One Day When

One Day When

My Pregnancy

21 August 2006 / Week 18: A Kick!

I have a tendency to think that if the baby books I'm reading tell me something should be happening, it should be ... well, only regarding the good stuff - the varicose veins and haemorrhoids I'm happy to let pass.

I'd read that between the 17th and 20th week of pregnancy I should be able to feel Zed kick and as it happens, kick Zed did! Following an aqua-bics class today, that got even the slowest-looking Japanese grannies moving, I let my hand rest on my abdomen while reading for a while. Sure enough, after some time and a few false guesses, a bony little protrusion nudged against my skin and soon after, it happened again! What a unique, reassuring feeling!

4 September 2006 / Week 20: The Baby Manual

After searching through reviews of baby books with a brain-draining number of references to 'smart babies' (which brought to mind 'smart bombs', so I wasn't as surprised as I might have been when I came across a book called 'Explosive Toddlers'), baby brains - and the study that one neuro-scientist had undertaken of her own daughter's - and baby care covering the gamut of possible emergencies, including the threat of terrorism, I headed to the bookstore feeling uninspired.

There's not a big selection of foreign books at Junkudo but among the five or six books on caring for babies, shelved in the 'Self-Help' section, I came across "What to Expect the First Year". It's written by Murkoff, Eisenberg and Hathaway, the authors of the standard pregnancy text "What to Expect When Your Expecting", which I'd passed over in favour of the Australia-specific, "Having a Baby" by Carol Fallows.

I liked this second "What to Expect..." almost immediately. The first four chapters of the book cover preparations for the baby, including ideas for the 'grandparentless', which we fall into the category of in a sense, and what to buy for the baby. While they advise the reader not to "go nuts", the authors appear to have disregarded their own wisdom in the section on 'baby's medicine cabinet': is something so small really going to need that much stuff? I was left wondering here if John and I are really grown-up enough to have a baby, first, due to the fright that the ointments and instruments list gave me and second, because we both squirmed and laughed in a Beavis and Butthead way at the reference to a 'rectal thermometer'.

The next 12 chapters offer a month-by-month on what the baby may be doing, things you might be concerned about and what will probably happen at the health check that month. This last part is really valuable for us because we still have a gap in communication with the hospital that means we're not as readily informed about what to expect at check-ups as I as suspect Japanese parents are, or as we'd be in Melbourne. Anyway, the end of these chapters only takes you to page 502 of 807 pages ... yes, the book is packed full of information in an easy to read format with lots of pictures - indispensible for understanding nappy-changing and breast-feeding! So, I bought it and a few hours later, was officially hooked :)

18 September 2006/ Week 22: It's a...

We've have had an ultra-sound, called an ECHO in Japan, during each doctor's appointment. I look forward to this part of the check-up. From seeing the presence of an amniotic sack, to an, albeit, funny and fairly disproportinate little being, the scans have rounded out the experience of having a baby a bit more... not to say that pregnancy isn't 'rounding' enough. On Friday though, it wasn't only me but John and my family in Melbourne who were anticipating the ECHO. We all suspected that during this visit the doctor would be able to tell whether Zed is going to be a boy or a girl.

Neither of us are really concerned either way, but if we'd been anxious to know before the doctor could help, there are a whole range of myths and old wives' tales about predicting baby gender. One of the more bizarre is peeing into Drano. A pee/Drano mixture of bluish yellow, brownish, brown, black or blue = boy. Greenish brown, green, blue or no change = girl. Tres scientific, especially if you're dehydrated or have recently enjoyed a Blueberry Blast slurpee. Beyond this there's whether your partner gains weight (extra kilos = girl), baby's heart rate (above 140 = girl / below = boy), cravings (sour things = boy / sweet things = girl) and changes to the mothers' face (round and rosy,you guessed it, = girl)... Then there are all the at home tests involving pendants, rings, keys and the way they swing or how you pick them up and so on and so forth.

