As a daredevil Blue Peter presenter, Helen Skelton walked a 500ft-long high wire at Battersea Power Station in London, ran 78 miles across the Namibian desert and was covered in bees.
Yet nothing quite prepared her for the challenge of living in France with her rugby-league star husband, Richie Myler, and their two young sons, Eric and Louis.
From her new home in Leeds – Myler now plays for Leeds Rhinos – glamorous Countryfile host Helen reveals that the lessons she learned across the Channel have changed her outlook on life – and motherhood – for ever.
French mums are definitely much stricter over bedtimes. They are big fans of controlled crying, which has become passé in Britain, while I’m still up and down all night with Eric – he has never slept through
From giving birth on her kitchen floor in front of two stunned French firemen to having her Annabel Karmel recipes torn off her in a market and the reason why she wore so many short skirts and high heels at the Rio Olympics, Helen gained a whole new insight into being a French-style yummy mummy – with a lot more va-va-voom to boot.
‘Moving to France was not on the cards when I married Richie,’ says the 34-year-old. ‘But then it’s hard to know what is on the cards when your husband plays rugby and you are a television presenter, so you have to be open to everything and just take what life throws at you.’
When Myler signed for the Catalan Dragons in 2015, the couple and Eric, then just two months old, moved to Canet- Plage, near Perpignan. Helen left behind two sets of doting grandparents and a thriving career for a life with no friends, no internet and no food delivery shops within a 20-mile radius.
At my last doctor’s appointment in France, he asked if I was going to breast-feed my newborn. I told him I had done so with Eric and I would again but if I had a problem I would use a bottle. In England, that response would be met with a look of disapproval but the doctor simply shrugged and said: ‘Breast is better for the baby – bottle is better for the boobs.’
‘Life was very different,’ she admits. ‘I’d just had Eric so I was ready to stay at home and spend time with him but it really was a bit of a culture shock.
‘The South of France sounds so cool and glamorous but we were in a pretty remote seaside town near the Spanish border. There was no wi-fi, no busy high street, barely any cafes and no friends around.
‘The French partners of Richie’s team-mates were lovely but I was in a completely different situation to them – I was a working mum with a young baby.
When I was weaning Eric, I’d go to the market with my Annabel Karmel recipes and the stallholders would take the pages off me, shake their heads, give me vegetables that were in season and tell me how to cook them
‘But in the end you just have to throw yourself into the situation and make the most of it. I learned a hell of a lot about the way the French do motherhood and a lot of it has stuck.
‘I’ve done so many crazy challenges in my life but this will stay with me – and my boys – for good.’
Here, then, are Helen’s ten rules for bringing up a baby – French-style…
FRENCH WOMEN DON’T STRESS ABOUT BABY FOOD FROM A JAR
When I was weaning Eric, I’d go to the market with my Annabel Karmel recipes and the stallholders would take the pages off me, shake their heads, give me vegetables that were in season and tell me how to cook them.
In England there’s a whole new movement around feeding – you don’t puree food and you don’t use spoons but instead you let your baby chew on pieces of carrot or fruit. French mums think that’s ridiculous. They have no problem pulling out jars of puree if they are busy, whereas some mums I know in Britain feel they have to apologise if something isn’t home-made and organic. Now I try to give my boys as much seasonal produce as possible – and I puree.
FRENCH WOMEN NEVER EVER SNACK ON CHOCOLATE
I’d never see the girls I was with scoff a chocolate bar. They would eat tons at meal-times but they didn’t snack in between and they didn’t do takeaways. They don’t sit around eating biscuits like I had done at home. This is something I’ve stuck with. My baby weight completely fell off in France even though I ate lots of great food. I think it was simply because I wasn’t snacking.
FRENCH WOMEN ARE HAPPY TO LET THEIR BABIES CRY
French mums are definitely much stricter over bedtimes. They are big fans of controlled crying, which has become passé in Britain, while I’m still up and down all night with Eric – he has never slept through.
When we lived in France, we’d take Eric with us if we went to dinner at the house of another couple. If a French mother is going out for the evening, the baby is left at home with grandparents so the mum doesn’t need to worry.
I have to admit I am still bad on bedtimes. I have tried the controlled crying method but I’m afraid break after about 20 minutes.
FRENCH WOMEN DON’T FRET ABOUT GOING BACK TO WORK
We have much better maternity leave in the UK – women can take a whole year off. In France, mothers simply make a decision to either go back to work after their three months of maternity leave or else they stop work and that’s it. They don’t beat themselves up about it.
