And just like that...

my mum has gone back home. I can't believe how fast the week flew by. It was such an incredible week, I can't even begin to write how wonderful it was to see my mum and introduce her to Chloe.

We spent our week together mostly puttering around my neighborhood as the weather was terrible! Hello rainy season! My mum also acted as guarantor for my passport renewal so we had to head down to the Canadian embassy to submit all the paperwork and I also picked up the paperwork for getting Chloe's proof of Canadian citizenship.
We also cooked a lot together, it has always been a favourite pastime of ours when we are with each other. We tried a new recipe she read about in a magazine on her flight over and it turned out really well! It was a salmon dish with syrup, butter and dijon mustard, sounds strange but was actually quite nice. On two of the less terrible weather days we went to visit my husband for lunch which I know he enjoyed. He was disappointed he couldn't take time off to spend with my mum.
She was amazing with helping me around the house, (I'm sure our apartment looked disgusting when she arrived as I have been quite lacking on the housework department for quite some time now) and with the baby, whenever Chloe fussed my mum was eager to pick her up and give her back rubs, walk around with her and just cuddle her. We discovered that little Chloe likes to go out... especially for lunches and dinners. Maybe she enjoys the scents in restaurants or something.
We also engaged in our all time favourite pastime of window shopping. We used to spend countless weekends strolling through the malls and streets of Vancouver, browsing all the lovely clothes and whatnot, rarely buying anything but having so much fun nonetheless. It was more about the company than the activity and hey, good exercise, no?
All in all, I'm quite sad to have to say good bye so soon to my dear mum and I really hope little Chloe has convinced her to come visit more often. Until then, we have Skype.

Mum Mum Mum Mum

My dear sweet mum is coming to visit tomorrow. I'm so excited for her to meet Chloe - her first grandchild. After becoming a mother myself, I see our relationship in a new way, probably more clearly than I used to. I cannot adequately sing praises for my mum. She is amazing. She always put us kids first. When I was younger she really wanted to be a real estate agent, studied hard and got her license. After a few years of pounding the pavement and doing her best, all the while us kids complaining because we didn't want to go to after school care, she gave it up to be at home with us. 

When I moved away to go to university, I started calling her every day and we would talk for hours. Mostly because I was lonely where I was living at first and started getting really anxious about leaving my apartment for anything and she would keep me company while I was out, it was then I realised she was (and still is) my best friend. When I moved back to Vancouver, we used to go out shopping almost every weekend or I would go back home and have dinner with my folks often. I know when I decided to move to Japan she was really sad I would be so far away but she always supported me and we still talk almost every day.  I hope someday I can see her everyday again. Now I'm tearing up thinking about her and how much I love her. 

The little lady has arrived - her arrival

So as I mentioned in my previous post, our daughter arrived on May 2nd. It took me a while to organize my thoughts surrounding her birth and figure out what exactly happened. I guess I was pretty shell shocked and the resulting fatigue didn't help me organize my thoughts any faster. Ha!

