Franglaise Mummy

Posts Tagged ‘BLW’

C is 7 months old today and I haven’t seen any medical person with her (apart from to get her jabs done by a nurse) since she was 8 weeks old. Whereas by 7 months old L had seen the paediatrician in France 8 times for routine check-ups. I have had no phone calls, letters or enquiries from anyone in the NHS as to how C is doing.

Fortunately C is in perfect health, she feeds well, sleeps well and is generally a very happy and contented baby. I weighed her at a friend’s house today (she has proper baby scales) and C is slap bang in the middle between the 25th and 50th centile, so I’d say there’s nothing to worry about there. As for me, I’m doing really well too, and I’m definitely in a much better place now than I was when L was the same age.

I’m very lucky in that I have a great support network in Hubs, family and friends. I also did the NCT refresher course and met a great bunch of mums who I still meet up with weekly, on top of that in our street alone there are at least 6 babies aged 3-7 months, so I’m far from alone.

However I do wonder what happens to the mothers whose babies are not thriving, who are not sleeping, or where the mothers are suffering through lack of sleep, lack of support or various forms of depression. Do they pass through the net or does the NHS somehow pick up on them? I chatted to my baby mum friends about this and none of them have been contacted by doctors, health visitors or anyone “medical”, and most of them have not seen a health visitor or doctor since their babies were around 8 weeks old. They are all second mums, and their babies, and they themselves, are doing well. But how does the NHS know who is doing well and who is struggling?

When I think back to L’s first year in France it couldn’t be more different, she had a paediatrician who we had a check-up with every month. She would be weighed and measured each month and this information would be entered into her “Carnet de Santé” (equivalent of our red book), she got her jabs there, the arrival of teeth were noted at these appointments as was her food intake, from the early months of just milk, through to what foods she’d been introduced to each month (although I did have to lie about doing baby led weaning!). Whilst that is possibly overkill it did at least give the French health service an overview of mothers and their babies and possibly a heads up if things were going badly.

Whilst I’m on the subject I don’t find the red book overly helpful and I often refer to L’s Carnet de Santé as it is far more complete. In fact I based a lot of my weaning (introduction of solids) for C on the information in L’s Carnet de Santé as I couldn’t find much useful information on it over here.

L’s Carnet de Santé on the weaning page

What do you think? Did you find you got enough support from the NHS? Is the French system too much?

Personally I’m happy with the system in the UK as I have very few questions about C as she’s so easy, and with her being my second I feel a lot more laid back too. But I know that my French family and friends are utterly shocked to hear that no one has examined C since she had a quick check over at 8 weeks old. Oh well, I doubt it’s the last time one of our family’s culture gets shocked by the other cohabiting culture!

6 years ago I was a first time mother to a 5 month old baby girl and living in the south of France. I didn’t have a clue how to even begin weaning, so I looked online and discovered Baby Led Weaning (BLW), it sounded perfect – no making up tons of purées, and none of this letting my food go cold while I feed the baby.

I embraced it fully with L and even translated Gill Rapley’s report on it for our “nounou” (childminder) to help her understand this crazy Rosbif* and her strange English ways. I was so excited about it but I totally wasn’t ready for the backlash that this decision would receive. I am very lucky in that Hubs was 100% behind me and our nounou accepted this and “fed” L this way without trying to talk me out of it.

L’s first BLW meal – 6 years ago

However this support was not universal and I had to lie to my paediatrician (in France you see your paediatrician every month when you have a baby) and tell her we were weaning with purées. Wherever we went I got shocked looks, negative comments about my parenting, including one woman who asked me “are you trying to kill her?” when L was happily feeding herself courgette batons at 7 months old! Fortunately I’m pretty bloody-minded and we carried on and I’m so glad I did, from L’s earliest age we’ve shared mealtimes as a family and she understands the importance of meals as a social occasion, and now eats pretty much anything (even though she’s never had a huge appetite and prefers playing to eating!).

