Foreign Perspectives

No great surprise there, of course. What we did wonder was whether John would feel the temperature in the same way as we did. After all, he was born here, so we sort-of thought that he’d feel it as a “natural” kind of temperature. It doesn’t work like that though and he spent the remainder of his first Summer wearing next to nothing.

What we found really peculiar was the attitude of all the healthcare professionals to this. In the hospital, they insisted on putting at least three layers of clothing on him in the maternity unit. Now bearing in mind that he was born in pretty much the peak of the Summer heat with outside temperatures in the shade of getting on for 40c and something similar to that in the maternity ward, that did seem rather crazy to us. OK, I know that newborn babies in the UK need to be wrapped up but that’s because they’re lucky if it hits 20c. What got me was that they didn’t think it odd when the sweat started pouring out of him when they wrapped him up (which apparently doesn’t happen to French babies).

A little further down the line, he’s way behind in his vaccinations because if we go to the clinic anytime from about March to October, they think that he has a fever and won’t give him the injections. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that me & Wendy are also sweating and perhaps he’s just hot because it’s 30+ degrees.

Our latest craziness is that we’ve been mildly rebuked for letting James go the nursery in shorts. After all, it’s under 30c and everyone else in the school is wearing long trousers, jumpers and coats. They’ve now taken things into their own hands and have started sending him in a subzero type of coat.

Anyway, being born in France isn’t enough to set your body’s temperature guage.