Soon after we arrived in France, I thought I could do both and took a job called The Instant Gardener for the BBC and took Eric – who was then aged eight months – with me. It was pretty chaotic moving from one hotel to another with all the baby gear, jumping from trains to cars, and trying to fit naps and feeding times into the schedule but we got through it.
We have much better maternity leave in the UK – women can take a whole year off. In France, mothers simply make a decision to either go back to work after their three months of maternity leave or else they stop work and that’s it
I was glad to be wearing wellies, raincoats and a hat because I usually had less than ten minutes to get ready. Now I cut myself more slack. I turn down work more often but I have not got rid of the mother’s guilt.
It’s about trying to weigh up what is best for my kids and good for my career, and like every other working mum it’s never knowing if I’m getting it right.
FRENCH MOTHERS ARE THE REASON I LOOKED GLAM AT THE OLYMPICS
I’d learned a lesson from French mums when I was asked to go to Rio for the 2016 Olympic Games. Instead of taking my baby with me and trying to do everything, I left him with my in-laws and got a stylist to send me a selection of outfits and heels. All I wanted when I got to Rio was to dress up. Swimming pundit Mark Foster used to laugh at me because I wore high heels everywhere, every day.
One day I had to run for a bus wearing a nude coloured dress, which made me look naked from a distance, and pink velvet ankle boots. Sharron Davies cheered when I arrived in the studio.
The real lesson from French women is if you want to look glamorous, you can’t do it with baby sick down your front. You have to give yourself time and space. That said, I’m still an expert at getting changed in a tiny public loo for a red-carpet event.
FRENCH WOMEN WON’T LET THEIR KIDS TAKE OVER A RESTAURANT
It’s easy to take your kids to a French restaurant but French youngsters will sit longer and do less running around than British kids. But in the UK we have more places specifically geared around families, which I think is brilliant.
We also have a different attitude towards the food. In Britain, lots of restaurants have a special kids’ menu – in France, children just eat smaller portions of what the adults eat.
FRENCH WOMEN DEFINITELY DON’T SWEAT ABOUT DUMMIES
No one has a problem with dummies in France. Eric still has a dummy and I find myself apologising in Britain.
FRENCH WOMEN AREN’T HOOKED UP OVER BOTTLE-FEEDING
At my last doctor’s appointment in France, he asked if I was going to breast-feed my newborn. I told him I had done so with Eric and I would again but if I had a problem I would use a bottle. In England, that response would be met with a look of disapproval but the doctor simply shrugged and said: ‘Breast is better for the baby – bottle is better for the boobs.’
FRENCH WOMEN DON’T REALLY DO CRECHES
Here in the UK we are absolute champions of mother-and-baby groups – much more so than France.
Eric hadn’t been to any baby groups, so when it came to taking him to a creche for the first time it was a nightmare – for both of us.
When I found out I was pregnant with Louis I thought I needed to get Eric used to going to. Unfortunately, he had an absolute meltdown and staff thought it best that I leave.
I put something on Twitter which went viral – lots of other mums said it had happened to them too. The British and French newspapers picked up on it and contacted the creche to ask why I was told to leave. Later I was called into the head’s office and got a dressing-down for causing trouble. It was mortifying.
…AND FRENCH MEN AREN’T MUCH USE IF YOU GO INTO LABOUR!
Louis, who is now ten months, was born in France and this will remain my most vivid memory.
Richie was playing a match in England when I realised I had gone into labour. I got home and rang him straight away, and he said he’d call someone to come and help me. I thought if I had a hot bath it would slow down the labour but it didn’t – I could feel the baby coming. I climbed out of the bath and crawled naked to the front door to unlock it so that the ambulance crew could get in. But Eric started hitting me with a Ninja Turtles sword, thinking I was playing a game – until Louis’s head appeared and then he completely freaked out.
I was panicking inside but trying to keep Eric calm at the same time. Fortunately, two lovely girls called Jill and Erica – the wives of two of Richie’s team-mates – arrived at the same time as two French firemen. The men just stood there looking stunned while Jill calmly delivered the baby.
A paramedic arrived shortly after Louis was delivered and I was taken to hospital wrapped in a fire blanket.
My experience was painful, mortifying – and absolutely amazing.
- Helen is an ambassador for the parenting networking site mummysocial.com. Her TV Tonight Special, Snowstorm: Britain’s Big Chill, is available to watch on catch-up.