My original due date was May 1st but then was changed to May 6th due to her growing slowly. So the weeks leading up to her birth I had the pleasure of going to the hospital on a weekly basis and getting checks to see what, if any, progress had been made. Every time the doctor checked me, there was only the slightest change and I was still carrying her really high. All my pregnant friends were talking about these "braxton hicks" contractions which I never had throughout my pregnancy which made me think labour was very far off. Needless to say, I was getting frustrated. My doctor recommended long walks and squats. One week I did over a thousand squats - no progress. I read online that eating dates helps prepare the cervix for labour - I ate hundreds, little progress. Yoga, squats, Pilates, walking and stairs - nothing.
So on May 1st (I was 39 weeks and 3 days going by my May 6th due date) I went in for another check up and was only at 1.5cm and still carrying high, I left the doctor's really frustrated and sobbing to my husband that the baby would never come and I would be pregnant until she turned 20. We made jokes about seeing the baby move a couch into my belly and that she was opening a night club. Getting comfy. We went home and decided to go for a long walk - so long that I actually changed into athletic clothes and runners for it, on the walk we stopped by our favourite asian market and bought some drink that is supposed to help jump start labour so we bought four of those. That evening we did our nightly ritual of rubbing all the labour inducing pressure points and using this type of acupuncture that uses fire and wicks instead of needles on the same pressure points. Feeling frustrated, I went to bed.
At one in the morning I woke up to the first contraction, I assumed it was gas until the next one came three minutes later, and then another. After about twenty minutes of quietly laying there with contractions steadily coming every three minutes I decided to wake up hubby and let him know. He jumps awake and we both wonder if it's the real deal or just false labour, since our hospital was a good 45 minute drive away and we were going to be taking a very expensive taxi, I didn't want to make the trek unless it was the real thing. So I looked online how to make sure - I took a shower and tried walking around (which can make false labour stop) and the contractions kept coming steadily every three to four minutes and lasting for a minute. Our hospital had told us since I was a first time mum I should head to the hospital when contractions were 10 to 15 minutes apart with this in mind I naively thought I might be having my baby quickly. At around 4:30 we decided to head to the hospital, hailed a cab and texted some family members to let them know.
Once we arrived at the hospital I was hooked up to monitors to check the baby's heartbeat and my contractions, this lasted for an hour and then finally they checked me to see how I was progressing. 3 cm. Bloody hell. They gave us the option of going home and labouring there for a while or staying and labouring at the hospital. We decided not to trek home and eventually back again and stayed at the hospital but were warned I would probably not be having the baby anytime soon. My labour was slow going and by 9 am I was only at 4 cm. I was getting really frustrated and started panicking because if contractions at only 4 cm felt that bad, 8 cm must be unbearable! At this point, my husband saw my despair and really stepped it up a notch. He remembered what our mid wife had taught him during our birth classes about coaching me through the contractions. From then on, he helped me remember my breathing and was invaluable. When he wanted to pee or go to the vending machine, I got really worried and even walked to the vending machine and back with him - much to the shock of the midwives. The midwife told us that even though my contractions were really strong they weren't making much progress - ouch, how discouraging! The pain was getting really intense so I asked for suggestions on how to manage it better (at that point I had just been crying) so the midwife suggested the bathtub. Before I could get in, we had to wake up the baby and monitor her heartbeat - lucky girl got to sleep through contractions. For a while I laboured in the bathtub which is when contractions got so intense I broke down and asked for pain medication which I luckily never ended up getting!  My husband said during this time I went crazy and had a weird look in my eyes - very intense and crazy. At one point while he was coaching me to "breathe, breathe, breathe" I growled at him "what the fuck do you think I'm doing?!!" and then true to Canadian form, apologised profusely.
Soon after getting out of the bathtub, around 11 or 12, my water broke and contractions felt very different. My urges to push came but I wasn't fully dilated so I had to try not to push which was tough. During this time, my husband says I regained my sanity and was cracking jokes with him and the midwife and apologising for all my foul language.
Around 1, I was wheeled into the delivery room and started pushing. The baby was still really high up and I ended up pushing for two hours with almost no progress. I tried pushing in a bunch of different positions to try and encourage the baby to engage in my pelvis with no luck. At this point the midwife seemed to be concerned about my energy due to labour starting in the middle of the night and lasting so long and decided to get the doctor to decide what to do.  It turns out, the baby was facing sideways instead of towards my back or stomach which made it difficult for her head to drop into my pelvis. The doctor tried spinning her head and then decided she had to come out soon. Instead of giving me pitocin to make my contractions stronger, he tried pushing on my stomach while I pushed a few times with no results. At this point they decided to vacuum her out while someone pushed down on my stomach. I was given an episiotomy and then they sucked her out which only took a few minutes and two tries with the vacuum. Our sweet girl arrived at 3:11pm on Friday May 2nd. She wasn't too big, 7 pounds exactly and 19.1 inches long. We named her Chloe.
I had to spend five more days in the hospital and recovery for me was tough. I was given boatloads of stitches and conveniently, no pain killers. For the first two days I could barely walk, sitting was hard and picking up Chloe took me about five minutes. Eventually my husband asked the nurses why the pills they gave me weren't helping me with pain -- they weren't painkillers! What a terrible mix up! So I was finally given something to help me with the pain which made it a lot easier to pee, shower, sit, stand, walk, sleep... Everyone told me to get as much rest as possible while I was in the hospital... what a crock of shit that is. I was put in a room with three other women who had just given birth and all four babies were also in the room. It would have been ok if one of the women had at least tried to calm down her crying baby. The sound of 24-7 howling from her baby really did my head in and lead to many text messages to my husband where I begged him to let me leave the hospital early - he did not. Looking back, I'm pretty impressed that I managed to do it without an epidural or laughing gas or anything. Leading up the birth all our foreign friends told me giving birth without pain meds was impossible and I'm glad my stubborn ass was able to prove them wrong. My mum had three children without and pain meds - and I used that for inspiration to get through it.
Chloe is now 7 weeks old and we are getting to know each other better every day. She is a really sweet baby and has just figured out how to coo and smile which is really sweet to see after she wakes me up at 5am to eat. My husband is on cloud nine with his daughter and I can't take enough photos of them cuddling and sleeping together.
Would I do it again? Probably. Not for a while. I think I need to emotionally heal from the trauma and also enjoy my new sweet baby, get to know her and help her grow up a little.

