Preparing for Bébé, Part 1

We're in the home stretch! Now at week 36, my ninth month of pregnancy has finally begun. I either have five more weeks to go (if counting by the French 41-week system) or four more (if using the British and American 40-week system). I'm feeling healthy, growing steadily, and sleeping well, despite the three to four night-time trips to the bathroom. We are excited to meet the strong, increasingly coordinated wiggler who likes to dance and practice karate in my tummy.

9 months pregnant! Oh, and there's some art too. Just Monet's famous Water Lilies.

Our calendar is pretty empty from here on out and we're mostly just trying to ensure that we have all the necessary goods for life with a newborn. We have toured the maternity wing of our hospital, attended birthing and breastfeeding classes, practiced “hypnobirthing” strategies, attended pre-natal pilates, devoured books, watched videos, read Amazon product reviews in French, and done everything else that anxiously eager future parents can do to prepare for life with progeny. Dare I say, I think we're as ready as we can be on the how-to-have-a-baby front.

But we've also been trying to get in some of the activities that will be difficult, if not impossible, once baby arrives. Now that we live in a slightly more comfortable apartment, we have been keen on having friends over. The day the Brexit results were announced, for example, many of our friends and ourselves included felt the need for some cheering up. So we hosted a games night at our place with a few of our British, Irish, American, and French friends. There was a lot of laughing, snacking, and discussing the state of the world, and for a few hours, it was nice to just enjoy a slightly raucous time with friends.

As we've mentioned in previous posts, the first Sunday of each month grants free access to many museums in Paris, and as last Sunday was the first one in July, we made the most of what will almost certainly be our last easy, spontaneous visit to museums. We got up early (to beat the lines) and headed to the Musée de l'Orangerie, a relatively small art museum next to the Seine that's at the other end of the Tuileries gardens from the Louvre. The Orangerie is famous for its two oval rooms dedicated to Monet's Water Lilies. It also has a nice assortment of paintings by Renoir, Cézanne, Picasso, and other French artists, in addition to an educational exhibit on the life and work of influential early 20th century poet, playwright, and art critic, Guillaume Apollinaire.

Following our visit to L'Orangerie, we made our way to the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, a museum about hunting, nature, and humans' changing relationship with animals. It has an eclectic collection of paintings, sculptures, tapestries, comics, and taxidermy, including a weird room full of trophy animals and old hunting rifles. It was an illuminating and thought-provoking museum, though I'm glad I didn't have to pay to get in.

A two-story fiberglass giraffe at the Museum of Hunting and Nature

So that's a little of what we've been up to in the final weeks before the baby arrives. In Part 2 of Preparing for Bébé, I'll talk about some of the Paris-specific ways we've managed to find the information and equipment we need for the arrival of our little one. Stay tuned.