French Twist (10 page)

And the way their kids eat, I doubt many French schools are serving up spelt crackers as a wheat alternative because of widespread wheat sensitivity. Suffice to say, for the French, keeping boundaries firmly in place starts from birth.

What about that husband and his claim on my rack, you ask? At the risk of sounding like a
Cosmo
cover line, there’s something to this. When you surrender everything to your adorable spawn, it can become difficult to find the path back to your own sexy scene. The grip of obsession is fierce, and, as we’ve established, the trend du jour for American parents is to completely fixate on their kids—at the expense of practically everything else in their lives. Not long ago, I ran into a neighborhood mom who declared she was “sleepwalking,” having spent nearly three hours on the Internet the previous night searching for seamless socks for her four-year-old. “She really has a thing about any socks with seams at the toe, and there is
always a conniption when she has to put shoes on. It’s scary how much I love flip-flops these days. Anyway, Brad is steamed because he says I’ve ruined our Saturday now. I guess I am a little out of it.”

Probably didn’t do a whole lot for their Friday night either. And I have a hunch that that kid could learn to tolerate a hint of thread near her toenails. The screwiest bit is that, only a few weeks ago, that same mom had complained to me that her husband was so consumed with selecting the safest car booster seat for this same sock-challenged daughter that he spent hours creating an Excel spreadsheet comparing different models. Clearly, this couple is in desperate need of a date.

Now, back to
les
boobs. Once, in a conversation about breast-feeding with a group of French women, I got a lot of strange—horrified, really—looks when it came to the question “How long did you nurse?” In this group of five women, only one besides me had gone as long as six months. “I’d decided to take a year off work, and the time just got away from me,” she explained, almost as though she was apologizing. The others all packed it—them—in by three months. It’s not surprising that, in the Western world, the French rank the lowest in terms of number of months allotted to breast-feeding. I’d nursed Oona for fifteen months and Daphne for eighteen. “Eighteen? Eighteen?
Incroyable
. Impossible. You must mean eight,” they exclaimed over there.

I then explained to these completely stupefied madames—and now it sounded as if
I
was apologizing—that
I’d always intended to wean Daphne at fifteen months so that things would be even between my kids. I harbored a fear that if I nursed one longer than the other, and then the one who got extended boob time ended up being a piano prodigy or teenage open-heart surgeon or something, early-weaner would blame me for playing favorites. But when Daphne’s fifteen-month birthday rolled around, she would have none of it, and I failed to seal the deal for another three months. This made absolutely no sense to my French companions, and I had a sensation—one that I was becoming well acquainted with in my interviews with French parents—that I was slightly deranged when it came to certain aspects of parenting. I could not tell if, at that point, they were puzzled more by the length of time that I nursed or by the amount of thought and worry I put into this hypothetical situation of an adult daughter feeling that she did not get her fair share of breast milk. You can imagine why I refrained from describing my many unsuccessful attempts to shut off the valve with Daph, which included a solo trip across the country for three days with the express purpose of “drying up,” various replacement incentives like little puffed fruity things and new stuffed toys if she cooperated, and many other ineffectual schemes. Alas, she was stronger than I—a bit of a pattern when I look back through the history of our battles. I still recall the force with which she brought me to the floor and pulled up my shirt when I returned from my transcontinental experiment. I simultaneously laughed at my toddler’s determination and mourned my failure to reclaim my body
after more than a year of suckling. While the French don’t hesitate to wean, I worried that if Daphne was still so attached to nursing, then clearly she
needed
it. No, I did not admit any of this to the French. They most certainly would not have understood. More than that, they would have been aghast and thought less of me:
Why is this baby making the decisions?

Why indeed.

The other side of this is that many French moms also don’t understand how completely heartbreaking and devastating it is for many American moms who fail to get the hang of nursing or are faced with a kid who doesn’t take to the tit. The pressure to be the perfect nurser is not there in France. French women are much more likely to be ostracized for nursing past three months than for not. I have heard stories of “rebel” French moms who nurse in secret to escape inevitable stares and aggressive tsk-tsking—and unsolicited advice and warnings about how they are ruining their lives and the lives of everyone they love. The French can certainly be harsh.

