Little Kenzo was born with 100% Japanese eyes. No crease or double eyelid or whatever you call it. They were just like daddy's and gorgeous! Fast forward 2 months and overnight he developed the double lid... in ONE EYE!! From the start, he'd get it in both eyes when he was super tired, but apparently after 2 months his left eye just decided it wanted to be different and the crease stuck. So he's totally gotten this Victor-Victoria thing going on where the left half of his face is Asian and the right half is Western. Hmph. He's still a cutie but I hope one of his eyes will change at some point so they'll go back to matching!
With a mommy and daddy of two different races (even if you're the same race!), it is really quite fascinating to see how the genetics play out with your children. While pregnant, everyone says "Oh, mixed babies are the cutest! Your baby will be gorgeous!!!" and we hoped so but deep down you really do worry. What if he gets Ryoji's tiny eyes and my huge nose? What if he gets my pasty complexion and Ryoji's features and looks funky like a Japanese albino (no offense to Japanese albinos!!). We were pretty certain he would have brown eyes, because let's face it, there is no one with a recessive blue gene in Ryoji's family tree! But, light brown or dark brown, who knows! And green or grey or hazel, how do those happen? Of course we are a wee bit biased but despite the mis-matched eyelids, we consider our little Kenzo kawaiiiiiiiiii (cute)!
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For me, bathing my newborn baby was a pretty terrifying thing. He's so soooo SOOOO very slippery, won't I drop him? What if I get soap in his eyes and it burns, or in his ears and he gets an ear infection? What if the water is too hot and he gets burned, or too cold and he gets chilled? What if I don't get all the shampoo out of his hair and it gets irritated? What if he does his business on me while he is without diaper??? Luckily after doing it a few times, these fears have quieted but still sit in the back of my mind ready to shout "I TOLD YOU SO!!!" the second I make a mistake!
Fear or no fear, babies do need a good cleaning. But how you do it, and how often you do it is up for discussion! Our American nurse at the hospital said until they're crawling around and getting really dirty, babies really only need a bath in the tub about once a week, using a washcloth (water only) to do spot cleaning on a daily basis (face, neck, hands, armpits - they get cheesy - ewwww!!, diaper region); incidentally this is the practice we have adopted. Our Australian nurse, on the other hand, said it's their culture to bathe the baby daily. My sister, who's son has severe eczema, would argue this is too drying on the skin, and in our son's case I would agree. His skin is a bit dryer after a bath, and his cradle cap is absolutely flaking out of control. Sure you could bathe daily and then lather them up with all kinds of creams, but those creams are loaded with all kinds of chemicals. And no, I don't want to shell out an arm and a leg for an organic blah blah blah kind of cream when we've found that it's much simpler to just not bathe him daily! One of my friends in Japan got the OK from her doctor at her son's 1 month checkup to take him into the regular bath with them. I have mixed emotions about this. Mostly I would love to do it! I love holding Kenzo, and I love taking a bath, so to mix those things would be absolute joy!! My problem is I like my bath water to be hot, and my husband likes the water to be pretty much scalding! And from what I understand a baby should have bath water that is just barely warm. I wonder if there is a certain degree that is recommended? The bath we had over in Japan was electric, you set the temperature and hit "on" and leave the room going about your business elsewhere in the house. When the tub is done filling up, it plays a song to let you know. And then it keeps the water that temperature til you're done bathing! How awesome is that?? Man, I wish I had that tub here. Instead, we have an OLD (pre-war??) tub with no stopper so we don't even have an option to take a bath now. Which is nice cuz I don't have to bother cleaning it often (or to be brutally honest... practically never). We'll have to fix this before Kenzo grows out of his baby bath, which fits into our kitchen sink and is nice and easy to use!
