...or Hopital de La Fontonne as it is more commonly known is where my little angel #2 was born. Here you can see a photo of Room #2111, where I stayed for four nights. Overall, I have to say that it was an amazing experience, albeit very different in many ways from my experience at Wellington Medical Center in Florida, where Andrew was born. To start off with the obvious: the language! Although the doctor (OB-GYN) that I'd been seeing for the last 9 months did happen to speak English, I did not see a single doctor until the second day after delivery. (which I was not aware of...I was expecting a doctor to be with me in the delivery room, though in the end, it worked out just fine anyway). Although I found there were a few words I did not know or recall in french, namely certain body parts or pregnancy terms that are not usually a part of daily conversation!, I managed just fine in French. Robert, on the other hand, generally needed his personal translator (i.e. ME!) after each and every time the nurse/midwife left the room. In the end, it really made no difference at all to me that French was the only language spoken.
The next BIG difference: NO AIR CONDITIONING!!! If you look closely in the photo above, you will see a fan to the left of the bed. Robert actually brought this from home, after our first night of sweltering in the heat. I think we were both in shock when we discovered the hospital is without AC. Since I became accustomed to having the portable air conditioning unit on full blast in our apartment, I thought I was literally going to sweat to death the first night of our hospital stay, when I was still 9 months pregnant, not to mention the fact that the week I gave birth was the hottest week of the entire summer. Antje, a friend who came by to visit, told us that the thermometer on her balcony registered 45 Celsius the day I gave birth! And the poor nurses and midwives, on their feet all day long, working their butts off...at times they looked like they were going to collapse. Why is there no AC in the hospital? We'll never figure that one out. France is indeed very advanced in so many areas, yet in some ways, it feels like we're living in a third world country.
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