Almost baby time!

Well, since my wife Ryoko is well into her 10th month of pregnancy, and the baby itself if due on Monday, we’re starting to get a little hectic. She hasn’t had any strong contractions yet, but since they could come at any time we need to be ready. Since neither of us have gone through this before we’re more than a little nervous that everything will turn out alright.

The reality of me becoming a father in only a few days makes a man do some serious thinking, that will only be surpassed by my emotional state AFTER the baby is born. Even though I have another 5 years of grad school coming up, I can’t pretend to be an irresponsible teenager anymore. (Not that I could anyway, I’m already 27 and my hair is starting to go thin in a few places.) I have this WIFE and BABY whom I have the sole responsibility for thier ability to live in a home and intake a certain number of calories every day. (Well, my responsibilities are more detailed than that, but those are the fundamentals.)

We had to go to the hospital on Monday evening because the baby wasn’t moving around very much, one of the 4 big reasons that you need to go to the hospital ASAP for. (1. Bright red bleeding from the vagina 2. Her water breaks 3. Contractions strong enough that you can’t talk through them 4. The baby hasn’t moved at least 6 times in an hour, even after drinking some juice and laying down) so they hooked her up to the baby monitor machine, gave her a big cup of really sweet cranberry juice, and had us wait for half an hour. Fortunately the baby was just fine, maybe just a little sleepy that day. While filling out paper work, etc., the nurse put me down for Ryoko’s ‘support person’ (i.e. husband I assume, but they have to use a PC term) and for her interpreter. I was surprised by my ability to translate everything the nurse said (even wierd ones like toxema of pregnancy – 妊娠中毒, labor pains – 陣痛, urinary tract infection – 膀胱炎, and caesarian – 帝王切開), I guess I’ve learned a lot of vocabulary in the last 10 months that you just don’t get from a textbook or a class. And after our daughter is born, I assume I’ll get to learn a whole lot more.