  I also study up on the nomenclature. In French, twins aren’t called identical or fraternal. They’re called vrais or faux—real or fake. I get used to telling people that I’m waiting for two fake twin boys.

  I needn’t have worried about my fake boys coming out early. At nine months pregnant, I have two full-sized babies inside of me, each weighing nearly as much as Bean did. People point at me from café tables. And I can no longer climb stairs.

  “If you want an apartment, go find one,” I tell Simon. Less than a week later, after seeing exactly one apartment, he does. The apartment is old, even for Paris. It has no hallways, ano hindd a triple-wide sidewalk in front. It needs a lot of work. We buy it. The day before I give birth, I meet with an architect to plan the renovations.

  The private hospital where I delivered Bean was small and spotless, with an around-the-clock nursery, endless fresh towels, and steak and foie gras on the room-service menu. I barely had to change a diaper.

  I’ve been warned that the public maternity hospital where I’m planning to deliver the twins will be a less rarefied experience. The medicine is excellent at French public hospitals, but the service is supposedly no-frills. They give you a list of things to bring to the birth, which includes diapers. There’s no customizing with birth plans, bathtubs, and “walking epidurals.” They don’t give the baby a chic little hat. People keep saying “conveyor belt” to describe the efficient but impersonal experience.

  I opt for Hôpital Armand-Trousseau because it’s a ten-minute taxi ride from our house and it’s equipped to handle complications with twins. (I later learn that it’s attached to the children’s hospital where Françoise Dolto did her weekly rounds.) I don’t want to give birth in a bathtub anyway. And I figure that when the moment comes, I’ll just use my New York chutzpah to customize things. I point out to Simon that we’re already enjoying economies of scale: they’re going to deliver our two babies for the price of one.

  When I go into labor, the epidural isn’t optional. The doctor puts me in a sterile operating room, so he can do a C-section instantly if necessary. I’m flat on my back, my legs locked into a retro 1950s harness, surrounded by strangers in shower caps and surgical masks. I ask several times for someone to put pillows under my back, so I can see what’s happening. No one even responds. Eventually, in a small concession, someone shoves a folded sheet under me, which just makes me more uncomfortable.

  As soon as active delivery starts, my French evaporates. I can’t understand anything the doctor says, and I can only speak English. This must have happened before, because a midwife immediately begins interpreting between me and the doctor. Maybe she’s summarizing, or maybe her English isn’t great. But she mostly just says “push” and “don’t push.”

  When the first baby emerges, the midwife hands him to me. I’m captivated. Here is Baby A at last! We’re just getting acquainted when the midwife taps me on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me, but you must deliver the other baby,” she says, taking Baby A to an undisclosed location. I realize, right then, that having twins is going to be complicated.

  Nine minutes later, Baby B emerges. I say a quick hello, and then they whisk him away, too. In fact, soon almost everyone is gone—Simon, the babies, and most of the enormous medical team. I’m still on my back, paralyzed from the waist down. My legs are up in the harness, spread wide apart. On a stainless-steel table in front of me are two red placentas, each the size of a human head. Someone has decided to open the dividing curtains that were the wall
s of my room, so now anyone who walks past has a bulls-eye view of my five-minutes-post-twins crotch.

  ht=s tThe only person still with me is the anesthesia nurse, who also isn’t thrilled about being left behind. She decides to mask her irritation by making small talk: Where am I from? Do I like Paris?

  “Where are my babies? When can I see them?” I ask. (My French has reappeared.) She doesn’t know. And she’s not allowed to leave me to find out.

  Twenty minutes pass. No one comes for us. Perhaps because of the hormones, none of this bothers me. Though I’m grateful when the nurse finally uses surgical tape to put up a little modesty cloth between my knees. After that, she no longer wants to chat. “I hate my job,” she says.

  Eventually someone wheels me into a recovery room, where I reunite with Simon and the babies. We take pictures, and for the first and only time I attempt to nurse both boys at once.

  An orderly wheels us to the room where the boys and I will be staying for the next few days. A boutique hotel it’s not. It’s more like a Motel 6. There’s a skeletal staff to help out, and a nursery that’s open from about one to four A.M. Because I have an older child and am thus deemed unable to mess up too badly, the staff leaves me practically on my own. At mealtimes someone brings in plastic trays with a parody of hospital food: limp French fries, chicken nuggets, and chocolate milk. It takes me a few days to realize that none of the other mothers are eating this: there’s a communal refrigerator down the hall, where they store groceries.

  Simon is home looking after Bean, so most of the time I’m alone with the boys, who howl for hours at a stretch. I usually wedge one between my legs, in some approximation of a hug, while I try to nurse the other. With the constant blur of noise and body parts, it feels like there are more than two of them. When I finally get them both to sleep, after hours of wailing and drinking, Simon shows up. “It’s so peaceful in here,” he says. I try not to think about the fact that my belly looks like a giant mound of flesh-colored Jell-O.