The Birth Story: Having a Baby in Japan

So it has been about 4 months since I last updated this blog.  I got tied up with work and my own self and kind of let it fall to the wayside.  But this year I really want to keep up with it.  I love going to other blogs and being able to pretty much read their life stories with all of their entries.  I think it is a great way to preserve a bit of myself and my family's history.  There is a lot to re-cap from the fall of 2012 but no time.  But I will document this because it is a pretty big deal.  It also helps explain why I kind of cut contact with a lot of people after having my baby.  So here goes.

Let me start by saying I was never one of those women who wanted a baby.  I have always wanted kids with kids being the key word there.  I am not a fan of infants and sadly, am still not.  There is just so much stress and panic that goes with having/caring for a newborn.  But let me back up.

I will say that getting pregnant and being pregnant was one of the easiest things I have ever done.  OK- so not as easy as becoming a karaoke legend, but a lot easier than I thought or was led to believe it would be.  For me the movies/stories are lies.  I never threw up, I never had swollen ankles (except for the car ride back from DC), I had heartburn like once.  I also never really felt the baby kick nor was I ever kept up by her moving.  I would feel her shift or roll around, but that was about it.  Even as I passed my due date it was really hard to feel that I was pregnant.  Leading up to the birth I was swimming, walking, cleaning, and pretty much acting as if I wasn't pregnant.

Also, for the most part, labor was pretty easy too.  Not easy, but not as bad as it could have been.  I was worried about being able to do it without an epidural but I did do it and all while managing not to kill my husband or the hospital staff.  I had actually gone in for an appointment on Saturday, December 1st feeling extremely normal.  The Dr told me that I wasn't dilated at all and that since the baby didn't seem to be coming, we should schedule an induction.  We told him we wanted to wait a little bit longer and we all agreed to meet again on Tuesday.

That afternoon we went shopping and then out for dinner with friends.  That night I started cramping and by early morning (3am) I was having regular contractions.  We headed to the hospital at 10 am only to be sent home again since I was only dilated at 1cm.  We then went back (at the urging of Motoaki's mom since I was having contractions every 3 minutes) and stayed, having the baby at 9:23pm that night.  It hurt, but I was able to push through it (pun intended) by pushing against Motoaki while he pushed back and by using the breathing I learned at the class in Iowa.

I will admit that when she was born I didn't feel quite the way that I thought I would.  Rather than being filled with the overwhelming love that you read/hear about, I mostly just felt tired and worried that she was going to suffocate on my chest since she couldn't hold her head up.  I didn't cry or get overly emotional.  When the nurses took her to clean her up and do tests, I was actually a little relieved, and I had no trouble giving her over to Motoaki and his mother and sister. I had kind of thought it might go this way, as I have never been one to get excited over things like my engagement or my wedding day, and figured it would get better over the next few days.

It didn't.  In fact, in some ways it got worse.  I could handle the no sleeping (this has long been one of my secret talents- one that served me well in college and at Camp Adventure), the crying, the diapers.  But I couldn't handle the breast feeding (STOP READING NOW IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE TMI).  She couldn't figure out nursing for the life of her (partially because I have flat nipples- there, now you know everything about me ) and for the first two days she didn't really eat.  Finally they asked to give her formula and I okayed it but felt pretty crappy about it.  Then one of the nurses found a special nipple shield that Robin would eat with, only it was a slow release shield that meant what would normally take a baby 40 minutes, would take her an hour- or two- or three.  I think the record was the day when she nursed from 3:00-6pm straight.  And even then I had to give her a bottle to make sure she gained weight.  Though I was happy to be nursing, I was starting to resent it as well as it was always a fight to start and then took forever.  Plus because she had lost weight we were having to wake her every three hours to eat.  Basically all I was doing was feeding her in a hospital room.  I wasn't allowing visitors because I was literally topless all day everyday and despite having Motoaki and his family drop by, I began to feel really isolated. 

