Three Weeks.

The clock is unremittingly ticking and the days are vanishing at great speed. The deadline of having the house and our family all packed up and organised before we board the plane is looming. It's scarily close now.....we have just passed the three week mark. I have been waking in the early hours of the morning and tossing and turning and panicking......about everything. In theory, it all seems like such a wonderful thing to do, to relocate your family from Hobart to the South of France for a term, yet trust me, in practice it's daunting. I would usually be the first to deny this now blatantly apparent fact and I'm ashamed to admit that I really am a creature of habit and staring down the barrel of change and challenge is difficult.

I remember all of these emotions from 2010 when we went to France for 8 months.  At three weeks out, I had an incredibly graphic dream one night, about giving birth. It was technicolour in it's clarity.....I was on the operating table and they were actually performing the caesarian. It was so real. The next day was Anzac day and while we were walking into town for the march a text message from a friend came through announcing the  birth of her baby daughter. A wave of memory engulfed me about my dream and prompted me to tell my husband all about how I'd given birth to our fourth child.....in a dream. We laughed our heads off. I think we were almost crying with hysteria about the ludicrousness of it.  Nevertheless, there remained an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty that I just couldn't shake off...it had been that kind of a dream. We, of course, decided that there was absolutely no way that it could be an omen....yet, just to make sure we stopped off at the chemist on the walk up the hill on the way home.

So, I peed on the stick....all the while berating myself for doing so....as if. Lo and behold it was positive. I was 38 and accidentally pregnant. I was having a baby and it would be born while we were in France. Dreams of wine and blue cheese* were dashed. Every minute detail of this impending trip had been worked over and over......for three long years. I can't describe the feelings of terror, confusion ad uncertainty that engulfed me. There was lots of crying. I felt sick....yet maybe that was just morning sickness. There was no way that my basic school girl French was up to it. We had already rented our house, so we couldn't stay at home even if we'd wanted to. Emails were sent to the American Hospital of Paris and replies received.....a caesarian and five day hospital stay....would amount to approximately AUD$20,000. Eek. What were we going to do?

We got on the plane. We thought that we'd suck it and see. Mercifully, once we arrived in Espondeilhan, one of the families who lived around our courtyard had a six week old baby which was how we got the recommendation of an obstetrician. Our landlady, who had spent days instructing us in the idiosyncrasies of the local areas shop opening and more importantly, closing times, rang the obstetricians rooms, explained our situation and convincingly haggled to get me an appointment. She wouldn't take no for an answer and they acquiesced. So, then I had a doctor and a quote for a caesarian and stay at the local private clinic....for AUD$5,000. Phew. The relief. The experience was similar enough to going and seeing my Hobart obstetrician, except that he had no long, detailed, repetitive boat conversations with my husband.....as he just didn't understand enough French. My own French was stretched to the limits as my doctor spoke no English. No English. This, as you can imagine, was just a tad tricky, especially as at our first appointment he jabbered something in my direction and left the room. 'I think he just asked me to take my pants off' I told my husband in confusion. 'You want to be sure that's what he said!' he replied. He had. Now though, I have a fully operational vocabulary of French gynaecological and breast feeding terms....words they just don't teach you in French classes at school or at Adult Ed. I also have a a beautiful two year old daughter who was born in France and was such a special, special souvenir:

So, once again, three weeks out from our departure, we are wrestling with a cacophony of emotions. My 91 year old father in law was rushed to hospital last week. He is still there. Yet again, we have been questioning whether or not we'll actually get on the plane.

Rx

*The French, surprisingly enough have a very draconian policy of zero tolerance to alcohol consumption during pregnancy yet their attitudes towards eating cheese are much more enlightened. Having endured three pregnancies in Australia where the fear of eating blue cheese or any soft cheese is promoted, in France eating blue cheese is OK....I checked with the pathologist not once, but three times to be sure......just so long as it doesn't contribute towards you putting on any more than the prescribed 12 kgs weight gain. My French doctor weighed me at every single appointment......I had never been near the scales when seeing my doctor in Hobart.....and commented, at one stage, to my husband's utter delight, he told me that I had to reduce! Truly.