I’ll never forget the complete anguish my good friend went through when she had a difficult time breast-feeding. She wanted to be “the best mom she could be,” so she tried and tried, but it just didn’t take. Before she threw in the burp cloth, however, she invited two representatives from La Leche League to her apartment for a consultation. The meeting resulted in my friend leaking only more tears and feeling like a miserable failure. Breast milk still wasn’t flowing, and the consultants, insisting that she had to find
a way if she was “serious” about the health of her child, had managed to upset her even more. Before they left, they admonished her for the size of her bed. According to the Leaguers, my friend’s double—and not queen-sized—sleeping accommodations were restricting the baby’s ability to nurse properly.

This guilt pile dumped on my bottle-feeding friend was completely unnecessary—and totally un-French. (Although, make no mistake, the French have no problem offering their opinions. They just wouldn’t knock the bottle.) Another pal of mine, who begrudgingly nursed her child well past his second birthday, lamented the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” feeling that is so bound up in this issue. It’s as though we have to choose between doing what we might think is best for our babies and what is best for womankind.
Zut alors!
I vote that we respect each mom’s personal decisions and not judge one another so harshly.

Well, to a point. There may actually be
too long
to nurse. I remember witnessing a somewhat disturbing scene on an airplane a couple of years ago. A child, I’m guessing nearly four years old, was still on the mommy meal plan. He was begging his mother for a little teet, and this poor mom, who had clearly discussed nursing in public with this kid, was frantically trying to fend him off in forced whispers: “Not now. You know the rules.” Finally, the boy desperately pleaded, “Well, can I at least just see them?” In France, it’s largely regarded as obscene—and damn close to child abuse—to nurse longer than one year. Good thing we weren’t on Air France that day.

In this area, French women have a very public advocate of sorts. And get this: She’s a philosopher! Yep, over there it’s still possible to be a living, valued—even popular—philosopher. After coming across one of the current French faves, Élisabeth Badinter, I understood a little better why French women are so different from Americans in their breast-feeding habits. For years, the feminist Badinter has been attempting to safeguard the role of women in French society and the workforce, which has improved dramatically in the last few generations.
La philosophe
is read so widely that French women could often find her book
Le conflit: la femme et la mère
for sale in their local supermarket after its publication in early 2010. The title translates to
The Conflict: The Wife and the Mother
. Badinter is on a crusade to save French women from losing all of the ground they have gained socially and professionally over the years. Although, by and large, French mothers breast-feed for far less time than we do, Badinter is still wary of a trend she sees developing in her native land toward “natural” parenting. Not only does she vilify the pressure to breast-feed, but she has her sights set on the ever-encroaching burden to provide homemade baby food and cloth diapers, all of which she fears will tether women to their children and their homes. She’s like a modern-day Simone de Beauvoir.

Part of me—the American part—thinks that Badinter sounds paranoid, overly bitter, and a little scary. But another part wishes we had our own version of this feisty feminist here. I didn’t want to nurse for eighteen months—that
much I remember for sure. Yet I didn’t have the balls (pun intended—ha?) to end it. Ladies, don’t let the pressure and guilt keep you in the same
bateau
. You’ve got a life too, so be strong if that is what you want.

Now for a little bit of questionable advice.

While most French mothers don’t need to pull out the heavy artillery to unlatch their babes, as two- and three-month-olds aren’t capable of too much resistance, I still managed to elicit from a collection of Frenchies a few tips for weaning particularly stubborn cases. Please note, I do not endorse the asterisked ones.

• *Cover the nipple and ½-inch area of breast that surrounds it with black body paint to confuse and discourage the child;
  
• *Sprinkle some pepper or rub garlic on the nipple as a deterrent;
  
• Feed them before they are too tired or hungry and do not need to nurse for comfort;
  
• Do not hesitate to give them a pacifier in place of the breast.
  

