Mia's Big Entrance (Part 3)

This may get a little long since I don't want to spread out this story over a million posts.


In the afternoon on April 15, I started to have contractions about every 20 minutes or so. The nurses told us to let them know when they started to come 10 minutes apart. Well Ten left the hospital around 8 pm, and almost as soon as he did....they started to come 10 minutes apart. I informed the nurses....and this is where I started to get irritated...and these nurses are lucky they are still breathing right now. Every time I had a contraction, they would place their hand on my stomach...and they would just say...hmm I don't think it is a contraction. 


I just smiled and said okay, but then they were coming every 5 minutes. I also started puking my brains out...as well as having to use the portable toilet about every 5 minutes....umm talk about the highlight of my life. The nurses just came in and said well it must be false labor. They told me to please stay in bed and everything should settle down. I knew they were wrong, and  the pain was getting much worse. The nurses continued to look confused, and I was starting to wonder if indeed this was a maternity hospital. I let Ten know the situation via What's App, and he told the nurses to call him immediately. In typical Japanese fashion, they said okay and avoided the situation. In the meantime, one nurse came in (who couldn't speak English) with a big binder of translated Japanese to English questions. Now, she could ask the questions (kind of) but couldn't understand the answers....so this was going absolutely nowhere. Also, the questions were so pointless...Example: On a scale of one to ten...what is your pain level? And they asked this question repeatedly. 


They also still refused to call Ten....so he was beyond angry...as it was clear that he was much needed for translation duties. 


Eventually around 1 am, they decided to call the doctor. The doctor told them to double my medicine. Well after an hour, this was having almost no effect. It had only slowed the contractions down to 10 minutes apart or so. So, they busted out the heavy duty stuff. I was on a new medicine and at 4 times the standard amount. My hands were shaking violently and heart was racing....but they assured me that it was a normal side effect and I would survive the night...hahaha. The nurses also said that the evening wouldn't be a good time to have a baby since they were short staffed (think about that before choosing Aiiku)....hahaha. 


The next morning I met with MY doctor. Finally...I was so happy to see her. She did an exam and said that it was not false labor last night and if they hadn't of increased my medicine, then I would have had the baby right then. She said that she wanted to take me off of the meds immediately and get the baby out since the situation could become dangerous to the both of us. She was especially worried about a serious infection or the cord putting pressure on Mia's neck. She said that I could wait for my husband to arrive to decide, but I told her to go ahead and stop it.


Ten arrived around 9:30 am or so, and at about 10:00 I had gone into labor....AGAIN...yes, fun times really. I had not slept for almost 3 days at this point. I was also told by my doctor that I would be hooked to monitors during the entire delivery and would not be able to move through any of my contractions....so it was bound to be highly painful and uncomfortable. Everyone agreed that an epidural would be my best bet (epidurals are extremely uncommon in Japan, so it was a bit surprising that everyone was on board with this).


So, I got the epidural at 1:00. I was finally able to sleep for a little bit, and Ten and I listed to some Kesha and Lil Wayne....yeah the doctors and nurses probably thought we were nuts. We were also dancing....well Ten was...and I was just doing motions with my hands....Ten also started to complain that labor was kind of boring at this point....no more drama  now that the baby was on her way....haha. I was happy with boring though.


Finally, a new doctor came in. This was the doctor who would deliver the baby. Our hospital is a maternity hospital, so they work in shifts. My doctor was doing check ups that day but not delivering babies. We were okay with that, but this new doctor was terrible. She came in and didn't speak to us or even tell us her name. She just walked right in and proceeded to see how far along I was. I was pretty unhappy and so was Ten. She also talked about how they wouldn't give me any more pain meds because a natural childbirth would be safer. Now, this was the exact opposite of what my doctor had suggested...and let's just say that this did not go over well with Ten.


Ladies and gents this is where it got a bit dramatic again, he kicked the doctor out of the delivery room. He yelled at her...something about if she was making a cultural decision and not a medical one...then he didn't care and he wanted them to keep the pain meds flowing freely. Blah, blah, blah and a lot more angry Japanese and she left the room. Yet, this wasn't good enough...he was also sick of the incompetent nurses (yes, they were quite terrible to be honest)...and proceeded to kick all of the nurses out as well....This just left me and Ten...and I was wondering which one of us was going to have to catch the baby at this point.


Eventually, they decided to send in only the head nurse as well as our doctor (Dr. Kawana). Dr. Kawana was amazing, and we delivered Mia at 5:16 on April 16. She started crying immediately and weighed in at 4.9 pounds.


We didn't get to hold her though. The NICU team immediately rushed her away to do a 3 hour evaluation where she got her feeding tube inserted, checked her brain for bleeding, etc. After 3 hours, Ten was able to go to the NICU. I on the other hand was told that I had to lay in bed for 8 hours and could see Mia the next day. This didn't fly well with me, so I pretended not to understand and snuck out and went to the NICU as well. The nurses caught me after a few hours and tried to make me get in a wheel chair to go back to my room. I began to speak to Ten quickly in English in order to intimidate them into leaving me alone and letting me at least walk back to my room. I kind of feel guilty about that, but I mean....I had a baby...I didn't go through war. I felt fine.


