Alien Baby

ALIEN BABY
by Nigel Stott (Fukuoka-ken, 1994-97)

(Winter 2006 Issue)

Hi, my name’s Nigel and I was an ALT in Fukuoka from 1994 to 1997. I currently work as an associate professor at Fukuoka Prefectural University. My wife (who is Japanese) and I are planning to stay in Japan permanently. This article was originally written ten years agowhen our first child was born, but I hope that it might still be interesting to readers of the JETAA New York Newsletter.

After the birth of our daughter, one of my congratulations cards contained this little rhyme:

“The good ‘ol days of sleepless nights
without a baby, meant pure delight!!
But Aya’s ‘ere and tho’ she has her charms
you now have two girls in your arms!”

Yes, it’s true. There have been many sleepless nights since January 10th when Aya-chan was born. I don’t really mind, though, because she’s worth it. Do you know the Japanese word “oyabaka“? Literally it means “stupid parents” but it really means doting parents who talk about nothing except for their own offspring. My wife (Shinobu) and I now definitely fall into that category. And so, without hesitating to apologize, I will inflict the story of Aya’s birth upon you…

The private clinic we chose is, to use their own word, a “heartful” place. It has brochures and cards stating “with all your heart” and a notice board filled with baby photos under the message “Hellow Baby.” We live nearer to the big public hospital but, apparently, they discourage fathers from attending births and I really wanted to be there. Also, the private clinic came highly recommended by a former ALT and friend. I think that she recommends it to rather a lot of people as the place is always packed and waiting times are lonngggg. However, the atmosphere is relatively relaxed and the nurses there are out of this world (don’t get excited, I mean”heartful”)!

Aya was due on January 1st, which is a very lucky birth date in Japan. Everyone who heard went crazy with their congratulations. They said stuff like “amazing,” “you did very well,” and “what incredible luck, she’s sure to become rich.” Inevitably she came late. Ten days late and ten days bigger than Shinobu had hoped. At nine pounds I guess she wasn’t huge by Western standards, but she was one-and-a-half times the size of the average Japanese baby. That made for quite a funny scene in the new baby room – about 20 cute little babies all lined up in one long open cot (not separated) with one giant in the middle, looking like she would crush the others if she rolled over! We could see the looks of horror on the other parents’ faces as they tried to hint to the nurses that their babies might not be safe lying in Aya’s swollen shadow. Still, at least we didn’t need to read the labels to know which was ours. We saw one couple gazing at their baby lovingly through the window, only to be rudely informed by a nurse rapping on the window and pointing, that this was not in fact their own child. Red-faced, they shuffled along the side of the cot, looked carefully at the labels and found the right one.

Anyway, back to the time before Aya’s birth… There were four Lamaze (it’s a breathing technique) classes and one parents’ class for us to attend during the pregnancy. We all sat on mats in the clinic’s dance studio and did stretching, relaxation and meditation exercises. The stretching I could follow, but the meditation tape contained nothing but some rather irritating music and a man saying the names of various body parts (good Japanese lesson for me), following each utterance with “ga atatakai” (is warm). Not something that I could meditate to, although everyone else seemed OK. There were 18 women in the group and only four male partners. I was one of a proud minority. The three other fathers-to-be joined in most of the exercises but only one male did the most embarrassing kneeling on hands and knees, pelvic thrusting type exercises (can you guess who?)!

Then there were the Lamaze breathing exercises. Japanese breathing consists of breathing out to the sound of “hi” (small breath) and “fuuu” (large breath). Combinations of these “hi-hi-fuuu” or “hi-fuuu-hi-fuuu” are pretty difficult to do with a straight face, I can tell you. In the final Lamaze class, a rather ominous-looking computer with four sets of wires and chest straps was leering at us from the front of the room. “We’re going to give you a test” – shock waves around the room. Looking at Shinobu with a little grin and a whispered “well, it is Japan,” I started to move to one side. “Oh no, don’t try to escape, honorable husbands also included!” Foolishly, we’d sat up at the front. Shinobu, two other women, and I all had our chest straps and wires attached and then the computer showed us what we had to do – match our breathing speed and depth to the graph on the screen. When we breathed, our progress was shown by a colored line superimposed on the ideal graph. From what I could see, one of the mothers was dying, her breathing looking more like a fly buzzing randomly around the screen. After ten minutes of this torture, the computer told her she should “ganbarimasho” (let’s try harder), Shinobu got “yoku dekimashita” (well done) and I got “taihen yoku dekimashita” (very well done). I felt a warm glow of self-satisfaction and pride as the nurse told me that I should have the baby myself as my breathing technique was perfect. For a moment I thought I’d achieved something… then I realized that I hadn’t!

