Pregnant in Paris, Part 2

28 weeks along with our new poussette

A lot has changed since I last wrote about my experiences of being pregnant in Paris. For one thing, I was considerably smaller back then. Now our beginning-of-third-trimester baby is packing on the pounds and so am I. Despite what feels like a hugely noticeable change in my body, I still get comments from people to the effect of, "You're barely showing!" Keep in mind, dear friends, that whether you say, "You're huge!" or "You're so tiny!" to a pregnant woman, it's probably the opposite of what she wants to hear. You've been warned.

I've heard from others moms in Paris that France is the place to be if you're pregnant. There are special check-out lanes for you at supermarkets, you can cut to the front of the line in many situations, people are supposed to give you their seat on the bus or subway, and you're just generally treated like a rock star. Plus, once you actually have the baby, French men in particular seem to have been trained to help mothers with strollers whenever needed, such as carrying the stroller down the stairs to the metro station. There is apparently a lot of kindness and consideration here for those who are gestating.

But I haven't really experienced it yet. Not much, anyway. The one time I was offered a seat on the metro was when Rory was very obviously rubbing my protruding tummy. I've seen it happen to other pregnant women though, so maybe the perks will start coming when I've gained a few more inches in girth. And as for the special lanes in stores, or people letting you go first, well, those special lanes are usually clogged with normal-appearing people, and no one has yet offered to let me skip a queue. But we shall see.

The healthcare puzzle

In my last pregnancy post I mentioned the French health care system, or what little we understood of it at the time. I think I have a better handle on it now, though figuring out the sécurité sociale (how one is reimbursed by the government for healthcare expenses) and what to do in case of grossesse (pregnancy) has been more challenging than I anticipated. It's rather like being told to put together a jigsaw puzzle for which you have been given only half of the pieces and no final picture to aim for. You have to find the remaining pieces by yourself with no instruction on where to look. Oh, and by the way, it's a 5000-piece Impressionist painting jigsaw puzzle. Bonne chance!

Briefly, the hunt to acquire a social security number for myself has gone something like this.
-Learn that I can be attached to Rory's social security number. Rejoice!
-Learn that I can't be attached to Rory's social security number. Despair!
-Call an English helpline and be told to fill out a form, put together a dossier, then go to a CPAM office to ask for a social security number.
-Get to the CPAM office and be told to mail them the dossier instead and wait two months for a response.
-Proceed to wait, hearing nothing, while still paying for monthly doctor's and medical lab visits out-of-pocket.

The plot thickens...
Meanwhile, around February, I registered for auto-entrepreneur status (translation: self-employment) for the teaching work I've been doing. I received complex documents in French regarding paying taxes on my business earnings, but no concrete steps on how to do so or on how to obtain healthcare coverage with this status. Suddenly! I received a letter saying I had been registered with the RSI, the social security/healthcare coverage organization for auto-entrepreneurs. The what?? I had no idea this even existed. And voilà! Just like that they gave me a social security number! Had I not become an auto-entrepreneur, I suspect I would still be waiting for my number and going back and forth with the CPAM office.

Now that I'm finally in the social security system, one might think it would be straightforward from here on out. Alas, this is France.

So shortly after this revelation happened, I spent three weeks in the US and we moved to a new apartment just outside Paris. Thus, I received no more letters or instructions and couldn't access any online systems to update my address. With varying success, I tried to contact the various organizations in charge of my health care and tax status and ask for information, and I've now managed to update my address with all but one. I recently learned who to inform about my pregnancy and who I should contact about healthcare cost reimbursement, which was really my goal in the first place. So I feel cautiously optimistic that things are finally looking up.

Ever so slowly I am finding these hidden puzzle pieces and the picture is starting to take shape. Now all we have to do in the next three months is buy most of our baby gear, prepare for giving birth, learn how to take care of a baby, figure out taxes, start getting reimbursed for healthcare, receive my French residence permit, and find all of the remaining thousand or so puzzle pieces that constitute our life in France. NBD.