Perhaps you’ve heard the recent criticism of the famous pregnancy book “What to Expect when You’re expecting.” I agree the criticism is well founded – this book mentions every possible pregnancy complication ever documented, however rare it may be. Though I referred to this book very frequently while I was pregnant, I realize in retrospect that it was to my detriment. I fully expected the worst at every turn– a genetic defect or a three headed baby. I worried about that glass of wine I had before I knew I was pregnant up until the baby was born, and fetal alcohol syndrome wasn’t diagnosed.

This book, though, is not an anomaly in American baby culture, I’m afraid. It’s just an introduction to more paranoia to come. There’s something to worry about with every stage of your baby’s life – SIDS, choking, suffocation, allergenic foods and anaphylactic shock, toys with small parts, chemicals under the sink, falls and serious head injuries. The books and magazines seem to imply that babies are dying by the thousands every day. That you will be lucky if your baby survives childhood. But you must be vigilant! And feed him pureed food until he’s five. And for God’s sake, don’t give him mittens attached by a string. Every baby who has ever had mittens attached by a string has strangled himself to death within 5 seconds.

Imagine my initial horror when I first arrived in France with a baby. They are still using those high chairs where the tray lifts up over the baby’s head on hinges. Didn’t they know those things cause decapitations and finger amputations (I presume, anyway)? I saw my sister-in-law put her 10-month-old down for a nap on a bed with a (GASP) comforter on it. Didn’t she know that soundly-sleeping babies are very adept at silently crawling, still asleep, under the comforter to suffocate themselves?

My mother-in-law came back from the store one day with Cheerios that I had requested she buy as a finger food for the Baby. But, good Lord, they were HONEY NUT Cheerios! If the potential anaphylactic shock from the nuts didn’t kill him, the infant botulism contracted from the honey surely would. I politely declined. Then she told me that there was also a special kind of milk for babies with honey in it. She said fortunately she didn’t ever give any to Cedric when he was an infant, with the MAJOR risk and all. But I think she may have been rolling her eyes as she said it.

So I spent the first part of our trip wondering why the French hated babies so much they were passively trying to kill them. Then it dawned on me – life is actually more enjoyable if you don’t get paranoid about every minute risk. Besides, there are so many risks in life – my guess is that driving to the supermarket with your baby is more dangerous than feeding him honey. I don’t know why we Americans chose to live our lives in obsessive fear of random horrors. So afraid we are of something terrible that we forget to enjoy life. But I think I may have learned something about relaxing from the French – before I left, I bought Loulou the cutest mittens, attached with a string.

This makes me like the French.