Purposeful family living - with a French twist
Bonjour! I'm Michele Cherie: francophile, teacher, writer, runner, wife, and mama to five children. I'm a non-native French speaker from the West Coast, USA. My husband and I recently relocated our family to Alsace, France. IntentionalMama shares our bilingual journey and resources for a culturally-rich family life.
Our family is ten days into this parenting journey with our third child, so I thought I'd share three truths about newborns that I am being reminded of this week. I didn't know these truths when I started my parenting journey, and our modern society has mostly forgotten them:
Read MoreThough I lived in France for a year and a half in my twenties, it wasn't until I read Pamela Druckerman's Bringing Up Bébé in 2012 that I started to gain a full picture of French parenting. Here are five general truths about French parenting that I learned from reading Bringing Up Bébé:
1. French women don't breastfeed their babies all that long, even by American standards. A few months seems to be typical, partially because the vast majority of French women return to work after several months of maternity leave. I expect I'll be nursing our seven-month-old infant when we stay in France next summer, so I'm curious if my French friends will see this as an unusually long time to breastfeed a child.
Read MoreRemember when I went to the Alt Summit Conference last month? I was away from my children for three days and nights, and I knew it might be an opportunity to wean my two-and-a-half-year-old son. I've never intentionally weaned a child before--I'm a strong believer in child-led nursing and my daughter slowly weaned herself at four-and-a-half. But this time was different: I've been breastfeeding children for five years straight, I'm pregnant, and I was ready for a few months' break from breastfeeding before our third child is born. I also knew my son was old enough that he could be weaned without much guilt on my part.
Read MoreI've breastfed my children since I became a mama more than five years ago. Honestly, I can hardly believe I've been nursing one or both children for five years straight, but my firstborn daughter continued to nurse through my pregnancy with her little brother, and now he's two years old and still breastfeeding a few times per day. How much I've learned about breastfeeding in these five years! Here's what I think you should know too:
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