I suspect these myths offer more accurate insights into the gender attitudes of the culture that produced them than they do about the sex of the babies about to be born into them! Japanese friends tell me that equivalent myths here include ths shape of your stomach (forward growing = boy, round = girl), how your face looks during pregnancy (soft and gentle = girl, hard and acrid = boy), and perhaps even funnier, and more subjective, if your eyebrows grow during pregnancy, your having a boy... or have misplaced the tweezers :)

In the meantime, Friday saw John and I watching a little screen while the doctor waved a metal gadget that shows sound over my belly. She explained what we could see from each of the angles she chose in order to measure parts of the baby's body: circumference of the head; length of the legs; length of the feet (3 cm!). Then she said, "otoko no ko ka onna no ko ka shiritai desu ka" (do you want to know if your having a boy or a girl?). We did. She moved the gadget around a bit more and landed on Zed in the middle of a nice-looking breast stroke... The answer to our question was given not so much with what could be seen, as by what couldn't! Ah, the wonder of modern technology.

09 October 2006 / Week 25: There is a Baby in my Stomach

The Japanese government introduced a new initiative in August to make travelling on trains more comfortable for pregnant women. The 'Maternity Badge', which reads 'There is a baby in my stomach', is being given to pregnant women in an effort to encourage commuters to offer them seats voluntarily. It is part of a larger push to halt Japan's declining birth rate. Australia has something similar, a 'baby bonus'(currently $4,000), which may just prove a more effective incentive to reproduce...

I heard about the badge a day after having an unnerving realisation. On leaving a Japanese class, I found my bike parked in a way that was going to make it hard to get to. The other two students with me insisted in a gentle yet firm way, on extracting it for me. After physically lifting the bike from its cramped spot, they placed it on the road and ushered me onto it. I was grateful but puzzled by the interaction. Later, I realised what had felt weird. These kind strangers had been acting on an idea they had about pregnant women and how they should be treated. Not a big deal, just that until then, I hadn't thought of the idea as applicable to me!

Its not like this is a first. Anyone travelling or living in another country knows what its like to suddenly be treated as a representative of, and therefore an expert on, your country of birth. For the first time in your life you're expected to know about (possibly even take responsibility for) obscure moments in national history or be capable of spurting out precise data in reply to questions like, "So, how many square metres of land is irrigated in your country?". Beyond this, there's the dawning of recognition from time to time that what you understand to be an expression of a certain aspect of your identity, has been interpreted in a completely different way by someone else. The effect is to place you in a category of person that you had no intention of being associated with or potentially, even any knowledge of...

So if this isn't a first, why did realising I'd been placed in the category 'pregnant woman' unnerve me so much? Afterall, I do have a baby in my stomach! On a surface level it seemed to be the 'slow to cotton-on' factor. Without knowing it, I'd become part of a group of people that society has specific ideas on behaviour towards, which means they have specific ideas about who I am, which up to that moment were quite unrelated to my sense of self! But on deeper reflection, I realised it was less about society's ideas about pregnant women than my own... As someone who feels settled in routines, dislikes mess, loves marking things off a list and creating concisely organised file directories and perfectly balanced budgets, pregnancy and care of babies always seemed like a kind of chaos summed-up by overdue haircuts and stained t-shirts. Then there's the idea of being a mother in itself... there had always been a sub-conscious 'just' before the term 'a mother' in my mind.

The process of considering the implications of how I feel about pregnancy, child-rearing and what it means to be a mum has been important. Its also turning out to be positive. Over the past six months I've started to understand that the experience of pregnancy is an individual one: while there's a general course that pregnancy takes, the substance is unique to each woman, the same for the relationship with your baby. Pregnancy has also been an intimate way of becoming re-acquainted with my body, which I've found both reassuring and empowering: there are some things that nature just takes care of, that I don't need to be concerned by, and yet my body is strong, healthy and capable of producing a new life!

Maybe hopping onto a train wearing a maternity badge will conjure-up all kinds of ideas about who I am in the minds of other people. For me, joining the 'pregnant woman' category is becoming a less conflicting initiation. I've started to understand that just as being Australian doesn't have to mean I love footy and beer, or expressing opposition to the war on terror doesn't have to mean I condone 9/11, neither does becoming a Mum have to mean a loss of control in my life or banana mashed into my carpet... okay, maybe the banana part is too optimistic.

12 November 2006 / Week 30: Showered in Lurve

I spent three weeks at home in Melbourne during November. Three weeks of warm weather and lots of love from family and friends. We were inundated with gifts for the baby, with the mother lode being presented at a baby shower organised by my girlfriends. It was so good to be around women as wonderful as my crew are! I collapsed at the end of the day with ribs sore from laughing, my mind flicking through the memories of the years that I've spent with them.

