Bébé

n. – baby
Impots
n. – taxes
I always wondered why in the old movies whenever a woman was giving birth, boiling water was immediately ordered up. You can’t bathe the baby in boiling water, nor can you clean the woman with the boiling water and unless there had to be an emergency c-section, there aren’t really any instruments used in extracting the baby. Well, maybe forceps, but you never heard the people yelling to get the forceps ready.

Babies are most welcome in France. Most all of the people we know, straight or gay, have them. Babies, like anywhere else in the industrialized world, are encouraged. Families get tax breaks and even subsidies by the time they have three children. Our tax accountant blanched when we told him we didn’t have any.

When we first moved here and I was looking for work, a friend of my husband’s suggested that we “faire un bébé” or make a baby since here you make them first, then have them, which is perfectly logical. It’s a similar logic when the French say “dans l’avion” or in the plane vs. on the plane as we say.

The word baby is masculine so even if you’re having (or have made) a girl, if you refer to the baby, she would still be a he. “Acouchement” is the word for birth and “enceinte” is the word for pregnant. People here get very excited when they’re pregnant and often break the three month taboo meaning they share the news almost as soon as they’ve found out themselves.

Buses here are very stroller friendly with more standing room than the ones in New York. On Wednesdays which is a day off from school for small children, the buses are often crowded with strollers or “pousettes” and their small passengers. It sort of reminds me of matinee day in New York where everything’s just a little more crowded on that day than during the rest of the week.

It’s April 15th, tax day in the US. As non-residents we file in June. But the day that’s really going to hurt is later in the year when we have to file here. With no children, we get no breaks and that’s something that even boiling water can’t fix.