In consultation at his Strasbourg office, at the nearby Sainte-Anne clinic, regularly on the set of The nursery house on France 2… At 70, Arnault Pfersdorff is not done with pediatrics. “When you love your job, you practice. I continue because I love it,” explains the man who has just published his eighth work. Co-written with midwife Anna Roy, Your pregnancy (Hatier) allows future parents to obtain answers to an often unknown world. From the first questions that arise when the desire to have a child arrives to the first six weeks of the baby’s life, obviously including pregnancy and childbirth. In total, 136 themes are covered.
Why this new work?
Yes, it’s true that I have already written a few on parenting, including one which is in its third reissue, Baby, first instructions. I’m even preparing one on teenagers, which will be released in a year and a half. Afterwards, I will have done the tour! This will allow you to go from the desire to have a child until the age of 16. This will raise all the issues in order to support parents, whatever the family models.
Let’s come to this last publication, Your pregnancy, which covers a period from the baby’s first aspirations to the postpartum period. Why did you focus on this specific theme?
I have had a real working relationship with midwives for a long time since I work as a pediatric resuscitator. In addition, as I am a columnist for La maison des maternales on France 2, I met Anna Roy. It was quite natural that the idea of writing a book together came to us, which is a first between our professions.
But didn’t this book rather belong to a gynecologist, especially on the pregnancy part?
No, not at all because the midwife takes care of the entire uterus part, the woman part. And I manage the pathology as well as the support of the fetus, the newborn and the postpartum period. We are completely complementary.
Is the desire to have children still as pronounced in France today?
There is a 7% drop in the birth rate in the first half of 2023 and we hope that it will not be the same in the second because that would be boring. We know the main reason: it is the average age of a woman’s first child, 30-31 years in the Paris region and 28-29 years elsewhere. This shift towards a greater age means that there is a more frequent call for medically assisted procreation (MAP). Because the oocytes age with them and fertility problems worsen. I would add, to explain this decline, that women today seek to prove themselves more professionally before committing to a pregnancy project.
Is endometriosis, which affects around one in ten women today, also a reason for this drop in birth rates?
Not necessarily because this disease has existed for quite a long time but was unfortunately underdiagnosed. In the past, we often told him “Don’t bother us with your periods, you’ll come back when things are better”. Fortunately, those days are over. We now have the means to detect these secondary foci of follicles which are not placed in the right place and cause this intense pain.
What questions do women ask themselves today before embarking on a pregnancy project?
Often it’s ‘Am I going to make it? Do I feel ready? A doubt has set in and I wonder if social networks and the internet have something to do with it. Going on forums, communicating between friends who never have the same story but compare themselves with each other, creates stress before the step is taken. Too much information kills information. The second reason is that many people tend not to trust themselves. The third, I think it is linked to the breakdown of families. Parents and children were more likely to live close together forty years ago. We then trusted his mother. I’m not saying that this model was good but we asked fewer questions. Today, a woman wants to control her destiny. She wants to control when, with whom, and how she will have a child. And she no longer wants her own mother’s judgment to intervene in her decisions. All this can make you feel lonely. Finally, I must also talk about economic considerations. This factor plays a role, not in the same way depending on the household, but having a child represents a cost. Diapers, milk, nurseries etc.
Does preserving the planet also hold back some people?
Yes, it’s more confidential. One child is the equivalent in CO2 emissions of fifteen round trips on a Paris-New York flight. Per year. The Swedes proved it with a publication on the subject. So yes, people are sensitive to this question, just like those who wonder what planet they are going to leave to their offspring.
In your book, you go all the way to postpartum, which is about six weeks after giving birth. For what ?
Because it would be incomplete without the first days of life. Today we are talking about the first 1,000 days and that goes from the two months of pregnancy to the child’s two years. I didn’t go that far but the book allows a woman to peacefully experience her desire for a child, her pregnancy and to have the tools for the first weeks.
How do parents experience this period?
Generally, the first visit from the pediatrician takes place when the baby is one or two days old. My first question to the parents, or to the mother only, is to know how the feeding is going. And most of the time, I hear “I would like to try to breastfeed him”. This response shows the worry and anguish of not achieving this. And I’ll spare you the other problems I hear, ”he has colic” or ”he has internal gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)”, the latest great invention of the internet. The parents then change milk and the child finds himself at one month of life already with three different milks. GERD is very rare!
You said it at the beginning, you will soon have covered the questions that future parents ask themselves until their child reaches adolescence. Do you hope that your books become references like those of Laurence Pernoud?
(Laughs) That’s what the publisher would like! I don’t ask myself this question. It is true that Laurence Pernoud is an icon, who is now deceased. Today, his books are written by authors of all kinds and his guide has become an encyclopedia. I don’t think parents need an encyclopedia. They need the essentials so as not to drown, and everything is written with kindness.
Last question: if you only had one piece of advice for future mothers, what would it be?
To listen to yourself. Too often when there is a question, the tendency is to search the internet or ask someone else. While they often have the solution! I am obviously not talking about very technical subjects, rare diseases, etc. I repeat it to future parents: listen to yourself, trust yourself!