Until quite recently, I always took what was said by my doctor and anyone in the medical world as law. They go through a lot of schooling and are pretty damn smart, so we should just blindly follow, right? It sure is the easy way! Unfortunately, once you begin to question anything and do some research, you are just led down this path of unending skepticism wherein there is no right answer. One leg of research ends with no simple conclusion but rather a whole new set of questions. And how often are they retracting one recommendation after realizing it's not so good, and giving a new recommendation. Ugh. It does seem like ignorance really is bliss...
Take the issue of vaccination for example. I grew up getting all the standard shots in the standard time frame. I certainly never questioned it. I never heard my mom or dad question it. Vaccines help us not get these horrible diseases, and not spread horrible diseases, and other than the pain of the needle and perhaps a sore arm for a day or two, what's the harm, right?? But now that it's my own itty bitty baby subjected to these vaccines (and many more than we were subjected to as kids), I find myself in a fog as I go through article after article questioning the the side effects (sometimes even death) of vaccines, the safety or lack thereof of certain ingredients, correlation with or causation of autism, and the efficacy which is not 100% after all. So what's a parent to do? If you decide not to vaccinate your child, and your child ends up getting one of those horrible diseases and dies, not only will you mourn that child for the rest of your life but wouldn't you also be racked with guilt that you could have prevented the death with a simple shot? Or perhaps your child handles the disease find but passes it along to your neighbor's infant who has no protection against it yet. Sure, these outcomes are all very very rare, but my mind always goes to the worst case scenario. I'm not sure which is lower risk, getting sick from a disease you're not vaccinated from or having a serious side effect from the vaccine, but in the end I decided to go ahead and have little Kenzo vaccinated as recommended. We are however on a non-standard schedule which spreads the shots out so he never has more than 2-3 vaccines in a single visit. This means more trips to the doctor (and more co-pays - damn the man!!), but hopefully his little body is better able to process them.
On a side note, one reason I'm glad we got out of Japan before having our baby is because of the BCG vaccine that is mandatory over there. This thing is WICKED!! Take a look at the photo on the left, I mean, ouch!! It causes permanent scarring, and from what I've read does not give a lifelong protection against tuberculosis. My husband says he is proud of his scar, and calls it his Japanese tattoo. My friends from UK and other various countries all have a scar or two from certain vaccines. So I guess I should be thankful none of the shots on the US roster are scarring??
We had ourselves a little Christmas baby just over 2 months ago. Little Kenzo arrived at 1:19 PM on Christmas day after a grueling 50 hour labor. With the help of Hypnobabies, I labored at home with my husband until hour 40, when I finally reached the point where contractions were close enough by the midwife's instructions (2-3 minutes apart for a few hours) to head to the hospital. We delivered at Manhattan's St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital's Birthing Center which was a wonderful experience!! You labor, deliver, and stay one night postpartum in a private room with a jacuzzi and queen size bed where dad and baby can stay with you the entire time. It's natural births only there, so there wasn't even a suggestion about pain meds and the midwife and nurse were AMAZING at getting me through the labor and getting my little one to progress down and out. They had me (and my husband!!) doing lunges and squat/sways up and down the hallways. That was TORTURE but I guess it did the trick. After breaking my water (the only intervention) and 1.5 hours of pushing, out he came and straight on my chest for kangaroo care. We both got the OK from the professionals and were discharged a mere 28 hours after birth.
