if I may, do tell

I might right a journal entry later on it. They take a lot more time taking care of you compared to what I heard my friends back home go through. Just for a few starters, after giving birth, you are in the hospital for week to make sure you and the baby are doing well, and that your milk has came in properly. ( almost unheard of for someone not to breast feed out here... Plus maternity leave is usually a year instead of just a month or two...so mom don't have to jump back into going to work)
My water broke before contractions started, and it was 30 hours until I gave birth... They encouraged me to eat candy and sweets to help my contractions along, and were very admit that I eat proper good meals so I would have the strength to make it through labor. Exact opposite of normal American policies.
I was allowed to walk around the whole time until I was at 9 cm and needed to start pushing. Actually after my water broke I spent most of the days going up and down the 4 flight of stairs to try to get things moving! Lol
During the week long stay with my baby after birth, they gave me classes on how to bathe him... ( most of the time the nurses came in a did it for me so I could just rest! ) and unlike America,nyou are suppose to dip your baby in water up to the shoulders. Completely fine to get that umbilical cord wet, just clean it properly afterwards.
Ohh yeah... Interesting Japanese custom. You keep the umbilical cord after it falls off, and put it in a ceremonial box, which is to be given the their future wife or husband.
So that is just going to a normal hospital... Not one of the special maternity clinics, where you get a hotel like room, and get served lobster and/ or steak after giving birth....

I'm glad you shared this as it is different to Australia too but Australia is changing in many areas, walking is often encouraged now more and its a less sterile event, a lot of the birthing suites are homes away from home and you are encouraged to bring in music, your favourite pillows whatever in the really good places. You are lucky to get given ice to suck on once birth starts still though and you are out the hospital in three days or less.

What a beautiful tradition with the umbilical cord. I must admit though in Australia I did get lessons on the spot on how to bathe my daughter and I got breast feeding lessons too as well as being encouraged to drink stout to get my milk flowing. Unfortunately I couldn't breast feed due to illness, got the colostrum okay but then I ran dry, but these things happen. I had an emergency c section so I don't know much about a natural birth.

Besides all that congratulations on the successful birth of your son and this is a very, very beautiful image. *hugs*

* purring hugs back* thank you! I'm happy to share the experience, and I love hearing about other peoples experiences too. Please share if you wish!
It is good to hear about Australia changing. Hopefully America will follow suit. There is a bit of a midwife movement happening nowadays, but for the most part it is really strict. C-sections, when needed, is just a must, but America is up to 1/3 of all births being c-section. My god mother is a retired OBGYN nurse, and helped delivered a ton of babies in the states. She said the reason they only allow a little ice is incase they have to do a Caesarian. Not good going into to surgery with a full belly. So that would be your case too. I heard recovery is really tough!!
I went all natural, no pain killers what so ever.... You don't forget that pain. Woooow. The end, pushing the baby out as things are tearing... Feels actually good compared to dilating up to those 10 cm. ( got another bun in the oven ATM too lol..... OMG I gotta do it again =( 0.o)=
Oh btw checked out your daughters site, she has an amazing style! Talent runs rampant in your family!

I am blessed with a daughter who is indeed talented. Indeed she was a miracle, I was told that I would be unable to have children then proved them wrong but I didn't know I was pregnant until I was three months gone, then due to medical reasons I had to have an emergency c section, no prep time, no notice just this child is coming now. She was born at 33 1/2 weeks. Well she's 23 now and although she has medical issues of her own not related to being born early she is a talented artist and a wonderful lass. *hugs*

congrats on having another, children are a joy.

Interesting to know how giving birth goes around the world. Over here (Belgium), the situation seems to be roughly the same as in the US. Almost all births are in hospital in a very medical setting; our daughter was born at home because my wife didn't even feel like going down the stairs anymore, let alone the 2-hour drive to the hospital (we explicitly selected one of the best hospitals for giving birth, where we could also bring our own midwives, so we had midwives with us anyway. The hospital is an hour's drive away though and we would have had to leave right in rush hour traffic.)

A tip from our midwives for all kinds of (minor) infection risks, rashes etc.. : a couple of drops of mother's milk usually does wonders as a disinfectant. (Yes, it seemed strange to us too, the first time.)

Just a fairly unrelated question (but as you seem to be in Japan...) : do you know at what age Japanese start giving their kids raw fish? Our daughter *loves* sushi, but so far we've only been giving her sushi with cucumber because we're not really sure when the fish is a good idea.

As for sushi I think it is about 4 or 5 when they start letting them have raw fish, but most restaurants have the option of have the fish cooked, tataki ( with a mini blow torch...) tamagoyaki is great sushi for kids too! Cooked shrimp, cooked tuna fish, they also have teriyaki sushi, wiener/ mini hot dog sushi, corn makizushi, and egg plant :3 hopefully that will keep her satisfied till she can have the real stuff!
That is nice you can bring along your own midwife! But I bet that was the experience having a baby at home.
At the hospital I was at they had quiet a few midwives that worked there. Actually all the doctor did was stitch me up after the baby was born, the midwife is the one who helped with delivery ( and she was amazing!!)
If you don't mind me asking, did the home birth go over well?

Thank you! We'll try to see if sushi restaurants here also have cooked varieties available... We were mostly afraid of giving her raw fish too early because there isn't really much information about when that starts being okay. If anyone should know about that though, it's the Japanese :)

I hope your son will give you lots of pleasure. I know seeing our daughter learn new things every day is one of the most wonderful things I've ever experienced.

