When Dr. Pauline Dravet Gounot - a French neonatal ICU doctor - had her fourth baby in Miami, she knew that it was going to be a slightly different experience to giving birth in France. What she didn’t expect was how little support she’d be offered on the way out the door (baby number 4 or not!).
We sat down with Pauline and La Petite Crème’s own Varisa Perlman NP on our podcast Beyond the Diaper to compare newborn care in France and the US.
If you have no idea what postnatal care looks like across the pond, this is an illuminating episode.
The checklist that doesn’t exist here
In France, before a new mother leaves the maternity ward, a midwife goes through a formal checklist with her. Can you bathe the baby? Do you know how to change a diaper? Are you confident with feeding? Items are ticked off only when the parent feels genuinely ready, not just nodded through.
During the first few days with your baby in the hospital, a midwife will show you how to clean their eyes, nose, and belly button. They’ll also teach you how to bathe them properly, make sure you know everything there is to know about safe sleep, and book your first home-visit with a midwife for you.
In the US, the boxes being checked are rather different. Car seat? Good. Baby not jaundiced? Out you go. As Varisa put it:
“Here’s the door. We’ll see you in a couple of days. Hopefully it works out.”
The educational piece - how to bathe a baby, how to give vitamins, how to read feeding cues - is almost entirely optional, and dependent on whether you happen to have a nurse who wants to cover it. There is no education built into the system.
The midwife difference
In France, midwives are the backbone of maternity care. They’re present at delivery (and are often the only people present at delivery), they manage the ward, and they sign the discharge papers. They care for both baby and mother - including the emotional and psychological aspects that medical professionals on both sides of the Atlantic acknowledge matter enormously, but rarely have the training or time to address.
In the US, nurses are not necessarily trained in the things that fall outside of strictly medical care - even though how a mother is sleeping, eating, and coping emotionally directly affects the health of her baby. The support gap is real, and most American families fall straight into it.
The village problem
One striking difference Pauline noticed: in the US, new mothers often have twenty visitors in the hospital room. In France, it’s typically just the parents and the baby. And while the intention is loving, Varisa was candid about what that actually looks like in practice.
“They’re coming in and I’m serving them drinks,” one of her patients told her. “They’re holding the baby and asking me to make them lunch.” 🤯
What new mothers actually need isn’t someone to hold the baby. It’s someone to do the laundry, make a meal, and let them recover. The village concept - once a genuine network of practical, daily support - has been replaced by well-meaning visitors who still need to be hosted.
Postpartum: a tale of two systems
In France, postpartum care is structured and proactive. Blood pressure checks, mental health screening, and pelvic floor rehabilitation are built into the system - not optional extras for the particularly motivated.
In the US, unless a mother has privately hired a doula or postpartum midwife, she typically won’t see her OB for six to eight weeks. A lot can go wrong in six to eight weeks. And we see it happening a lot.
What both Varisa and Pauline agree on: the health of the mother in those early weeks directly determines the health of the baby. You cannot separate the two. And a system that doesn’t treat them as one unit is missing something fundamental.
What we can learn from each other
To her credit, Pauline was quick to note that this isn’t a one-way conversation. When her youngest was born in Miami, her in-laws flew in to help - something that wouldn’t typically happen in France. It was, she said, wonderful. “As much as we learn from French culture,” Varisa noted, “French people can learn from American culture too.”
The best version of newborn care probably lives somewhere between the two - the structure, accountability, and midwife-led support of France, combined with the warmth and community instinct of the US. Neither system has it entirely figured out. But the conversation is absolutely worth having.
🎧 Listen to the full conversation with Dr. Pauline Dravet Gounot on Beyond the Diaper, the La Petite Crème podcast - available wherever you get your podcasts.