Moving to Paris at fairly short notice - advice please!

[yellowmama]

Hi, it looks as if me, DH and DD (8 months) are about to move to Paris for DH's job - he works there part of each week at the moment, and his company looks as if it will help us financially to move permanently. However, my job will not move so I am likely to become SAHM and try to get pregnant again. I speak quite good but rusty French which I hope will get better quickly. Don't know people in Paris but am assuming that there will be mother and baby groups I can go to? First, will need to rent out London house, find a flat in Paris and organise move in the next couple of months. Haven't even begun to quantify what that involves yet. Please give your advice! Also, what about nursery for DD (not urgent but I'd like her to go to one by the time she is 1 or so), health care for future pregnancies (had gestational diabetes, and brilliant specialist care here - will that be a problem to replicate?), UK pension / tax issues in case we come back...

At the moment we don't know where we will end up except we'd like to be somewhere rural, so this move will not be permanent, but might be long term.

THanks in advance for your help!

[JuliaJeanne]

Hello yellowmama - I moved from London to just outside Paris a couple of months ago with DH and 2 DDs (6 and 2.) Have a look at www.messageparis.org which is a support group for anglophone parents and parents-to-be in the Paris region, organised area by area. It's a real lifeline for lots of new arrivals here - members organise playgroups and get-togethers by area and they have lots of information about maternity services and members' experiences of different healthcare providers. You can join it before you arrive and then have access to a members' talkboard too.

There are lots of state-run creches and nurseries, mainly for full-time care (most French mothers work FT), and a system of halte-guarderies for part-time care, but as for as I can tell, they all operate under different parameters (e.g. one of our local halte-guarderies has been described to me as "babysitting", whereas others offer much more interactive care) so there's no substitute for some local knowledge when you get here. DD2 is starting at a "jardin d'eveil" attached to our local creche in September, which will be a bit like a small nursery school - 3 mornings a week with 4 other children doing painting/singing/playing etc. As it is state-subsidised the prices are much cheaper than the similar nursery school that DD1 attended in London.

I'm still pretty new here and haven't got the measure of everything yet - but please do ask if you have any further questions. Good luck with all your preparations.