The Reception

Well we had our little ‘reception’ and Sammy was welcomed into the community, as were the rest of the family. There were quite a few local folk there and the Mairie had gone to the trouble of getting a lovely quince tree to plant in Sammy’s honour, hoping that “he will put down strong roots here and grow well”. They are making a plaque bearing his name to go beside it. Plus they gave me a beautiful bougainvillia bush and an Anne Geddes My-First-Five-Years momento book. And the champagne flowed – not that I could take full advantage being a breastfeeding Mum contrary to one of the newspaper articles that said Sammy was unaware of the fuss, oscillating between bottle and sleep!!!!! Goodness, he even had a feed halfway through the evening and I don’t *think* my boobs look bottle-shaped (I asked Ben and he agreed that they do not look bottle-shaped normally, only in certain lights). That indignation aside, we were in 4 papers – news here in the rurale is slow. Ben’s Mum is with us too. Check the scowls on Rowan and Brodie’s faces!

Fairy Godmothers

We now have Granny Sheila staying with us for a fortnight and that is just wonderful. I can concentrate on feeding and cuddling and don’t have to worry that Ben is over-burdened. It’s like having a fairy god-mother in the house as I think of something that needs done but find that’s it already being handled. Rowan and Brodie are also enjoying having her here for an extended period of time though I’m not so sure that Sheila’s voice will make it back unscathed as she is constantly harangued for yet another story.

We have become small celebrities in our little village. We went down to the Mairie’s office to register the birth and, lo-and-behold, no births had been registered there since 1966 as all the women give birth in hospital in Le Mans and it gets registered there. So cause for celebration - the Mayor himself raced over and they opened a bottle of champagne - and lots of books and flowcharts to refer to to guide them as to how to fill in the paperwork!!! And on Saturday morning the Mayor popped in chez nous to say that they’d organised a ‘reception’ for us and the Press would be there and all the prominent members of the community to welcome Sammy. Oh gosh. So that’s this Friday. Better see if I can find my best frock!

Sammy Arrives

Samuel Haydn Freeth-Thomas arrived Friday 6 March, 10.43am, 6lb 8oz / 3kgs. 37 weeks and 3 days, so another early bird. Beautiful day, beautiful homebirth, and lovely days since just staying at home looking wonderously at our perfect lovely new addition in my arms rather than in an incubator. Spring is definitely everywhere.

So the story went like this….. The Thursday we needed some things from IKEA so we tootled off to Tours (80 miles away) and I had to waddle SO slowly round the store. After, we stopped at Buffalo Grill for tea and the waitress asked how long I had to go and I said 2 or 3 weeks but wished it was sooner. She wished us Bonne Chance. Got home at 10pm and fell into bed, asleep I’m sure before I hit the pillow. Midnight – ping, waters broke. No contractions until 2.30am so we then called Joelle, our midwife, as she lives 2.5 hours away. It was actually a rather peaceful and cosy night with the boys fast asleep and just Ben and I lying on the sofa. There was a frantic moment for Ben when the contractions speeded up and Joelle hadn’t arrived so he was desperately scanning the net for guidance on how to deliver a baby. But things calmed down again much to his relief. Joelle arrived at 5.45am and was just so lovely and laidback. The boys woke at 8am and were happy to be allowed to go out in the garden to play in their pyjamas. Fortunately it was a lovely warm day as things might have been a bit more stressful if they’d had to play indoors (Ben’s Mum, flying in to be on stand-by for child-minding during birth wasn’t flying in until the following Tuesday). 9.30am things got going in earnest and just over an hour later our gorgeous Sammy Sausage squeezed out. The boys came in to see him and were quite interested to actually see the placenta and the cord that attached Sammy (Rowan had talked a lot about this throughout the pregnancy – how does a baby get its food when it’s in your tummy etc etc). Brodie adores him and keeps bringing toys (Lego) for him to play with and Rowan has raked out baby Lucy (my nappy demo doll) and keeps changing her clothes and putting her in the car seat, arranging boob feeds for her etc etc.

Fire and Brimstone

Gorgeous day today (following on from two more consecutive gorgeous days) – 16 degrees, sunny, calm and springlike. Time to get outside and start the spring tidy up we thought. So Ben continued to cut the grass (started yesterday) but the ride-on lawn mower decided to stop miles away from the barn and refused to start again. Ben swore. So we stopped for lunch.

Our lovely Jesse the Esse the woodburning cooker is doing a grand job with cooking and heating water for domestic use but we wanted to put in a slightly higher thermostat. A 10 minute job we’d been assured. The warning should have been in that sentence however….. Ben started the change over whilst I made lunch and lo and behold complications arose that ended with him setting off a big leak in another joint in the system and us not having the tools to fix it. So we had a flooded floor. Ben swore again – louder. Fortunately Francis (our knight is shining boilersuit) was working with us today but had gone off for the traditional 2 hour French lunch break (he’s not normally away for that long). However, on his return, it was all fixed and mopped up and life went on with Ben grumping that it was ‘one of those days’. Little did we know….

