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Baby Freight

I started saving for the our “baby freight” thinking that we would need a chunk of change to pay for the private clinic in Toulouse that my husband suggested we have our baby in. I really wanted to have a water birth and found a private place with trompe l’oie painted walls, Jacuzzi tub, five to one staff—meaning five doctors, nurses or sage femmes for each one patient. This is going to set us back especially because I requested the private recovery room for my six day stay with an extra bed for my husband since the baby would be rooming in. I wanted him to experience the joy of night feedings from the get-go. When I got the bill, I was shocked. 35 euros. Total. Our mutual covered the extra 10 percent that the national French insurance didn’t. I did a double take, that’s it? I kiss the French ground in front of me. Then I kiss my daughter. Well, I washed my lips in-between those two.

We had a few extras included in our stay, since the water birth didn’t go as I wanted. It felt weird to be in a bathtub laboring away and seemed to be taking forever. “Bring on the DRUGS, the epidural” I said.  An hour later she was born. A little French girl and half Californian like her mommy. Amaya Madeleine. A little bit yellow in pallor and into intensive care where I bawled my eyes out looking at this tiny baby under UV lights. But she was fine. She was a California girl after all and had to get her suntan since she was born already a brunette with blond streaks and long manicured oval nails. I’m surprised she didn’t ask me for an avocado, sprout sandwich on rye. It must have been all the woo woo Hindi yoga that I did during the pregnancy.

Our little girl came into the world three weeks ahead of time, deemed premature because of her low birth weight (just a smidge over five little pounds) and caused the doctors some stress to make sure that she was ok. The French love to do tests. And prescribe medications. Oh, and go on strike. Luckily, not that day.  Loads of analyses every three hours and a brain scan on her second day. One of the doctors (seriously, I didn’t really know who was a doctor, nurse, sage femme or housekeeper-- I just told them all the same story in my pigeon French that my milk was coming in, look at my breasts, do they look engorged to you?) came into my room with orders for me to take her downstairs for an ultrasound scan.

I was wearing my pyjamas and hot pink bathrobe with crocheted black cat slippers. I didn’t even think to get dressed. So I went downstairs with my baby girl wrapped up like a papoose pushed open the door and into a large room that resembled the Los Angeles DMV at 9am on a Monday morning. I was standing there in my pjs while everyone else was dressed, they had come in from the street entrance with normal appointments. Alors, she was fine after all. And I wasn’t *that* embarrassed. There is something about being in another country that makes you not care about what other people think about you. It helps if you can’t really understand what they are saying about you as well. I still can’t believe that I had a baby in France. And in French! (My ten grade French teacher would be so proud of me.) And it was only 35 euros. God, I love this place!