In the half-day parents’ lesson we had one session with no apparent purpose. We were expecting a lesson on baby care or something. I was surprised that, this time, all of the husbands were present. Each couple sat on their mat on the floor. The nurse had all the pregnancy medical record books in front of her. She picked the first one up, called out the name and then (shock) asked the husband to introduce his wife, tell us the baby’s due date, and give his wife’s current weight. He faltered on the last point and received a look of disapproval from over the nurse’s glasses. There was a lot of frantic whispering around the room as husbands got the relevant information from their wives. However, the nurse was far too clever for us and she asked a different third question each time. I was the fourth to be called. When I said that our baby’s due date was January 1st, there was a gasp of astonishment (envy?) from the other couples and the nurse gave the inevitable “omedetou gozaimasu” (congratulations). She then asked me what medical problem my wife was currently experiencing. How could I explain low hemoglobin levels in Japanese? A look of confusion clouded my face and the nurse gave Shinobu a sympathetic oh-what-an-uncaring-husband look, before explaining “chi ga usui, desu ne” (thin blood). I was irritated at her patronizing manner but, at the same time, I also thought this was a big internationalization breakthrough – I was being asked about my Japanese wife, in her presence, in Japanese, with absolutely no acknowledgment of my gaijinity! That’s a first! Now, obviously, the purpose of this session was to make the fathers take a greater interest in the pregnancy (even if it was just to prevent being caught out by questions in the future). However, although this was our last lesson in the series, for the other couples it was their first before the Lamaze training. Suddenly it dawned on me why so few husbands had made it to the other sessions – fear of further humiliation.

January 1st came and went. No sign of a baby. A week later, Shinobu felt contractions and, just as we’d been instructed, she waited until they were at ten-minute intervals before calling the clinic. She was expecting them to say that they’d have a bed ready and waiting for her arrival but, instead, the nurse simply said “you’re not having real contractions because, if you were, you wouldn’t be able to talk to me right now!” Shinobu was taken aback, “you mean it gets worse than this?!!”

The next day the “real” contractions started. Shinobu couldn’t talk through this pain. They admitted her to the hospital at 9:30 pm and, from that moment on, I became her masseur – targeting that spot in the small of her back where she felt like her pelvis was being pulled apart (which of course it was!). At 1:00 am I was finally persuaded to return home for a few hours’ sleep (holding onto the telephone like a teddy bear) and then rushed back to the clinic at first light. Contractions galore but still no baby. All day long! Finally, 24 hours after admission, they took us into the delivery room. What an amazing room! With its wall-long fish tank and tiny electric multi-colored ceiling stars (instead of normal lights), peace and serenity were almost guaranteed. Or so you’d think. I guess it probably was a more calming atmosphere than in an operating room but, at times, I felt like we were in a submarine in an emergency. You know, in the movies, when they switch off the lights and there’s that red twilight glow with the silence punctuated by the ping-pings vibrating through the vessel’s hull. Very unnerving! But at least the torpedo didn’t hit us… Well, Shinobu doesn’t quite agree with that last statement. She said that’s exactly what it felt like!

Nine long hours in the delivery room. After a 48-hour labor and just at the point Shinobu and I had agreed that she should be taken outside and shot to put her out of her misery, the baby arrived. When it was held up in all its purple, blue, gray, blood- and gore-covered glory, an exhausted Shinobu gasped “watshi no alien-chan” (my alien baby).

All through the latter half of the pregnancy, everyone had asked us “is it a girl or a boy?” Much to the puzzlement of all, we replied “don’t know and don’t want to know.” The worried response: “But how will you know what color clothes to buy?” “Duhh! Big problem!” In fact, preventing the doctor from telling us the baby’s sex was a feat in itself. He kept trying at every clinic visit. “No thank you, we want it to be a surprise.” You see, we had this romantic image (from movies and TV dramas) of the moment of birth and the midwife or doctor holding the baby aloft with the words “Congratulations, it’s a boy” or “You’ve got a beautiful baby girl!” The kicking bump suddenly becomes a little boy or girl and the parents cry with joy. In our case, however, the nurses and doctor had forgotten that we didn’t know, the doctor’s hand had obscured the important bits, and we hadn’t noticed. I was so relieved that Shinobu had survived the ordeal that thoughts of the baby’s gender hadn’t even crossed my mind. The nurses took the baby away for checking and cleaning and I held Shinobu’s hand and gazed at her tired but happy face. Suddenly, she looked at me and said “Is it a boy or girl?” “Oh, I don’t know.” “What do you mean, you don’t know, you cut the umbilical cord, didn’t you?” “Well, yes, but I was focusing on making a clean snip, I didn’t look down there!” We had to call the nurse over to tell us. Laughing, she said “Didn’t you know? It’s a girl!” and so the little alien became Aya-chan.

Aya was handed to me and, amazingly, she had her eyes open and was staring straight at me. I don’t suppose she saw much beyond a shadow of a man (which is an apt description of my state at that time!) but it was incredible to be looking into the eyes of the child we had made. Our daughter. Definitely one of those weak-at-the-knees moments.