Just Call Me Superwoman

My original plan was to complete my application dossier for French citizenship while I was on maternity leave. As in, before the baby was born.

But life, laziness and bureaucracy got in the way and, with my return to work looming, it had to be done this week, as I'm pretty sure that once I start back I will have no spare time to do anything for myself ever again, let alone the brainpower and motivation for mammoth administrative tasks.

And so it was that yesterday I found myself trying to finalise everything at the last minute with a baby and toddler in tow - a situation which really deserves the invention of an extra circle of hell just to accommodate it.

Things started off badly when I popped into my local tabac for a timbre fiscale. You can buy these online now, but for certain procedures you still need the paper ones. Unfortunately the paper ones are being phased out by the end of the year, so hardly anywhere stocks them. I was advised to go to our nearest town centre (a 40 minute walk away with a double buggy when I had a million other things to do and nap times to respect) but luckily along the way I found another tabac which just happened to have the right ones. Another stroke of luck was the lovely HR lady at work emailing me a copy of a payslip 5 minutes after I left a message on her phone, which saved me rushing to go and collect it. Finally, a trip round Monoprix with the buggy and the toddler pushing a mini shopping trolley left me with just the right change for the photo machine (because I had realised the night before that none of the photos I had at home actually conformed to the regulations any more). With those missions accomplished, we fitted in a trip to the park to reward the toddler for her patience, then the baby considerately fell asleep independently in her cot (currently a rare feat for her). Nobody had cried all morning, and I sat down to lunch with the toddler feeling like superwoman.

The last hurdle was to photocopy all the documents (around 50 pages in total). The fact that this had to be done twice was not clear on the original list I had, but was written in big bold letters on the instructions from the préfecture which I came across at the last minute. Except that the printer was running out of ink. A trip to Carrefour to buy more took an hour out of my evening after some very tired children had gone to sleep, and I finally went to bed myself just after midnight with my alarm set for 6:15.

On the excellent advice of a friend, I turned up to queue at the préfecture half an hour before it opened and managed to be second in line to submit my dossier. That took just over an hour and the baby, who had been woken up early for the occasion, managed to stay reasonably cheerful for the duration (luckily the toddler was in childcare, because having her there would have been a challenge too far). And then, having spent the past 48 hours flying by the seat of my superwoman pants, I was finally able to breathe a sigh of relief because all that paperwork was GONE.

I would like to say, though, that although the list of documents is long and takes a lot of time (and money) to assemble, the actual procedure so far hasn't been anything like as awful as I thought it might be, and I was very impressed with the staff at the préfecture. Not only did they respond to all my (many) email enquiries within 24 hours, they were also extremely nice in person. When the baby started to get fussy as I stood at the desk while they took my first set of documents, the lady told me to pick her up and she would sort the paperwork. I was offered a room to breastfeed in as I waited to be seen (I have no shame whatsoever about breastfeeding in public, but the thought was kind). At the end, I needed to make an appointment for the interview stage but I didn't have my holiday dates and the man was happy to give me his email address so I could confirm later. Everybody smiled at KB and helped to keep her happy. So maybe the stereotypical unhelpful, grumpy fonctionnaire is finally becoming a thing of the past, or maybe the trick is to always take a baby when you go to the préfecture!

A Happy Story

Last week I went to the mairie to apply for SCB's French ID card. I had collected together all the documents on the list: my ID, proof of address and an official copy of her birth certificate dated less than three months ago. (Nothing makes you realise that time is flying by like your baby's birth certificate being out of date. And for British people, it's a bizarre concept anyway, because how could a birth have changed, but it's because in France, other life events, including death, would also be recorded on the birth certificate, so it does make sense here.) I had to fill in a form with SCB's details, including her height in cm, which will have changed in the time it takes to produce the card, she's growing so fast at the moment.We had also managed the amazing feat of getting approved style photos where SCB had her eyes open and her mouth closed - basically what a baby would look like if one were ever included in a prison line-up. The lady at the mairie actually complimented SCB on her poker face and we joked that she clearly already has the required skills for life in France.

When it came to the documents, however, she was not so sure. I had brought a justicatif from our energy company and not a bill, which is apparently not always acceptable, and she was almost certain that they would want to see UFM's ID, as he is the French parent. We live not far from the mairie, so I told her I could go and get the other documents to add to the file but she said they couldn't accept an incomplete file, so either I could hand it in and they would phone me if they needed more details or I could take everything away and come back to start from scratch. So far, so typical of l'administration française.