The garden tidy up continued and we made a big pile of fallen branches and debris ready for a bonfire, in one of our fields that was sporting large lumps of dead grass that never got cut last autumn. About 4pm I mentioned to Ben that if we were going to have a bonfire then we’d better do it then so we could keep an eye on it before it got dark (about 7.15pm). So off went the bonfire and up got the breeze – now only a slight breeze you understand but enough. Within 15 mins we were whacking the grass clumps with brooms trying to keep the fire under control. It was a losing battle so I ran to the house (as best you can when you’re 37 weeks pregnant) and called Francis and Pascal to help (you may well remember that my French words for emergency fire situations have been tried out before, so no problems there!). It had spread to the orchard and was heading rapidly towards the tree-lined hedge. Unfortunately the outdoor water supply had burst during the cold spell at New Year and was awaiting a fine spring day to be fixed – so no water outside other than all the water butts. Pascal attacked them, Francis whacked the fire with a spade, and Ben whacked it with a broom. I ran to collect all my millions of hosepipes from all over the garden and time ticked away oh so fast. Finally Francis managed to fashion a hosepipe connection to our house water supply and the dousing began in earnest – as well as the second flood in the house today (thanks goodness it’s all tiled). The boys stood by mesmerised but being very responsible. An hour later the fire was finally out having blackened about 2000m2 of our orchard. Ha-ha, next week we were going to hire a commercial lawn mower to get the orchard grass under control – no need now!!!!! Ben was clean out of energy for further swearing.

So here I sit wondering if these sort of things bring on a birth?



The picture above was taken the day after and no, that's not fog, it's the smoke still rising!

All Hands on Deck

Yikes – just found out it’s a major works day tomorrow. Our charpentier, Stephan, arrived this evening to say that they will be here first thing tomorrow to start replacing the worn bit of roof (it’s only 1/3 of the roof and only the southern side) so let’s hope for fine weather. That’s 3 guys minimum.

And Francis has said that he can get a helper for this weekend, and he’ll be here tomorrow as well so the count is up to five.

Plus Martin, the cooker/heating installer, is also arriving tomorrow for 2 days to finally get this system’s teething problems sorted – and he might bring Lance. So that’s six minimum arriving tomorrow.

Bless them, they’re all trying to get the house ready before Bubs arrives – maybe they just don’t want to be ‘on the job’ when I go into labour knowing that we’re planning a homebirth.

Glad they’re not all expecting tea/coffee on tap or we’d be a bit shorter by the weekend with all the running about!

We had about 2 hrs of snow this morning but it was melting as soon as it hit the ground really. Monday’s is now almost gone. The UK didn’t fare so well did it? Our farmer friend, Claude, popped in today for a chat and he said that this was a colder winter than normal!!! Oh good, it seems quite doux (mild) to us. I’m itching to get a wee few veggies planted up in the potager and it looks as though that might be quite soon.

Work Ethics

The changes to the house continue at speed with the constant help of Francis, our man-who-does. Anyone who says that the French don’t turn up, are unreliable, and lazy definitely haven’t had the good fortune to meet the guys we’ve worked with because they’ve all been the exact opposite – in fact, no endless need for them to have coffee/tea on tap like in the UK, they just turn up at 8am, work solidly until 12 noon, come back about 1.30 and invariably work until 6 or 7pm again with no breaks!!!! What a work ethic. We have now finished one of the guest bedrooms in the grenier and hope to have the upstairs bathroom finished in a couple of weeks. Then we can start ripping out the downstairs bathroom (at last). Our kitchen still needs to have some of the units permanently fixed but it functions as a kitchen and so I’m happy. The stove and heating system are still proving temperamental but should hopefully be finally sorted by the end of this week.

This house stays SOOO warm unlike Butterwell and we’ve survived thus far with just the fire in the main living area! We put in loads of natural hemp roof insulation and it’s been really worthwhile. We had some snow again this morning (about 2cm) but it’s not set to last. Good because hopefully some more Velux windows are being put in tomorrow.

Pregnancy in France

Well we have reached 33 weeks of this pregnancy peacefully and without complication nor worry. What a lovely change!! I have to admit that just in the last couple of weeks I have ‘blossomed out’ and now feel like a whale with very little space left for comfortable eating. I am however still finishing off our floor tiling and wall painting. Good for Bubs to keep on the move I think. We only have to hold on for another 3 weeks and we’re assured of the homebirth we’d like to have (as opposed to a highly interventionist birth in hospital, so we’ve heard – caesarean rate in France runs as high as 43% in some hospitals!!!). We have found a lovely independent midwife (one of only 30 for the whole of France!) who is prepared to cover us from 36 weeks at our own house and she is very laissez faire. She has written loads for medical journals etc and has actually just released a book that she’s doing a big launch for in Paris (yikes on the 18/19th March so I hope Bubs doesn’t decide to exit on those days). She’s also very French so we’re now learning lots of baby/birth words to add to our vocabulary of plumbing, masonry, electrical, carpentry – steep learning curve but effective. It was wonderful to find her a) because she’s so lovely and b) because we can now stay at home rather than move up to Paris for a few weeks. I’m quite excited actually.