French Children Don't Throw Food (23 page)

On day fourteen, there’s a massive storm and a freak rail-service breakdown in western Holland. Just as I arrive at Brussels station around 6 pm, 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 only lasts 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 back 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 cosy and warm, and decked out for Christmas with a giant tree. I should be grateful just to be there, but the first room the porter takes 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. It seems like a better 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 order a bagel at a deli, for the sole purpose of using the deli’s dingy basement bathroom to take the test (OK, I also ate 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 the ultrasound. 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 on to 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 a 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 neighbours 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 two babies are two little 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 estate agents are always boasting that the place I’m about to see is ‘very calm’. This seems to be a prized quality in both apartments and 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 to worry about in there). 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 ultrasound scans. 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 micro-smile.

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 embryo). Within two months 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 read up on the nomenclature. In French, twins aren’t called ‘identical’ or ‘fraternal’. They’re ‘
vrai
’ or ‘
faux
’ – real or fake. I get used to telling people that I’m waiting for 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 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.
It’s
old, even for Paris. It has no hallways, and a triple-width pavement in front. It needs a lot of work. We buy it. The day before I give birth, I have a meeting 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 nappy.

I’ve been warned that the public maternity hospital where I’m planning to deliver the twins will be a less rarified experience. The medicine is excellent at French public hospitals, but the service is no-frills. They give you a list of things to bring to the birth, which includes nappies. 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 labour, 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, paralysed from the waist down. My legs are still 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 walls of my room, so now
anyone
who walks past has a bull’s-eye view of my five-minutes-post-twins crotch.

The only person still with me is the anaesthetic 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 Travelodge. There’s a skeletal staff to help out, and a nursery that’s open from about 1 to 4 am. 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 is eating this: there’s a communal refrigerator down the hall, where they store groceries.

Simon is at 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-coloured Jell-O.

Amid all this, we have to name the boys. (The city of Paris gives you three days. By day two, an angry-looking bureaucrat marches into your hospital room holding a clipboard.) Simon asks only that Nelson is somewhere in the mix, after his hero Nelson Mandela. Mostly he’s worried about selecting the perfect nicknames. He wants to call one boy Gonzo and the other Chairman. I have a thing for contiguous vowels, and am considering calling them both Raoul.

We settle on Joel – whom we’ll only ever call Joey – and Leo, who defies all attempts at nicknames. They’re the most fraternal twins I’ve ever seen. Joey looks like me, except with platinum-blond hair. Leo is a swarthy little Mediterranean man. If they weren’t exactly the same size and constantly together, you wouldn’t guess that they were related. I’ll later discover that someone who asks whether the boys are identical has no interest in babies.

After four long days, we’re allowed to leave the hospital. Being at home with the boys is only marginally easier. In the early evenings, they wail for hours.

Both boys wake up all through the night. Simon and I pick a baby before we go to sleep, and are responsible for that one the whole night. We each angle to pick the ‘better’ baby, but who that is keeps changing. Anyway, we haven’t yet moved into the larger apartment, so we’re all sleeping in the same room. When one baby wakes up, everyone else does too. At about six months old, the boys start to sleep until six am.

It still feels like there are more than two of them. I never thought I’d dress twins alike, but I’m suddenly tempted to do so just to create a little bit of order, at least visually – like making kids at a tough school wear uniforms.

Amazingly, I manage to find time to be neurotic. I’m obsessed with the idea that we’ve given the boys the wrong names, and that I should go back to the town hall and call Leo Joel and Joel Leo. I spend my few leisure minutes ruminating on this.

Then comes the small matter of the circumcisions. Most French babies aren’t circumcised. In the main, just Jews and Muslims do it. Because it’s August in Paris, even the
mohels
, who do ritual circumcisions, are on holiday. We wait for one who’s been recommended (a man who is reassuringly both a
mohel
and a paediatrician) to come back.

Unlike the birth, the circumcision isn’t two for the price of one. There isn’t even a package discount. Before the little ceremony, I confess to the
mohel
that I fear I’ve given the boys the wrong names, and that I may need to switch them. He doesn’t offer me any spiritual advice. But being French, he explains that the bureaucracy to do this would be awful.
Somehow
this information, plus the consecration of the circumcisions, erases my doubt. After the ceremony, I never worry about their names again.

Thankfully, my mother has arrived from Miami. She, Simon and I spend most of our time in the living room, holding the boys. One day a woman rings the doorbell. She explains that she’s a psychologist from the PMI office in our neighbourhood. She says that she pays house calls to all mothers of twins, which I think is a tactful way of saying that she wants to make sure I’m not having a breakdown. A few days later, a midwife from the same PMI stops by, and stands with me as I’m changing Joey’s nappy. His poo, she declares, is ‘excellent’. I take that to be the official view of the French state.