Hiatus Over: Blogging A Go-Go

Alright! My attempt to blog while pregnant failed miserably. This was partially due to my own laziness and exhaustion, but the two months I spent in Japanese hospitals with no wifi didn't help my ability to update my blog. I wasn't updating regularly before that anyway, though. Things must change!

So, to summarize the rest of 2013:
April was spent hanging out with my brother, finishing my work at the eikaiwa in Sendai, and having many short adventures.
May saw a bit of a break as I tried to wrap my head around the concept of being a housewife and preparation for a trip to Texas that was abruptly canceled when we found out that my cervical length was terrifyingly short only a few days to take-off. Bed rest finished off the month.
I spent June splitting time between the hospital where my husband was born in Shiogama and a bigger Red Cross facility in Sendai. No one speaks English well. My medical level Japanese is not so great, especially when I spend most of the night not sleeping but listening to what could have been confused for a bear being murdered for hours on end. I still think that woman was at the hospital to wait out the baby because no one wanted to sleep next to her at home. I'm not being fair, but I rarely am when my sleep is messed with.
July saw me on a short reprieve at home where I had a baby shower with my friends in Japan. I stockpiled media and crafting supplies in case I wound up in the hospital again.
August saw me back in the hospital again, watching fireworks from my window some nights. Luckily I got to stay in Shiogama where I was at least already used to everyone. The last week of August, my cervix was such that they felt safe releasing me.

I went home that Monday with a check-up scheduled for Friday morning. My husband couldn't take the day off, so my in-laws came to take me to the hospital only to find me in labor already. My mother-in-law contacted my husband's company and got him to the hospital to act as translator on top of caregiver and father-to-be. He was upgraded to father shortly before 1PM as Julia came screaming into the world. Knowing that she was about a month early and what that could mean for her lungs, I was so excited to hear her screaming. The experience was terrifying and incredibly painful, but well worth it in the end.

September was spent recuperating, pumping breast milk, and getting used to things at my in-laws home on the other side of town.

In October, my mother and brother came to visit. It was her first time in Japan but his second. We had a few adventures, spent more money than we absolutely had to, but it had to be done.

November saw me succeeding at Nanowrimo with a few ideas I had during pregnancy including a series of short stories built on the sleeping facial expressions of my daughter. The only problem is the dictation software I used to construct this is so flawed that I will have to spend another month picking through and editing each chapter, piece by piece.

And now we are ending December, a month in which I attempted to clean and relax. This was somewhat accomplished.

Let's hope the new year brings new resolve to me, and health and happiness to those in need, or anyone really. Who couldn't use health and happiness?

Now it's time I got around to cleaning this infant and trying to put us both to bed. Tomorrow promises to be a nice, long day.

Adios muchachos e muchachas.

Early Pregnancy in Japan, Part 1

It may seem crazy for someone like me, a busty, size 12 Texas girl, to choose to be pregnant in Japan, and some of it is crazy, but some of it is works out really well.

One Good Thing
Regular Sonograms – The first thing they did when we went to the hospital to have our pregnancy validated by a trained professional with take sonograms of the uterus to identify the tiny, 6 mm long bean shaped growth causing my body changes and increase in human growth hormone.
At our next visit, two weeks later, we had another sonograms to see the teeny tiny heartbeat that had developed in our 1 cm long offspring.
Keep in mind that when I was an embryo, my mom didn't have any sonograms. At all. Really. Nothing. It just wasn't common where she was at that time.

One Bad Thing
Prenatal Vitamins – One problem with the service at the hospital is, aside from don't drink or smoke, they didn't give us much advice in the way of vitamins, minerals, etc. in fact, prenatal vitamins are not that easy to find here, at least in my experience. When I had my husband ask at a pharmacy, all they could tell us was "Take normal vitamins." Which meant I got to do some homework. I looked around online and found out what types of vitamins are most necessary and paid the exorbitant fees for calcium, iron, and folic acid supplements. Then, in hunting through one maternity department at a department store, I managed to find one small bottle of actual prenatal vitamins. By then, I'd already contacted friends and family back home to send me whatever they could find. Honestly, I'd rather have supplements I can read the back of easily. Playing match that kanji isn't so fun in this case.

Next week, we go back to the hospital for another checkup. At this one, they will give us are expected due date, and apparently a lot more information, which may or may not include warnings about weight gain. That is a story for next time.

Hello again!

Allo Blogosphere. Sorry for the delay in correspondence. I will actually do better this time, and stop trying to make up for old updates. Let's just move forward. Okay.

So let's start with some new information. First off, I'm writing this using Dragon dictation software which I bought at a 50% discount following Nanowrimo. In January, I finished editing the first decent draft of a novel and submitted it to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards. We'll see if I made the cut in the coming week. The first cut that is.

As of May 17, I will have been in Japan for five years. The next day marks the day I met my husband five years previous. A little over six months after that will be our two year wedding anniversary which, if the fates allow, we will be celebrating with our infant offspring.

As of today, February 11, I am eight weeks pregnant, semi – full-time employed (by Japanese employment standards), and generally quite happy. I spend my free time using the bathroom constantly, eating as much as I think I need to (and even sometimes a little more), reading books I need to return to students, and learning how to take things slow.

I'm not good at taking things slow. It is not a skill I have ever had a need to develop. Part of how my brain wants to behave is more similar to a tank than a ballerina. I am more likely to just keep going and run over anything in my path than to stop, slow down, and carefully tiptoe around a difficulty. I don't like it. It requires taking more care of myself, and for some reason that's really hard for me to do.

But I am learning. And I am finding ways to be more generally appreciative of the things I have. A lot of the plans that I had as a child have actually worked out pretty well. I wanted to get married at twenty-seven to someone I had known for some time, and we did that. I wanted to be married for one year before we got pregnant, so my partner and I would have time to adjust our roles within marriage before adding parenthood to the mix. On that note, so far so good.

So now I'm a large pregnant foreigner living in Japan with the Japanese husband in a Japanese apartment in Japanese in-laws, physicians, taxes, food prices and all else that makes this place so special and at times so strange.

By the end of next month, we will be at the end of the first trimester, and I will be able to tell my students. A month later, I won't be their teacher anymore. The wonderful thing is the date when we can stop worrying as much and I can let the news out overlaps just about perfectly the blooming of the cherry blossoms in this area. A great time for great news!

I am so excited.

And for now, that is all.