I also think that I really started processing my father's death as well as being reminded that my mom was dead and that just made me even more depressed (loading the ipod, in hindsight, was not the greatest idea- great for singing along but also great for cuing endless tears about my family, as I had always known it, ending).

Another part of the problem was that I had Robin on Sunday and then Motoaki's dad had spinal surgery on Monday in a hospital an hour away.  This meant that his mother was now going every day to visit him and that Motoaki and his sister were the only two running the company.  This also meant that Motoaki's mom and sister couldn't check on the dogs.  So instead of staying with me at night as originally planned, Motoaki would come from about 7-12 and then go home.  I actually suggested this since I worried about the dogs.  Added to this were a bunch of other curve balls like one of Motoaki's coworkers father passing away, etc

It also didn't help to see all of these other people having babies and them being so happy about it.  That sounds horrible, but I felt like if I said I was overjoyed I would be lying and that if I said I was depressed and hating motherhood that I would come off as a bad person.

So anyway, the first week of motherhood was not the best.  Robin was a great baby (even now she rarely screams or freaks out) but I was just not feeling the whole mother thing.  It sounds horrible, but I began to relate to people who gave their kids up for adoption.  Or rather, I could see how it would be possible.  Fair enough, I felt the same way when I had my first ultrasound at 6 weeks and saw blinking Lima bean.  Rather than being overwhelmed by the miracle inside me, I thought that I could see how women got abortions without a second thought.  I am not proud of these thoughts or saying that I would ever have an abortion/give a child up for adoption, but I do see how people do it.

The second week got a little better as I got to go home and see the dogs.  Yeah, you read that right.  People always tease me about how much I love the dogs, but they are just such a comfort to me.  I really started crying uncontrollably when I saw them.  After being in the hospital for a week and not getting to go outside at all, it was the best thing in the world to walk the dogs on the bike path along the river.  I absolutely love that part of our house- that we are in town and yet so close to nature and, more specifically, a body of water.

Also, being home I had better internet access and I was able to talk a lot to the people in my Facebook group, the Momma Birds.  All of us had babies due around the same time so we are all going through the same things.  They were/are such a wealth of knowledge and support and made me feel stronger and more confident in what I was doing.

The third week I had visitors which was great as I got to speak English and just kind of be myself.  And in hearing them get excited about Robin, I got more excited about her.  I also went to book club which was very therapeutic.  It made me realize that Robin wasn't 100% reliant on me (she stayed with Motoaki for the two hours that I was gone) which made me relax a lot more.  I think that was part of my depression/anxiety- worrying that I was totally responsible for her well being and that I was failing.

The following week my sister and David came which helped too.  Finally, I just began to relax about the whole thing.  I feel bad that I started giving a lot more formula, but a happy mom makes a happy baby, right?  And I seriously doubt she won't get into Harvard based on that fact alone. I know that with the second baby it will be better and I will be more relaxed and probably able to do it.

So yeah- probably not the post you expected and not that much about Japan.  I will say that the biggest difference was obviously the language barrier.  I had thought about the mental challenge of having to translate everything, but I hadn't thought about the mental challenge of having to translate everything at 3am when a nurse stopped by to see why my baby was freaking out.  Also, though the support of the hospital staff was amazing and I enjoyed being able to relax/recover in the hospital, I do feel like it delayed our bond a little bit.  With American parents you kind of get thrown into the deep end, having to take baby home pretty much on their second day of life.  But in doing that you really have to step up and parent and face your fears.

It's been a month now and things are a lot better.  Robin is fine and each day as she develops her personality, I begin to get just that much closer to her.  I am sure that after a year I won't be able to remember or believe all of the feelings of detachment I felt in the first few weeks.  In fact, even now I see that in some ways I was being a bit silly- a bit of a baby.  But I wanted to write about them to let other new moms know that they weren't alone if they felt the same way.