With C this time round, it’s 6 years on, we’re living in the UK and no one seems in the slightest bit shocked by BLW, which is a relief after having to fight so hard to do it last time. We’re only on week 1 of C’s weaning but it’s much easier this time round, maybe because I know that it’ll all be fine, maybe because I don’t have to hide the way we’re weaning or be embarrassed or apologetic for it, or maybe because things just tend to be easier second time round. Or maybe it’s simply a case of BLW being more acceptable 6 years on, as I can’t comment on how it was in the UK 6 years ago. Whatever it is I have to say that BLW is the way forwards for this family, and no, I’m not trying to kill my kids!

C’s 5th BLW meal – this week

*We call them Frogs, they call us Rosbifs.

As a Brit, married to a Frenchman, raising our children first in France and now in the UK in what we call our franglais way, I know that we shock some people with our style of parenting. It is amazing to think that so few miles separate the UK from France but that culturally these two countries are so different.

Before I go on to explain our style of parenting it’s probably good for you to get some background on B and me, and how we were raised, to see where we are coming from.

• B and I were born 6 weeks apart in the mid 1970s: him in the south of France and me in the south of England.
• B’s parents are both doctors (a retired GP and a school doctor); my mum is a (retired) nurse, who trained to be a midwife and set up a local NCT branch in the 1970s, as well as being a breast-feeding counsellor for the NCT, my dad is in IT.
• B is one of twins; I am the middle child of 5 (all from the same, crazy parents!).
• B’s mum went back to work when B and his brother were still very small; my mum stopped work for 15 years to raise us 5 unruly children.
• B’s mum, like most of her generation in France, didn’t breastfeed; my mum breastfed all 5 of us.
• B’s mum weaned B and his brother on pots and purées; my mum weaned us the BLW way before it even had a name, as otherwise nobody would have got fed.
• B and his brother slept in their own bedroom from birth; my siblings and I slept in my parents’ room (but not bed) when we were small babies.
• B and his brother only ever had disposable nappies; my siblings and I only ever had washable nappies.

So that gives you an idea of the parenting style we grew up with, this is the one we developed for ourselves, and that shocks the French in France and the Brits in the UK:

• I breastfed L. This shocked several of my French friends and in particular my MiL who warned me “it’ll ruin your chest”.
  

  Me doing the unthinkable, breastfeeding my newborn baby!

• L slept in her own room from day 5 when we came home from hospital. This shocked pretty much every single Brit and Anglo-saxon I know, but was accepted as the norm in France.
• For the first 3 months I did everything on demand and had zero routine. This shocked my French paediatrician and numerous French friends. The only reason we got into a routine at 3 months was because L was going to the childminder’s…
• I went back to work 4 full days a week when L turned 3 months old. This was very early for most of my friends in the UK, but was standard for France.
• We put L in washable nappies from about her first week onwards. This was very uncommon in France and I kept being asked why I was doing something so unhygienic.
• When L was a few months old I started thinking (worrying) about weaning and I came across Baby Led Weaning (BLW) on the internet, I loved the sound of it and this is what we did with L. You can’t imagine the reactions I got in France, “are you trying to kill your baby?” and “she’s got no teeth, she’s going to starve to death” etc. I had to lie to my paediatrician about it, translate Gill Rapley’s report on it into French for our childminder and basically defend this decision every single day. It was very hard and it’s funny to be in the UK now where BLW is just another totally accepted weaning option.
  

  L’s first taste of BLW and broccoli at 6 months old.

• Whenever we were invited out we took L with us, and when we had parties at our house she generally stayed up and partied with us until the small hours. Fortunately she wakes much later if she goes to bed late which makes this doable. This is not a big deal in France, whereas many of my UK friends are shocked at us letting her stay up late.
  

  L with B and me at one of our house parties for Hallowe’en, aged 3.

  

  L at a fancy dress party we had when she was 2 (this was B’s wig, not hers!).

  

  L with B and me having just celebrated midnight on new year’s eve, age 2.