The little lady has arrived!

On May 2nd our daughter was born. It has taken me a while to find the time and coherence of thoughts to sit down and write this entry.

First off, I feel it is necessary for me to write about my time spent as a pregnant lady in Japan before I dive into the details of the birth and the babe.
It was quite the experience being pregnant in Japan and I quickly came to discover that there are some major differences in attitudes towards pregnancy between Japan and the west so I found myself trying to find a good balance between the two. Here are some things I discovered on my journey:

-In Japan, prenatal vitamins are not common, nor do doctors prescribe them as they would in the west. I ended up finding some on the shelf at a baby goods store and did my best to take them everyday. I was told the Japanese perspective is that a pregnant woman should be getting all these nutrients from the food she is eating and not from a vitamin.
- Japanese doctors are extremely strict about weight gain! My first doctor was extremely insistent that I not gain any more than 10 kilos (22 pounds) throughout my pregnancy. She also strongly encouraged I only eat brown bread, brown rice, lots of vegetables, NO fruit and only drink water throughout my pregnancy. Had I have the willpower to give up chocolate and fruit and the ability to find brown bread I might have considered this to be a viable diet option. Unfortunately some women take this strictness a little too far. A friend told me about her sister in law going on a diet exclusively of bean sprouts while pregnant to avoid being reprimanded by her doctor. While I agree a pregnant woman should not follow the "eating for two" idea, I also think pregnant women should not be preoccupied with worrying about their weight gain. I think I gained about 13 kilos total for my pregnancy and most of that is gone as I type this. :)
- The question of exercise - I encountered two very different opinions from the two doctors I saw for my pregnancy. My first doctor recommended I stay very still, definitely not exercise and do minimal housework. My second doctor encouraged pilates, yoga, long walks and squats throughout my pregnancy.
- Ultrasounds! We got an ultrasound at every appointment, it was great to see our little girl grow month by month and then week by week. In Canada, a friend said she only had one ultrasound for her entire pregnancy!
- In Japan, women are encouraged to give birth naturally without pain killers with the belief that mothers should feel pain while they deliver in order to feel close to their baby. (or so I was told) If I wanted to have an epidural, it would only be available if the anesthesiologist wasn't busy and it was between 9 and 5 on a week day for a large fee, of course. With that in mind, I spent my pregnancy mentally preparing for an unmedicated childbirth.
- TOUCHING! People I had never met before would come up to me and pat my stomach without even asking! I've heard this happens in the west as well but it was very annoying none the less.
- Post partum recovery - Most Japanese women when they are close to their due date return to their hometown to give birth and recover at their mother's home for the first few months.

The months leading up to her birth, I did everything I could to educate and prepare myself as much as possible for labour, the birth and the early months as a new mum. You name it, I probably looked into it. Since I was having her in a foreign country I found it especially important to do my research. When I found out I was expecting, my husband and I discussed options for the pregnancy and birth to make my first pregnancy as stress free as possible. The first option was to return to Canada and the other was to stay put. I was very tempted to return home so I could have an English speaking doctor and be close to my mum for this major life experience but didn't want my husband to miss out on the birth of his first child. For my husband's sake, I decided to stay in Tokyo, I was lucky to find a hospital with some English speaking doctors for all my appointments. I struggled at times with the differences in attitudes towards pregnancy but in the end it was the best decision for us.

Happy *belated* 2014

It's been a while (of course) since I last updated this blog. And like usual, much has changed. Since August of 2013, I have changed jobs. Now I am working part time in a public junior high school as an assistant language teacher. The students are pretty nice and the other teachers are really friendly. It would be an awesome job if not for the dreaded dispatch company I work for directly. Oh well, my contract is up in March and I intend to move on to greener pastures... specifically, MOTHERHOOD! The husband and I are expecting our first child who is due to arrive sometime in early May. It's a girl and so begins a whole new odyssey in my Japan adventure. For the past few months I have been researching everything under the sun about pregnancy, birth, and children. My husband is so excited he keeps saying he wants her to come out NOW but it's a little too soon for that. We have prepared almost everything that needs to be prepared, bought a bunch of super tiny clothes and diapers and now all we have to do is... inwardly panic and wait. :)

In other updates, the hubby and I had our big Tokyo wedding way back in October and everything went off without a hitch. The day whizzed by really fast and it was a lovely day - the sun was shining, everyone showed up (including the groom) and there were smiles all around. That being said, I'm glad it's a one time thing!