Being optimistic, lazy and not in a desperate hurry to receive the ID, I decided to take my chances. She gave me a receipt, told me it would normally take 3-4 weeks for the card to arrive and reiterated that they were likely to ask for the French parent's ID. So when I had a message on Monday from the mairie, I assumed that was going to be the reason ... but no, the card is sitting in their offices already and all I have to do is go and collect it! After our recent (and ongoing) experiences with the bank, all I can say is that I was in need of a pleasant bureaucratic surprise.

In other happy news, Nicholas Sarkozy has been knocked out in the primaries for the presidential elections next year. I can't say I'm a big fan of Fillon's ideas, but at least he isn't the man who was defeated last time by the guy who went on to become France's most unpopular president of all time. I was also pleased to see Jean-François Copé (he of the "droite décomplexée") come last with a paltry 0.3% of the vote. In the age of Brexit and Trump, it's good to know that the worst doesn't always happen.

Flat Update

We bought the flat.

In the last 24 hours before the signing date the bank managed to fit in one last act of idiocy when we were finally able to send back the last set of paperwork that would allow them to transfer the funds to the lawyer. They received it at 10 am that day and were supposed to send the payment immediately, but at the end of the afternoon Understanding Frenchman got a phone call from our adviser saying that he had omitted to sign one of the pages. Except that he had. The adviser sent him a scanned copy and there were our two signatures, clear as day on the page.

It turned out that what had happened was that, because my signature is basically just my name written in my normal handwriting and his is a bit more "signature"-like (although you can still see his last name clearly written if you look for more than about a second), someone had decided that I had written my name and then signed underneath and that he had forgotten to sign. (This despite the fact that both of our signatures also appeared on the front page of the document next to our typed names.) By the time they'd figured out the mistake, it was too late to send the payment.

However (with yet another reminder from both UFM and the lawyer the following morning) the bank did eventually transfer the money half an hour before we were due to sign. Paperwork dealt with and keys in hand, UFM went happily back to work while I returned home with the baby.

A few hours later there was another phonecall. This time it was the previous owners, to say that they had just been informed by the gardienne that water was coming through the ceiling from our flat into the flat below. Feeling like we were in some kind of sick reality TV show, UFM rushed off to the flat to see what had happened while I dashed to the insurance agency to confirm our policy starting that very day (Our super-cool baby was smart enough to stay asleep through all of this!). In the end it turned out that the flood was actually in the flat above and the water was running through our wall into the one below, so we ended up with more paperwork to sign and some extra repair work to do, but luckily no financial liability. Fingers crossed that our trials are now over and that in a few weeks we'll be enjoying our new abode!

Maternity Care In France

Medical care during pregnancy in France has a reputation for being excellent. As this is my first experience of maternity care anywhere, I can't really make any comparisons, but I'm prepared to believe it. However, like so many other things in this country, it takes a little time to figure out the system before you get to experience the excellence, so for what it's worth, I thought I'd share my experiences here.

As with other kinds of medical treatment, you have a lot of choices in France. The price of having choices is, of course, that you have to take responsibility for your own decisions, and there is also a fair amount of paperwork to be filled out (with accompanying deadlines), which for a rookie like me was a bit stressful, especially in my exhausted and somewhat emotional first-trimester state.

When I first found out I was pregnant, I actually already had an appointment lined up with a gynaecologist, so I phoned my GP to check if there was anything else I needed to do, and she gave me a prescription for the blood test which would confirm the pregnancy. Her secretary told me I would need this to send to the CAF and the sécurité sociale, which was to be done by the end of the first trimester.

From what I understand, the initial pregnancy consultations can be done by a gynaecologist, a midwife or your GP. If the gynaecologist is also an obstetrician, he or she can "follow" your pregnancy beyond the fourth month, as can a midwife. Midwives in France either practise at maternity hospitals and clinics, or as sage-femmes libérales, but hospital care, at least at my maternity unit, seems to start from the fourth month, so if you want to take the midwife option earlier, you have to find your own libérale one.

