The Bean has sprouted!
On February 11th at 5:21 pm, after 18 hours of labour, Shin and I welcomed our son Kio Aaron Hirano / 平野 希於 アーロン into the world. 3530 grams and 52 centimeters of beautiful!
Of course I am rather biased.
3 hours old
Every birth has its story and Kio's started with a hair cut...
I mentioned in my last post that there were a three things that we needed to sort out before the Bean made his grand entrance (we didn't end up doing any of them). In fact, there were four. The final one was to get my hair cut.
I made an appointment for the afternoon of February 10th, a week before the Bean's due date, thinking that there wasn't much chance I was going to give birth early. I'd read somewhere that labour patterns are passed down through the family - if your grandmother's children arrived early then it was likely that it would be the same for her daughters and so on.
My sister and I were both late, and all of my sister's children arrived after their due dates. So I figured that our baby would also be late.
That bit about labour patterns is all lies.
On with the story.
I got my hair cut and was feeling rather frisky afterwards so I decided to walk from the hairdresser's into Umeda and treat myself to some lunch. I poked along, wandering in and out of shops and an hour later was seated in a cafe enjoying my lunch.
Wish I'd saved my energy.
After lunch I did some grocery shopping and headed home. I was feeling pretty exhausted after my long day out (being nine months pregnant and all) and had a long nap once I got in.
The evening was pretty normal. I made dinner, chatted on Skype with a friend in England and watched some TV. Shin had been out for the afternoon working on his bike and came home to grab a quick shower before heading to work. It was then that I started to feel 'strange'. I shared this feeling with Shin but as I wasn't in any pain we decided that he should head to work.
He was home again two and a half hours later.
At around 10:30 I started having contractions. From what I've read and experienced as an official contraction time keeper for my sister's first two babies, is that contractions start far apart and get closer together as they increase in intensity. Mine started at three to five minutes apart.
And stayed that way for the next eighteen hours.
At around 1:30 I decided that I was in labour and that we should head to the hospital before things got going too far - after all, nobody wants to have their water break in a taxi. Not to worry, mine didn't.
We grabbed our bags (which I had packed while waiting for Shin to come home), emailed my family in Canada and were off!
We were home again an hour later.
The midwife on duty checked me out and informed us that I wasn't really in labour, that my contractions would stop, that I wouldn't give birth for another couple of days AND that I would be in much more pain if I was really in labour.
She was right about the last part!
So home we went. Emails were sent to my family and we tried to go to bed. The midwife had also told me that I should try to do things as I normally would - clean the house, make breakfast etc. She said that staying in bed wouldn't help my labour to progress.
In fact, that wouldn't be a problem.
As Shin slept my contractions stayed three to fine minutes apart and got continually stronger. By about 8:00am I was pretty sure that the midwife had been mistaken and I would in fact be giving birth that day.
I held out at home until 11:30 and then we called a taxi - the same driver we'd had before! This time things weren't so calm in the taxi. I was in a lot of pain and not doing a very good job of hiding it.
And man, did that taxi driver drive.
This time we weren't sent home. I was five centimeters dilated and definitely in labour.
The rest of the afternoon is somewhat of a blur. My lovely English speaking midwife was on duty and she and Shin put up with my incoherent ramblings peppered with the occasional expletive.
At 2:30pm I was told that I could start pushing and that I would be able to meet my baby by about 5:00 - to which I replied "two and a half hours! I can't do it."
But I did.
And our wonderful baby boy was born.
Amazing.
1 hour old
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