What we did is actually very nonstandard in Belgium (especially for a first baby), there are only a few hospitals that actually allow bringing your own midwife, most require that their own midwives take over as soon as you enter the hospital. The medical insurance is also not prepared for that; if the doctor even pokes in his (or her, in our case) head to check if everything is okay, all compensation for the delivery goes to the doctor and the midwife gets nothing -- we had already made sure that, should that have happened, we would have paid our midwives ourselves because they would have spent *much* more effort on it than the doctor.
Our midwives were actually fairly hands-off; the one that did the actual delivery (it was her first completely independent delivery, so the 'head' of their midwives' group was also there as a backup, as was an intern) actually spent most of the time just holding my wife's feet and I was squeezing my wife's legs to help her focus on something different. The best part was when the head midwife came in and just said to my wife, "Oh, I already see, you're a natural.". Eventually the progress stagnated a bit (afterwards it turned out that the umbilical cord was fairly short so everything slowed down by itself to allow it to stretch a bit and the womb to shrink a bit. In hospital they would never have allowed the time for that according to the midwives.)

The actual experience of the home birth was pretty much dwarfed by the changes of having a first baby (and her being 3 weeks early, so pretty unexpectedly. Fortunately we were already prepared for a home birth as a fallback.) All in all it was fairly quick (8 hours) and not really messy at all (at least not nearly as much as you'd expect from TV documentaries.) It was only after our daughter was born that the real problems started; first there were issues with our parents because they weren't involved enough, simultaneously we had problems with breastfeeding that took a couple of months to really get straight. After that things still went from bad to worse and eventually it turned out that my wife had gone into a post-partum depression that she only really recovered from about a year ago (after 9 months of therapy in a specialized psychiatric unit.)

I am glad your wife is doing better now. Postpartum depression is really tough, I only had it a a very short time and not sever. Plus not getting good help from the folks can be rough. I had my mother for the first month and a half with me.. So I was spoiled, but then she had to go back to America... And all on my own. My husband was working stupid crazy hours the first two years.
It sound like the birthing process went over really well. I am glad you had some good midwives helping you along. It is such a shame how much more the doctors get comparing.
How old is your daughter now?
Ohh one thing that is good to hold off on for awhile is salmon.. Especially raw, it is usually cooked or partially cooked out here because of the parasites.

Yes, when your help ends that's a pretty tough time when PPD can spring up. Usually PPD goes away on its own pretty soon, but in our case it was still getting worse after six months. The midwives really helped us very much, but at that time we decided we really needed specialized psychiatric help. My wife is doing okay now, but I had to give way too much in those two years (our daughter is now two years and a couple of months), so it's now my turn to be in therapy. Our parents actually wanted to help, but it would have cost us way more effort than it would have saved... we actually wanted to keep the birth of our daughter secret for a week or so, until *we* had got used to our new life, but unfortunately we couldn't because of practical reasons (family called while our daughter was being born, so we had to call back to explain why the midwife immediately hung up the phone and then call the rest of the family to make sure that nobody would feel left behind. After that, we stayed out of contact for a couple of days, and then absolutely everyone was angry with us for not immediately giving the information that they wanted, some of which we didn't even have ourselves!)

The birthing process went very well without any complications, not even tearing; the worst actually was that there was no real moment when it slowed down a bit (which was when we originally wanted to leave for the hospital), so it was 8 hours of continuous work for both of us. First contractions started around 5.30 AM (ah, nice, pre-contractions have started, so it'll probably be within two or three days), water broke 15 minutes later (uh oh, make that within 24 hours) and within four contractions they came every 2 minutes... our daughter was born around 1 PM, after which the midwives went to a different room to leave the three of us alone for an hour. Then they told me to take off my shirt and go and lie in bed with my daughter to keep her warm and give lots of skin contact while they cleaned up and helped my wife take a shower. It was only at 4 PM that I could finally let my work know that I wouldn't be coming in for the next couple of weeks. A disadvantage of home birth was that while the midwives return every day for the first week and you can call them anytime, it feels really alone when they're not there; that's something you wouldn't have in a hospital. On the other hand we could now wait for a couple of weeks before we needed to put our girl into a car seat and didn't immediately have to subject her to an hour-long drive when she was a few days old (hospital birth with your own midwives is at most a 48-hour stay instead of 5 days if the hospital arranges everything.)

I think the compensation here is the same, independent on who does the delivery. Hospital's midwives are salaried employees of the hospital, so they get paid the same however much the doctor had to do, which *is* much less than the doctor gets, they're effectively treated as support personnel even though they are also highly qualified medical professionals. Independent midwives are in an either/or situation: either they do the delivery and they get the compensation, or they have to call in a doctor for help and he or she gets full compensation and they only get paid for pre- and postnatal care (but that's separate from the delivery anyway and pays much less). There is no possibility for splitting the money: according to the medical insurance only a single person can do the delivery of a baby.

We do already give our daughter salmon, but only fully cooked (even when it's smoked, we cook or bake it anyway.)

Wow that sunset! And that baby! So cute!!! <3 I love seeing pictures like this. So serene and peaceful!

Also I read your comment above and that is totally different. Honestly something I wish I could experience one day...(Sadly won't ever be able to)

Thank you! My mom took the picture , so holds the extra bit of special for me.
I am really sorry to hear that you can't. It is a very deep experience, but raising the little guy has been a whole new world. * optimistic thinking here* but maybe another option can open up for you in the future :)

Well, unless science is allowed to progress in ways that...well otherwise break traditional methods. Giving birth, is most likely something I wouldn't be able to do. Although I am definitely up for adopting a baby and raising them as my own once I get settled in life.

Although as I stated above your picture is really touching and very lovely! Thank you for sharing >^,^<

Thank you again! Ya never know, science might figure it out!. I think any person who wants to experience it should be able to... I was lucky and got born with the right functioning parts for that, but really wish my hubby could experience it too ( though I think he's really happy just helping out and observing) but adoption is a wonderful thing !!