This difference in focus between the French and Americans is truly fascinating. I’ve had a female French visitor in my room who announced out of the blue, “If you get rid of that big bed and get maybe the double size, you will make love more often with your husband.” The advice haunted me for weeks because I love my big bed. But, then, so do my kids.

Probably the most effective way that French parents have managed to cut down on the breast-feeding is by keeping ze leetle babies out of their bed. Here in the United States, the words “sleep training” are as controversial and brimming with emotion as “breast-feeding.” Or “dogfighting.” In France, there’s no heated debate about how to put babies to sleep. Known as
le rituel du coucher
(the bedtime routine),
it’s just how it’s done
. With baby Oona, I had been reading Dr. Michel Cohen’s parenting book and I ended up acting surprisingly French on this score. When Oona was about four months old, Mac and I commenced with “Operation Cold Turkey/Wild Turkey,” in which, after having spent every single previous night with the baby in our bed, we placed our precious bundle in the crib at 7:45
P.M.
and resolved not to get her until at least 6:00 the next morning. The Wild Turkey bourbon was to help our resolve. I think I got down only about a thimbleful on the first night, because I was so focused on and horrified by the shrieks of my infant. (Mac didn’t have the same problem.) By the third night, however, the whiskey was going down smoothly—well, as smoothly as Wild Turkey can go down—and Oona slept for eleven hours straight. (Note: I didn’t touch the whiskey until after she had nursed, so don’t get any ideas.) Oona has maintained her sleeping talent ever since.

Daphne, as is often the case, was a different story. Maybe it was because I knew that she was most likely my last baby and thus didn’t even try to start the process until she was more than six months old (by the way, Dr. Cohen
advocates starting at two months, and the Wild Turkey was our idea, not his), or maybe it was because I was so exhausted from holding her all day that I didn’t have the energy to resist or endure Daphne’s nighttime wails, but I was not very French in trying to get her out of my bed. And, man, did I suffer. If I could have had that kid sleeping in her own bed by a respectable age (even before she was four), I might have had a chance at a decent bedtime routine. As it was, it took years and years before my husband and I could reclaim our California king mattress.

Thinking back to a dinner party I went to in France, I realize how much I could have gained from drawing a few lines. When I first arrived at the dinner, I was somewhat disheartened to see that my hosts’ children were still awake. These kids are quite adorable and, of course, well behaved. But, since they were two and five years old, I assumed there would be some serious surrender in the adult ranks. In my brain, their little pajamaed presence translated to the eventual loss of at least one of their parents—relegated to a protracted “bedtime routine.” There’s no other kind, right?

Wrong. At bedtime in this
maison française
, the kids were assisted with brushing their teeth, and after that they obediently took to their beds. I swear, both parents were in and out in less than ten minutes. It was like witchcraft, and I so wanted into the coven. During dinner parties at our place, more than once I have disappeared to put the kids down and not emerged for more than two hours—just as the gathering was breaking up. Talk about depressing.

Trying to be more French, I recently put my foot down and cut the nightly song roster from eight lullabies—eight!—to two (one pick per kid). Oh, and we now have a twelve-minute limit on books, which must be started by 8:00
P.M.
or book time is forfeited. I thought I was truly learning, and I have managed to cut our routine down considerably, but our nightly ritual is merely French-flavored and not the real deal. Then again, I’m doing better than my friend who admitted that she and her husband both bring their phones into their children’s room at bedtime so they can talk via text—as the kids refuse to fall asleep without them in the room.

Back in France, after the safe, swift, and utterly seamless return of my friends to the table, I pumped these two magicians for information. The reply: “The baby is in her crib, but she knows that even if she cries it will not do any good, so why should she bother?”

Gulp of wine.

“Sometimes, not very often, she does anyway, but we cannot get her. Then she would do it all the time. And the older one understands that this is not his time. This is the moment, every night, for grown-ups to be alone—even without guests he knows he is not welcome.”