Free That's Not English by Erin Moore Page B

of my second ultrasound. Those who want more personalized care can choose to see a private doctor and deliver in a privatehospital. It will cost you or your insurance company about £15,000—about the same, or a bit less, than the average cost in the United States.
    After the NHS, the most important acronym for English parents is the NCT (National Childbirth Trust). This organization operates as a charity with two main purposes: to advocate for parents’ rights and interests, and to educate new parents. Its bias toward natural, drug-free birth is not entirely uncontroversial—some feel the NCT presents too rosy a picture of what childbirth is actually like, and joke that the acronym really stands for Natural Childbirth Trust. It’s hippy-dippy, warm, and welcoming—“crunchy” in a way that wouldn’t be out of place in Park Slope or Portland, but isn’t usually associated with England.
    Still, joining the NCT and taking their
antenatal
(prenatal) classes is a rite of passage for thousands of English parents. The greatest benefit may be community. It is not unusual for tight bonds to form within NCT antenatal groups, lasting long after the maternity leave (usually six months to a year in England) is over and even sometimes after the children have left home. The NCT introduced me to the charmingly old-fashioned custom of bringing cake to each new friend’s family as the babies were born, and my NCT group spent so much time together that any of the parents could pick up and comfort any of the others’ babies, as if we were one big family. It was a fascinating experience of permeable or nonexistent boundaries that lasted about a year, until the last of us had returned to work.
    Not that we weren’t busy. We took long walks with our pushchairs
and prams
(short for
perambulator
, a word that calls to mind nannies in starched white uniforms rather thanmummies in tracksuits with tricked-out Bugaboos). We had vigorous debates about whether or not babies should be given dummies (pacifiers), and whether to spring for the chicken pox jab (a vaccine not standard under the NHS) at a private clinic. We exchanged helpful tips on how to get posset (spit-up) stains out of Babygros (onesies). Posset is—confusingly, disgustingly—also the name of a creamy dessert, and many desserts were consumed that year as we fretted over the statistics on cot
(crib) death and balanced infants on our knees. We had the camaraderie of trench mates who knew we wouldn’t be judged for whinging (whining) or throwing wobblies (tantrums) over our sleeplessness, our partners’ lack of understanding, or insensitive comments from the in-laws. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the most common acronyms on Mumsnet, England’s most popular online forum for mothers, is AIBU (“Am I being unreasonable?”), to which one may respond: YABU or YANBU.
    We had a multicultural group. Two-thirds were English, but we had an American (me), an Italian, and an Australian as well. So there were some English words I had to adopt, or no one would know what the hell I was talking about. I fought this a little. My friend George, an Englishman married to an American and raising a family in New York, had the same reaction. We both feel the need to hold on to some of the vocabulary of our own childhoods—not just for our comfort, but so our children will not be entirely assimilated. Just as I could never bring myself to say
nappy
, George could never say
diaper
. But my daughter thwarted my attempt to make her “bilingual” by making up her own words. Diapers became
gagas
by a strange logic: If her father called it a
nappy
, and her babysitter used the French word,
couche
, and Mama said
diaper
, we must all be making up ourown language and therefore she could, too. We all ended up calling it a
gaga
after a while. But that’s what a shared cultural experience is all about—whether it’s the culture within a country, a chat room, an NCT group, or a single home.
    Once a child