As a side note...women in Japan are kind of pitiful after having a baby. They walk around the halls like they can barely move and stay in the hospital for 5 days. The nurses were shocked that I was walking normally the next day and asked to be discharged. Being discharged early caused a long argument....but eventually I was free of the hospital after a mere 8 days. 


The next post I will do...to end this giant recap...will be brief...some photos of Mia's time in the NICU and GCU.

Mia's Big Entrance (Part 2)

The first three days in the M/FICU were pretty uneventful but extremely stressful. I was on strict bed rest and couldn't even get up to take a shower or go to the bathroom. Instead they brought this little portable toilet next to my bed and I had to ring the nurses when it needed cleaning. Yeah...not my idea of a good time.


I had daily doctor check ups and was told that I was very lucky that the baby was already head down or I would have had to have a C-section immediately. She still had enough fluid to stay in longer, but I was monitored daily for contractions, her growth, fluid levels, etc. My image of bed rest and the reality were much different. I got to do very little resting really with all of the tests going on. 


We also had meetings with the head doctor of the NICU as well as the head nurse. The doctor was extremely pessimistic giving us all kinds of worse case scenarios and explaining how the baby would most likely be looking at a lengthy NICU stay....until her due date...so six weeks. As a doctor, maybe he had to say these things...but it did extremely little to ease our anxiety. He also told us that indeed 34 weeks is an arbitrary number and maybe Mia's lungs wouldn't be as developed as we would like. After that, we met with the head nurse of the NICU. This lady was like an angel...She explained that babies at this stage had few problems and could even go home around 36 weeks. She also brought in a big photo album with success stories of babies who were born at much earlier stages than ours. A complete 180 from the doctor. Nevertheless, we were both extremely stressed and not at all sure how things would play out when the time came. 


We also got to meet with doctors talking about risk of C-section, blood transfusions, infections, etc. The anesthesiologist also came in and talked about what indeed would happen if an emergency C-section was necessary, and she talked about pain medications available during labor. 


Overall, we were extremely busy for the first 3 or 4 days trying to get everything figured out. Ten and I were hoping at this point that I may be able to even last longer than the 34 week mark since I wasn't having any signs of going into labor. We were becoming a bit more optimistic about our chances and hoping a mind over matter approach would work for us. On April 16, I would be 34 weeks and we were going to meet with our doctor to decide what course of action we would take regarding the medicine that I was on to stop labor. However, on the afternoon of April 15, our decision was slowly but surely being made for us.


Note to anyone looking for an English speaking hospital to have a baby at in Japan: All of the information was presented to us in both English and in Japanese. The staff did their absolute best to communicate everything in both languages up to this point. However, there were several times when the conversation switched to pure Japanese since Ten is a Japanese speaker and the nurses assumed that my Japanese was good enough to at least follow the main points of the conversation. However, I am confident that Aiiku Hospital will do their absolute best to communicate everything in English if you have no understanding of Japanese and are not with a Japanese speaker....however, there are some major drawbacks to this hospital....which I will talk about in later posts.

Mia's Big Entrance (Part 1)

On April 11, Ten and I finally made our way over to the hospital to do a tour of the Labor and Delivery ward. We figured that it was about time to do it. We made our way over to the hospital (Aiiku Byoin) and joined the tour. 

We saw the delivery rooms, the rooms that you stay in, etc. Pretty boring overall, and they even showed us a special room. The room was right next to the nurses station and was for those with complications and immediate high risk deliveries/pregnancies. We kind of glanced at it and both made the comment that we probably wouldn't need it so no point really paying attention....bahahaha. Fast forward about  6 hours later.

Yes ladies and gentlemen...there are my legs....sitting in the Maternal/Fetal Intensive Care Unit.

When we got back from the hospital...we continued our day as normal...and then around 9 pm or so....I decided to go to bed. After about half an hour or so I got up to use the bathroom....and my water broke. I would say that we weren't panicked really...I told Ten that he should probably call the hospital and ask what we should do. Ten called them up and said that I was 33 weeks pregnant and that we had thought that my water had broke. Their reply was something along the lines about how that was too early...but to come in for a check up anyway and try not to move around too much. I told Ten that maybe I had just peed myself and was to ignorant to realize it....hahaha...or at least I hoped that was what happened.

We hopped into a taxi and made our way over to the hospital. I was diagnosed with PPROM (which only happens in less than 3% of pregnancies) and told that I would be hospitalized (in that special room) and on bed rest until the baby came. They pumped me full of meds that would stop contractions and said that we were going to try to at least make it to 34 weeks. However, the important thing was to make it a day longer...each day I didn't have the baby was a milestone. 

Ten headed back home for the night, and we began our 5 day journey in the Maternal/Fetal Intensive Care Unit.