Yes, it was incredibly painful. Yes, it was exhausting. But I am glad I went the natural route and it was a truly empowering experience. I knew the pain was productive and not due to sickness or injury (well, maybe the pain immediately AFTER the birth was injury-related pain, haha), and I knew it had a definitive end point. Each "pressure wave" (what hypnobabies moms call contractions) worked its way up to the intolerable point, but only stayed there for about 30 seconds or so and then eased its way back down and gave me a minute or two respite before the next one. Anyone can get through 30 seconds of excruciating pain, knowing it will go away (and come back, yuck), especially with wonderful and patient coaching. If I could have had an epidural with the 100% guarantee that it wouldn't slow down my progress and lead to the need for pitocin, wouldn't hinder my ability to push, wouldn't take away my right to eat and drink and move about on my own, and wouldn't ultimately end in a c-section, then yes, I most definitely would have gone for it! And it seems most women in America do go for it (and most doctors and nurses encourage or even push it). Unfortunately, the risks I mentioned are quite frequent with epidurals (if you haven't seen it, watch "The Business of Being Born" - an amazing documentary about childbirth in America). I do not judge anyone who goes that route, in fact, up until a year ago when I watched that documentary I had no doubt that it would be epidural city for me!! But in the end, it just wasn't worth the risk for me and luckily I was able to endure the "discomfort" (another hypnobabies term, which looking back, is freaking HILARIOUS). I could not wrap my head around was the price tag associated with this natural birth and short hospital stay. A whopping $25,000 was billed to my insurance company!! After paring that down using their "contracted rates", $15,000 was paid out by my insurance company to the hospital and my midwives' practice, and $3,000 was owed by my own little pocket. My city/county/state employed teacher friends like to brag that they paid a mere $25-100 for each of their births. My UK friends brag that it's entirely free over there!! In Japan, childbirth is not covered by insurance, but your city pays you a healthy stipend after you report the birth (part of their attempt to reverse their ever decreasing birth rate), usually around $3,000 I believe, which basically covers prenatal visits, birth, and ONE WEEK (luxurious and relaxing) stay at the birth clinic. But America's ridiculously problematic health care system is no surprise, after all... So, what was your birth experience like? Gimme the good, the bad, and the ugly! Born in Philadelphia and raised in New Jersey and North Carolina, no one would have guessed I'd move to Japan for 5 years, but long story short that is just what happened. I am a product of the JET Programme, a teaching exchange program that sends native English speakers to Japan to teach English and increase international awareness at public schools and in the community. It was a wonderful experience which I owe my deep gratitude for because it was during my stint in Ibaraki Prefecture that I met my wonderful amazing husband. How we met is a rather funny story (gay night at the club Ageha in Tokyo), but basically we dated briefly before I returned to America, did a year and a half of long distance with various rendezvous in Vietnam, America, and Japan, and finally I returned to Japan to make sure he was really "the one". Indeed he was and within a few years we were engaged, had a magical destination wedding in Hawaii, and finally quit our jobs, traveled the world for 1 month (literally - 9 countries!) and settled in the Big Apple.
On my 30th birthday we decided it was time to work on expanding our family, and it took 4 months to get the thrilling double line on the pee stick, followed by 9 long weeks of intense morning sickness, ick. I'm currently sitting here at 39 weeks, already on maternity leave, with my wee little bun in the oven not quite ready to come out it seems, which gives me a nice period to relax, nest, and get this blog started! Hooray! Being American but having lived in Japan for 5 years and having married into a Japanese family, I have come to be quite familiar with the good, the bad, and the ugly of both the Japanese and American cultures. That said, it seems there is always a new shocker right around the corner in my household. "You think you'll get diarrhea if your stomach gets cold?" "A baby's name can bring them bad luck depending on the number of strokes in the kanji character, and the day/time/location of their birth??" "Your company actually thinks we'd be cool with you moving back to Japan, without your family, for a couple of years???" I mean, wow! But no matter the issue, it really is fascinating to delve into the reasoning and history behind it, which usually leads you to a better understanding. Now, whether or not you agree with the argument and the solution is a whole other story, but these are some of the fun things we'll be covering in this blog! But not just US-Japanese cultural issues, but also ones more generally applicable to any parents - such as whether or not to vaccinate, how to choose a pediatrician, shopping for baby on a budget, finding mommy support groups, etc! I hope you'll not just be a loyal reader, but also an active participant in the discussions! Please let me know if you have a topic you'd like to guest blog about, or one you'd like to see me post about. All opinions are welcome!! |
About ME:I'm a NYC metro area mom blogger living in NJ with my Japanese husband & our 3 kids (twins plus 1), focusing on fun and honest product and travel reviews, saving moms time finding the best for their families! Find what you need in the menu bar or search section above! Categories
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