French Children Don't Throw Food Read Online Free Page A

these women are used to customizing their environments, even if it’s just to get soy milk in their coffees. And like me, they find the primitive, mammalian event happening inside their bodies to be uncomfortably out of their control. Worrying – like clutching the armrest during aircraft turbulence – at least makes us feel like it’s not.
    The English-language pregnancy press, which I can easily access from Paris, seems to be lying in wait to channel this anxiety. It focuses on the one thing that pregnant women can definitely control: food. ‘As you raise fork to mouth, consider: “Is this a bite that will benefit my baby?” If it is, chew away …’ explain the authors of
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
, the famously worrying – and bestselling – pregnancy manual.
    I’m aware that the prohibitions in my books aren’t equally important. Cigarettes and alcohol are definitely bad, whereas shellfish, cold meat, raw eggs and unpasteurized cheese are only dangerous if they’ve been contaminated with something rare like listeria or salmonella. But to be safe, I take every prohibition literally. It’s easy enough to avoid oysters and
foie gras
. But – since I’m in France – I’m panicked about cheese. ‘Is the Parmesan on my pasta pasteurized?’ I ask flabbergasted waiters. Simon bears the brunt of my angst. Did he scrub the chopping board after cutting up that raw chicken? Does he really love our unborn child?
    What to Expect
contains something called the Pregnancy Diet, which its creators claim can ‘improve fetal brain development’, ‘reduce the risk of certain birth defects’ and ‘may even make it more likely that your child will grow to be a healthier adult’. Every morsel seems to represent potential SAT points. Never mind hunger: if I find myself short of a protein portion at the end of the day, the Pregnancy Diet says I should cram in a final serving of egg salad before bedtime.
    They had me at ‘diet’. After years of dieting to slim down, it’s thrilling to be ‘dieting’ to gain weight. It feels like a reward for having spent years thin enough to nab a husband. My online forums are filled with women who’ve put on forty or fifty pounds over the recommended limits. Of course we’d all rather resemble those compactly pregnant celebrities in designer gowns, or the models on the cover of
Fit Pregnancy
. Some women I know actually do. But a competing message says that we should give ourselves a free pass. ‘Go ahead and EAT’, says the chummy author of the
Best Friends’ Guide to Pregnancy
, which I’ve been cuddling up with in bed. ‘What other joys are there for pregnant women?’
    Tellingly, the Pregnancy Diet says that I can ‘cheat’ with the occasional fast-food cheeseburger or glazed doughnut. In fact, pregnancy seems like one big cheat. Lists of pregnancy cravings read like a catalogue of foods that women have been denying themselves since adolescence: cheesecake, milk-shakes, macaroni and cheese and ice cream cake. I crave lemon on everything, and entire loaves of bread.
    Someone tells me that Jane Birkin says she can never remember whether it was ‘
un
baguette’ or ‘
une
baguette’, so she just orders ‘
deux baguettes
’. I can’t find the quote. But whenever I go to the bakery, I follow this strategy. Then – surely unlike the twiggy Birkin – I eat them both.
    I’m not just losing my figure. I’m also losing a sense of myself as someone who once went on dinner dates and worried about the Palestinians. I now spend my free time studying new-model buggies and memorizing the possible causes of colic. This evolution from ‘woman’ to ‘mum’ feels inevitable. A fashion spread in a pregnancy magazine that I pick up on a trip to New York shows big-bellied women in floppy shirts and men’s pyjama bottoms, and says that these outfits are worthy of wearing all day. Perhaps to get out of ever finishing my book, I fantasize about ditching journalism and