Cultural boobs

TheLastStraw: Apparently there are some excellent buggy shops in France.

So when we went on holiday there recently with a four-month-old baby, my wife suggested buying a new stroller en route to replace the one that never recovered from the last baby (now aged five). Until then, I could use the child-friendly sling and carry the little critter. It seemed like a good plan.

There's nothing like lugging an 18-pound baby around in a heatwave to heighten your experience of a foreign country. Luckily, the baby sling was scientifically designed to distribute the weight to wherever your back hurt most. This could be trying for the parent involved. But - here's the clever bit - the sling seemed to be just as uncomfortable for the baby. So at least the suffering was shared.

The trip wasn't all pain, of course. There are always tender moments when you have a new-born infant - like when we were in Monet's gardens at Giverny and a misty-eyed German woman, clearly remembering her own experiences, asked if she could hold Daniel. We told her that if she had the time she could hold him for the rest of the week - we'd cover all meals and accommodation. Sadly, she only wanted to do it for a minute. Damn.

You get a lot of looks when carrying a baby in France. But according to my wife, you get even more looks when breastfeeding one. This did not come as a complete surprise. After all, despite being an agricultural nation, the French are notoriously suspicious of fresh milk. Most of the stuff available in supermarkets is of the long-life variety, stored on open shelves, along with other durables such as washing powder. Shops do keep a few pints of what they call lait cru for foreigners and other eccentrics. But they hide it in obscure parts of the fridge, to discourage the practice.

Another clue that the French might be disturbed by breastfeeding was a recent discussion on the website of Fodor's, the US travel guide. Fodor's is popular with young backpackers, and the site's debate about breastfeeding in Europe occasionally descended to the level of: "Children on holiday? Yeuch!" But all the more mature contributions recommended the importance in France of "discretion".

Unfortunately, discretion is a concept that Daniel hasn't mastered yet. When he gets really hungry, which is every 15 minutes, he feeds in a manner that, at an outdoor restaurant on a busy street in Paris, would still be clearly audible over the traffic. Also, as seems to be typical of boys, he needs to combine mealtime with vigorous exercise, thrashing his limbs about and defeating all attempts to hide him under the tablecloth.

The French for breastfeeding is allaitement au sein. Any assumption that this makes it acceptable in Paris, however, is based on bad spelling. Feeling brave one night, we went for dinner in Chartier, the lovely cheap old restaurant in Montmartre. It was packed as usual, with the usual mixture of tourists taking photographs and locals, so we had to share a long table with a group of young people who looked like Fodor's readers. We didn't mind: it's such a busy place that nobody notices what anybody else is doing; or so you'd think.

We'd just made it as far as consulting the menu proposé when, on cue, Daniel announced that tonight, as usual, he'd be choosing from the a la carte. Exercising maximum discretion, his mother slotted him into position. And immediately, the looks started. I don't know what the locals thought. But I had a horrible feeling that, for the tourists, we were adding to their (sadly mistaken) notion that we were French and they were experiencing something culturally authentic. I just know some of them wanted to take a photograph.

All in all, based on our experiences, I would suggest that France is struggling in the lower reaches of the La Leche League, and faces relegation unless results improve.

No doubt globalisation will close them all soon, but for the moment Paris still has the most beautiful shops you ever saw. A short stroll from Chartier - or about 2.5 miles if you're carrying a 19lb baby (yes, he'd put on weight since the start of this column) - we found a 250-year-old confectioners that would have made Willy Wonka feel inadequate. And just around the corner from that was a toy shop with every doll's house accessory you could imagine, right down to miniature novels for miniature bookshelves.

It had miniature strollers too. But we never did make it to a place with full-sized ones, and I was still carrying the baby when we came home. The physiotherapist is optimistic that I will have the full use of my back again - eventually.