Most people I know have had their pregnancies followed by their gynaecologist, but my strange experiences with mine ended in me cancelling my 3-month appointment and stressing massively about what to do next. Understanding Frenchman sensibly suggested, after a week or so of being on the receiving end of my stressing, that I went to see my very nice GP to ask for advice, and that is what I did. One twenty-minute appointment later and I was feeling much more in control of the situation. The key things I learned from her were:

- although you can do the déclaration de grossesse as soon as you have the lab report showing that you're pregnant, it's fine to wait until after the 12 week scan, as you have up to week 14 to get it signed by a doctor and send it in.

- you don't have to travel all the way across town and pay a fortune to get a decent scan, as the weird gynaecologist had told me. My GP was able to recommend an excellent radiologist in our arrondissement and I got an appointment no problem.

- if you live in Paris DO NOT (as the weird gynaecologist advised me) WAIT UNTIL AFTER THE SCAN TO SIGN UP FOR THE MATERNITY CLINIC. It's more a case of peeing on the stick and contacting the hospital as soon as that magic line appears. (OK, I'm exaggerating, but not by much. We are lucky to have several good sector 1 units nearby and when I contacted them at around 10 weeks, two of the three were already full.)

Once I had a place at the maternity unit, I chose to have all my appointments there from 4 months onwards apart from the scans, as they do midwife consultations and also run ante-natal classes, but you can continue to see someone outside for a certain number of weeks, depending on what type of health professional they are. One option which doesn't seem to be widely used is seeing a GP - I asked mine a few pregnancy-related questions in the course of other appointments and she seemed a bit surprised. I have the impression that most women in Paris tend to see someone more specialist, and as a result, GPs are less used to dealing with pregnancies than a UK doctor or a French one in a more rural area might be.

I've been very happy with the midwife consultations I've had so far, as the midwives have all seemed both  professional and approachable, and I like the idea of getting to know the people who may be around for the actual birth. However, I can also see some advantages in seeing a gynaecologist (if you happen to have one who isn't weird!). One is that the hours for the midwife appointments are quite limited and have resulted in me having to take a few half-days off work. Although you are legally entitled to do this, given that my mutuelle would also cover the cost of a Sector 2 gynaecologist where I could get appointments after work, I felt a bit bad about missing all that time. Also, despite my weird experiences at the first two appointments, the gynaecologist had the equipment in her clinic to do a couple of very early scans, and it was nice to have some evidence that there was a baby in there and know that everything was OK at those early stages.

That's probably enough for now. More to follow as my experience progresses!

That's Not My Name!

There has been a lot of paperwork in my world recently. Between medical information, organising maternity appointments and dealing with social security, I was only half-joking when I claimed that our baby required a full-time secretary before it was even the size of a plum. Now that we're also buying a flat (Did I mention that we're buying a flat? Well, we're buying a flat!), the mountain of documents has been growing ever more rapidly.

Mostly, it's fine. There's a lot to "read and approve", a lot to sign and a lot of appointments to fit in, but generally it's just a case of doing what needs to be done. One hiccup that I've encountered on quite a few occasions, though, is people calling me by the wrong name.

When we got married, I decided not to change my last name to Understanding Frenchman's. I had various reasons for this, including some feminist principles and the fact that his name is funny in English if you don't pronounce it the proper French way, but to be honest the biggest ones were that I like my last name, it goes well with my first name, I've had it all my life and it feels like part of my identity. On the other hand, I can see the attraction of having a "family" name that you share with your husband and children, so I wasn't completely against the idea of changing, and I understand why people do it. As a result, I'm fairly laid-back in everyday life if people decide to call me Mrs or Mme  Frenchman (as long as they don't also use his first name when addressing me - that really does offend my feminist principles!).

On official paperwork, however, it's another story. I'm amazed at the number of times that people or organisations have just assumed that I use his last name, and I'm dreading the day when I can't do something important because I don't have any identity documents with it on them.

The problem is that in France, you never actually change your name, you just (have the option to) adopt your husband/wife's name as a nom d'usage. (Eyelean has an interesting post about this where people have shared their experiences of the different options.) This means that somebody looking at my passport would see my actual name but not necessarily understand that this means I haven't taken my husband's name, since a woman who did use her husband's name would also have her maiden name on her ID card (with the option to add the nom d'usage as well). As a result, it's less obvious that I've decided not to change than it would be in the UK, where you either change your name everywhere or you don't.

And so I've written to the CAF, and I've phoned the lawyers, and I've had my blood group card reissued, and every time I wonder if the 25% of women in France who don't change their names after marriage are all doing the same thing, and if not, what I have to do to avoid the problem arising in the first place!