• We first left her to go out for the night when she was 5 months old, we drove for an hour to meet up with some friends for a night out. We first left her all night when she was 9 months old as we had been invited to try out a posh hotel in Cannes for the night. When she was 2 years old we left her for two weeks to go off on holiday, just B and me, to the Dominican Republic. Every year we try and leave her for a week to go off on holiday as a couple, to reconnect, and to be simply B and me again, not Mummy and Papa. Now this one shocks the hell out of 90% of my UK friends, but all my French friends do this regularly with their kids.
  

  B and my first night out without L, when she was 5 months old.

• When L was 5 years old she flew unaccompanied to Marseille to spend a week with B’s mum in the run-up to Christmas. French parents frequently send their kids across France by plane as the school holidays are so long and everyone works. My UK friends were astounded that I might consider this.
• L started school in France when she was 2 and 3/4. This was 4 days a week, from 9am until 4pm; as B and I worked, she also went to the before school club, the after school club and the Wednesday club (no school in France on Wednesdays) at the same place. So Monday – Friday 8am-6.30pm she was at “school” from the age of not even 3 years old and she loved it! I know many British friends who think this is far too early, but it worked so well for us and for L who excelled there.
• When we moved to the UK, L was 3 and 1/2 so was too young for school. She started full time school when she was 4 and 3/4 and my French friends and family kept asking why she was starting so late.

I am sure if you are French then parts of the above shock you, and if you are British then there are certainly areas you disagree with. But this is what works for us and for L, it’ll be interesting to see if we end up raising baby number 2 the same way too seeing as he/she will be raised in the UK and not France. Watch this space…

We’ve always raised L in the way that suits us best, sometimes this is “the English way”, sometimes “the French way” but most of the time it’s simply our “Franglais way”. Now we are living in the UK what stands out the most, naturally, is the ways in which we raise L in a French way. One thing in particular is her daily routine.

I never really read any books on routines, English or French, and L set her own routine/rhythm when she was first born, so it wasn’t really until we weaned her that we started to establish any real kind of routine. The one that we ended up with just so happened to be the one that worked for us, not anything that either B or I researched.

So when L was 6 months old and we first weaned her, we took something very un-French – Baby Led Weaning (BLW), meaning we ate our meals with her – and mixed it with French timings. At around 6 months old L was waking up around 8am, having a milk feed and breakfast, then in the evening she would eat dinner with B and I at around 7pm before having a milk feed just before bed at 8pm.

Eating at 7pm was a big shock to our system as we were used to eating at 8pm which is fairly typical for the French, but we decided we wanted to have our evening meal all together as a family. We got laughed at by a fair amount of French friends who teased us about eating “comme des poules” which means eating early like hens which is a typical French expression.

Now we are living in the UK and L is older (she’s 5), her/our routine has changed slightly but not much. It goes something like this during the week:

7.30am: Wake L up and have breakfast all together before B and I go to work at 8am.
8-9am: L is got ready for school by our au pair.
9am-3.30pm: L is at school and has lunch at around 11.30am-12pm.
3.30pm: L has a snack after school, something like crackers, rice cakes, fruit, yogurt, seeds, cereal bars etc.
6-7pm: L is bathed by the au pair.
7pm: B and I are usually home from work by now, so we usually have leftovers of whatever we prepared at the weekend, reheated, so we can eat as soon as we get home. This means we all get to eat together as a family.
8-8.30pm: Bedtime for L.

Naturally the weekend is more relaxed with wake-up times, breakfast, lunch, dinner and bedtimes varying depending on where we are and what else is going on.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this routine shocks our English friends but it’s certainly very different to their children’s routines. L’s 5 year old friends are given “tea” (dinner) by their mums/dads/nannies/au pairs at around 5.30-6pm before going to bed around 7-7.30pm. When I recently questioned various English and French friends about this, the outstanding reply was dinner around 6pm for the English children with the parents eating separately later, and around 7-8pm for the French children with the parents and children all eating the same meal together at the same time.

Whilst I don’t want to preach about how children should be raised and I certainly wouldn’t say that one way is better than the other, what I would say is don’t expect your child to be fed at ours if they’re over for a playdate at “tea time”! I just don’t ever think to feed children at that time!

What do you think? What time do your children eat? Would you prefer that they ate at a different time?

Well she certainly seems to sleep well with this routine!