We live in France and we've just had our 3rd baby and the quality of care that we've got is simply amazing here. Hospital facilities are good, well designed and people there are very welcoming, helpful and polite. You stay 3-5 days in hospital, you can have a dedicated room and everything is taken care of. I contrast this with the country I'm born in (Eastern Europe) were the care is not bad, but very far from standards in France.

Also, my mother was shocked when we went to a pharmacy to 'buy' some stuff for newborn and my partner, and we didn't pay anything at all. I think you can fully appreciate all that only if you were raised elsewhere, otherwise you just take it for granted.

Stupid question : where is the father supposed to learn ?

For our firstborn, the (finnish) hospital provided us with a family room for 3 days. Due to the circumstances of the birth, it was me (father) who got all the instruction at that point. I actually got to teach my wife how to change nappies and bath the baby afterwards :)

We also had a family room, to ourselves, for 3-4 days post-birth over Christmas. I was also the one who got the most instruction too.

It does have to be said that the rest of the talk/instruction/help was very focussed upon the mother (as you'd expect). I remember that all the meals we were provided with had labels:

* The meals for the mother had her full-name on them.

* The meals for me just said "father".

To some extent, the meals thing is probably just because the mother is the one who is the admitted patient, so her name will be readily on record. As the father is likely both a) not in need of even a contingency of medical care related to the birth process and b) not even necessarily well-established, present, or even alive at time of birth, I can see that being a more ephemeral label.

I remember our first night home with our first child. It was an extremely difficult birth(long labor followed by a C-section due to complications) and so my wife needed lots of sleep(we only got 3 nights in the hospital and she was in no way recovered). I very vividly remember standing there, carrying a 3-day old baby crying while covered in poop and trying to figure out WTF I was supposed to do...

The answer is: you eventually figure it out after lots of panicking :P

In Germany (and probably most other central european countries), it has become common for the father to stay with the mother and the kid in the hospital for the first few days (if job conditions and the income situation permits this), at least for the first child. This way, the father is also able to learn from basic child handling from the nurses in the hospital right from the beginning.

The father has 11 days of paternity leave in France.

In Iceland the father has 3 months of paid paternity leave. It is required, however, that parents leave the hospital the next day if everything is normal.

From the mother, for example.

And the midwife will visit at home 2-3 times in the following weeks