5 Things I Learned From Bringing Up Bebé

When I found out I was pregnant, shortly after making a huge out-of-state move for my husband’s company, I also found myself out of work. It was just one year after the publishing world collapsed and mass layoffs abounded; independent bookstores were closing at insane rates across the country, and big box store Borders abruptly closed all stores. I found myself going through multiple rounds of interviews with Philadelphia publishers…only to find that I didn’t get the positions. Here I was, with only a handful of years in the publishing industry, going up against publishing veterans with 10+ years of experience who were willing to take a pay cut and a position beneath their experience to remain in the industry they loved.

When my pregnancy test came out positive, I knew my days of serious job hunting were over. There was no way I could lie about my pregnancy and let’s face it, no one was really going to hire me if I disclosed my pregnancy, especially with the abundance of qualified applicants in the market. In an effort to bide my time and make a little money while pregnant, I took a part time job in a bookstore, working as a children’s book specialist.

The outer shelves of my section were filled with pregnancy and parenting books, and I came across an interesting title while shelving books in the section. That book was Bringing Up Bebé. As a soon-to-be parent, I was intrigued by this seemingly different parenting wisdom, so I grabbed a copy (well before it hit bestseller lists). I think Bringing Up Bebé was so popular is because it didn’t read like a parenting book, and the success of the “groundbreaking” ideas in Frenchwomen Don’t Get Fat were still resonating in America. The French were apparently doing life right, and we Americans wanted a piece of it.

If I’m honest, many of the ideas I gleaned from Bringing Up Bebé were forgotten in the throes of being a new parent, but quite a few resonated with me and “stuck”. I was delighted when the opportunity arose to write about a book that was a big part of my own pregnancy for Care.com!