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I, on the other hand, was told by my midwife this week to stop trying to sleep through the night if it was too difficult, and instead to sleep whenever I felt tired, regardless of if it was day or night. The idea is that my body is already adapting itself to the baby's rhythms, and getting used to sleeping in two and three hour spurts throughout the day, as opposed to staying awake for 14 or 16 hours and then sleeping for 8 or 10. This is actually good advice as I've been feeling sleepy at totally weird times and trying to push through it, but I seriously don't know how women work all the way up to when they give birth. I feel really lucky to have so much flexibility in my work schedule to accomodate all this random napping.
We went to our first parental preparation class yesterday - this one was on breastfeeding; next weekend we do a big two day labor/birth/early parenting class - These classes are all offered through MESSAGE, which is the English-speaking parenting network here in Paris and which I've been finding INVALUABLE - they have a big webforum on just about every topic expats need for living in France, from where to send the kids to school to where to get a good haircut, and they also offer these classes and new parent support for English speaking couples in the Paris area. Its been interesting because there actually haven't been too many Americans at the things I've gone to - but a lot of Brits and, kind of surprisingly, a lot of Australians. Yesterday there were five couples and 3 were Australian (or at Australian women who'd married French men), and one of the instructors was as well.
What was also really cool was that all the future dads came to the workshop, which I didn't expect - I asked Matt to come, and he asked me "Is this the kind of thing fathers normally come to?" and I was like " I don't know, but you can come and I think I really want you to" - but then apparently all the other wives had told their husbands the same thing, and they all came - even though there was a giant French-UK World Cup Rugby game on that morning ;) It was great having it not just be moms, really - The guys had a lot of the same questions we did, and also you could see that they were all super engaged - and it was also a good chance for some of the guys who were more nervous to get to talk about that. You could see that a lot of the nervousness came from just not knowing what to expect or how to best help - kind of the same with how the women were feeling, though its obviously more abstract for the guys during the pregnancy and I think that contributes to their anxiety, so it was cool they all showed up.
All the women in the workshop were due before me - not much before, we were all basically due in October and November - but I still felt like I was the most gigantic of all of them despite having technically 4 or 5 more weeks to go -sheesh. Oh well, I'm just not going to worry about it anymore - I have been kind of obsessing but I guess everyone shows their pregnancy in a different way -
After the workshop, Matt and I went on a date, which was very exciting for me as actually leaving the house and doing something fun with my husband has been harder and harder for me to have the energy for. But, we've been trying to do this in the last couple weeks and it's been GREAT. This is the last time it'll be just the two of us, really - and so it feels kind of special to just have a simple follow-your-nose afternoon where we just have fun together. Yesterday we went to find Udon Soup in Paris -there is this funny Japantown area in the 1st Arrondissement just north of the Louvre and the Palais Royale, where there are several streets of mostly Japanese restaurants and markets right where you would NOT expect them at all. We found a noodle bar called Kunitoraya on Paris by Mouth:
http://parisbymouth.com/our-
And they had real udon noodle soups - which I thought were pretty good, though Matt is a tougher critic than I am and thought his was too salty. I think I've started really making allowances for things because they're in France, but Matt is right - we should continue looking for a really exceptional udon soup, rather than just saying it's good enough because it's in Paris.
After that I was miraculously still not tired, so we walked around and eventually passed a movie theater where we were just in time for DRIVE, the new (at least in Paris) Ryan Gosling film that is basically an homage to and/or rip-off of both BULLITT and Michael Mann's THIEF. Nameless cool guy drives for a living - getaway cars and stunt cars - until he meets a cute girl and gets caught up in a crime, and finds himself having to kill a lot of people. Its pretty good - very stylish - but goes a litle off the rails in the second half. My feeling: not enough driving for a movie called Drive. There are two good car sequences, but in the second half it gets to be more about killing than driving. The one funny thing is that Ryan Gosling's character doesn't carry a gun, presumably because he doesn't want to be involved in violence, but this of course leads to him having to kill people in more and more creative ways as the movie goes on - with a hammer, with window blinds, you see where I"m going with this. Also features Christina Hendricks, Joan from Mad Men, in a thankless two line role. Matt said he felt really bad for her. But after all of this, I still enjoyed watching it - its preposterous at times, but the director has talent and Ryan Gosling makes the movie, given that he has almost no dialogue and still manages to make you care about him.
So that was our date - but its amazing, after all the stuff we've been doing to get our lives organized and set up for the baby, how fantastic it was to just have an afternoon like that. I forgot a little how much fun Matt and I have just hanging out together, and it also made me remember again how happy I am to be living in Paris with him and trying out all these new things -
Okay I'm gonna sign off now, but I hope everyone has a great week - In other news, I'm starting to finally finally get my blog together for real, so hopefully before the baby comes I'll have sometime up and running as a website that you can subscribe to or check out as you want - this will be a much easier way also for us to get you current pics of the baby. I'll keep you posted - but hopefully it'll be done either in the next month or if things get to hectic, before the end of hte year -
Lots of love to all,
Claire
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