False Alarm: Where is the Baby?

Sorry for getting everyone all worried/excited last night. It looks like Suzuna won't be putting in an appearance quite yet, after all.

Yesterday I started getting what I thought were contractions (and obviously turned out to be "false labor") around 10:30 in the morning. They were coming at about an hour to an hour and a half apart, so I threw myself into cleaning the house to make the time go faster. Well, the house got nice and clean, but the contractions didn't get any closer together and once disappeared for 3 hours. Then suddenly at 9:30 they started up again with a vengeance, coming every 10 or 15 minutes, so when Shoichi got off work at 10:45 we went to the hospital.

As my sister can attest, I was freaking out and afraid I was going to have the baby in the back seat of the car. She stayed on the phone with me the whole time for moral support. (Thanks Kate! You are awesome!) Then I got settled into the hospital and Shoichi took Rin and Rosie to his parents house, at which point the contractions promptly stopped. I was a little worried to go home and have them start up again and have to do the nail-biting ride to hospital again, so I consulted with the midwives and decided to stay overnight.

I had one or two weak contractions, but mostly I just got my nerves worked up waiting and listening to the women in the next bed who was really laboring in earnest. Then the doc came around at about 8:00 in the morning and checked my dilation etc. and said there was no change from when I came in, so I should go home and wait some more.

And here we are. We'll just have to wait and see what happens, but at the moment it looks like it's going to be a while. Ay yi yi!

PS- the picture has nothing to do with this post, but it was the cutest one that came up in GIS for "Where's the Baby?"

One Small Change

We've been discussing the name a little more and checking it out from all angles and we decided to tweak it just a little bit. There's something in Japan called 姓名判断 (seimei handan) which is a kind of numerology based on the number of strokes in the kanji for the name, and the balance between the different characters. Apparently Suzune is badly balanced and therefore "unlucky", so we looked for another similar name with a luckier number of strokes. (NB I don't believe this stuff, but when in Rome...). We'd already been calling her Suzu-chan for quite some time, so we stuck with that, but we changed the 音 (ne-sound) to 奈 (na-a kind of tree).
So at 36 weeks and counting the new official name is Suzuna (鈴奈) bell-tree.

It's a Girl!

We got 100% confirmation a few weeks ago. The next baby Kanou is going to be a girl and her name will be Suzune Catherine Kanou. Yeeha!

Finally

We finally got a clear picture of Baby #2's face. And Dr. Ida says it might be a girl, but it's still not definite yet.

It's Official!

Baby Kanou #2 is on the way with a tentative due date in late September!


And how's this for coincidence? Before our Monday appointment with Dr. Ida, we ran into Akane (the girl who had her baby Rui a few hours before Rin and who I shared a room with) at the hospital, also waiting for Dr. Ida and her due date is about a week before mine! Who knows, if one is late and the other early we may end up as maternity ward roomies again! Freaky!

Christmas Cookies!!!

My favorite part of Christmas, ever since I can remember, has always been decorating Christmas cookies. Unfortunately here in my house Japan we don't have an oven, so I can't actually make any of the wonderful Christmas shaped cookies from my childhood, but my wonderful mother was kind enough to send me a big ol' box of powdered sugar, so at least I was able to make the buttercream frosting! This year I made up a big batch and had a Christmas cookie making party for my students. It was a big success and here are some of the finished cookies. Enjoy! (Also a little thank you to Justin who gave me some motivation to start posting again!)

Wild Kingdom Sanda: Part 4

Here is a little gecko I found crawling around in the classroom. I believe it's another Schlegel's Japanese Gecko. Cute little thing, ain't it?