The oldest of these friends had her beautiful new daughter with her. We met when we were 10 years old. Together, she and I practised our kissing technique and discovered the thrill of making prank phone calls. I made many of the friends that were there in my final year of primary school and first year of high school, and it was with them that I gripped the rail during the roller coaster ride that those years were. I continued on with two of them to university, and spent that magic period of second hand cars, rented houses, low wages and long summer holidays with three of them developing an indie chick identity over cups of tea and countless cigarettes after nights spent on the dance floor of one club or another. A Canadian friend from the first time I went to Japan also came. She and I shared an adventure in Vietnam that I still consider one of the best times of my life. And there too was the first real friend I made, against the odds, in the tough corporate environment that was my entry to the workforce soon after returning from Japan... what adventures we've had together! Of course, my Mum was there as she has always been, her face beaming in a ceaseless smile at the prospect of her first grandchild's imminent arrival.

How many things have I celebrated with these women?! How many broken hearts and shocks of life's realities have we consoled each other during? I don't think I ever imagined during those times that any of these friends would be throwing a baby shower, much less one for me!

Back in Kyoto, awaiting the arrival of the new crib, change table and pram that our parents generously bought us, and I can't help but think what a lucky little person our baby to be is... so many warm wishes for her parents and for her future. Now, if she'd just realise that, and get a move on with arriving!

18 January 2007 / Week 39: Waiting, a little more patiently

As you can see, I've been absent from this blog for just over 2 months while preparing my work and our place for the arrival of the baby. I also hadn't felt like writing: I'd begun to feel over being pregnant and really impatient for the baby to arrive. This translated into a frustrating kind of merry-go-round of believing that I should be relaxing but each time I tried, feeling like I should be doing something because the baby would be arriving soon, or coming-up with something to do because I was bored! The onset of irregular contractions in the 36th week helped pull me out of both the 'being over pregnancy' and 'the needing something to do' mind-set, as did our meeting with the midwife soon after.

My first contractions came in the middle of the night, and they were painful! This was the same night that I'd had my first real moan about being pregnant to John, complaining about how uncomfortable it was and that I was tired of not getting a full night's sleep. The strong cramping down my side that came a few hours later happened with such a sudden force that it woke me up physically and, retrospectively, psychologically!

The following week we met the midwife to discuss my birth plan. This involved talking about what I imagine the birth will be like and what I'd like to happen during the different stages of the labor. While the contractions happened to start at just the time I was launching into 'sorry for myself' mode, it was no conincidence that the chat with the midwife actively focussed my mind on the reality of giving birth.

Don't get me wrong, over the past months I've thought and read a lot about labor, and post labor, and post-post labor (breast-feeding, nappies, getting babies to sleep etc., ), sometimes even long past post-post labor (what will our child be like, how will we influence this, how will I feel when / if she goes through a stage where we love her, but just don't get her... or like her?!). The process of preparing the birth plan and talking through it with the person who will deliver the baby really kicked things in on a deeper level. I guess this translated into not just understanding the value of having a good idea of what to expect from different possibilities of what labor will mean for me, but of placing myself in the moment and trying to prepare myself for how I might feel, and in that way gaining a bit more control over how I will react.

Since then, my mind has relaxed into a much gentler form of anticipation, more of a meditation on the birth. Yesterday I was imagining what it will feel like to hold Zed after she's born, and I began to be able to feel her breath against my chest and her heart beating against mine. Letting my mind wander into thoughts like this has made me feel calm and reassured, it will happen... all in her own good time.

27 January 2007: Nina Aiko Stachurski

(John writing on behalf of Cleo and myself.)

Friends, Romans, countrymen,

On the 27th of January at 10:04pm Cleo gave birth to a beautiful baby girl called Nina. She was 3.4 kg and possessed all ten fingers and toes.

Cleo is sore and tired but otherwise doing well. Nina was calm and I left her sleeping curled up next to Cleo. The labor was hard but without complications. I will leave the story for Cleo.

Thanks to everyone for their kind wishes, thoughts, encouragement and advice, John.