Our Baby Girl Has Arrived!

This article is also available in: 日本語

Hi,

This is Mizuki.

 

It has been 10 months since our last post. Now we have wonderful news to share with you.

We’d welcomed a baby girl, Emma, to our family in May!

 

Her kicking was very strong when she was in my belly.

Although she is only 1 month old, we find she is very powerful and energetic.

It’s tough to do breast-feeding every 3 hours but it was all worthy when I see her cute and smiley face.

We deeply love her and look forward to bringing her up.

 

During the pregnancy period, both I and our baby were fine.

 

However, the doctors were very concerned about how to deliver the baby. The doctors could not decide whether to perform either vaginal delivery or c-section because of my disability, which was caused by spinal cord damages.

 

Eventually, I had to hospitalize for 10 days before the due date and was advised to wait for a labor pain and try vaginal delivery first.

 

However, the baby didn’t come down enough even until the due date (maybe she just wanted to stay inside. haha.). Therefore, the doctor decided to do c-section finally.

 

C-section requires anesthesia, obviously. There are several types of anesthesia for c-section delivery. The doctor informed us that he may adopt either epidural analgesia* or general anesthesia, depending on how my body, specifically my spinal cord, reacts to the medication.

 

Epidural analgesia is more common for c-section labor delivery in Japan, but the doctor concerned as it requires to put anesthesia medication near my spinal cord, where my disability is related.

 

Since the exact cause to my disability is still unknown, the doctor wasn’t sure if epidural analgesia would work on my body.

 

On the other hand, I was explained that general anesthesia could bring more potential risks to our baby. (General anesthesia would put both me and the baby asleep, and a doctor needs to help the baby to breathe, after she leaves my womb, until she is awake and breathe by herself.)

 

The doctor kept discussing with other doctors from Anesthesiology and Pediatrics, and we all agreed that we try epidural analgesia first, and if it doesn’t work, the doctors would change general anesthesia.

 

I was worried how it goes, but thankfully local anesthesia worked well.

My delivery took about only 1 hour after I entered the surgery room.

 

 

 

On the delivery day, I needed to lay down on the bed with a lot of cords (monitor, drip etc.).

From the second day, the baby Emma came to my room and I started taking care of her.

 

Although the wound from c-section still hurt, I repeatedly held her, gave breastfeeding, changed her diaper when she cried.

 

While doing so, amazingly and surprisingly, the pain of the wound did not get worse but only got better and I gradually recovered and was able to move my body little by little.

 

Now 1 month has passed since the delivery.

I don’t feel any pain from the surgery and I can move my body like before my pregnancy.

 

Jeff and I have been enjoying a great time with Emma and working hard everyday to care for and love our baby girl. My mother also came to Tokyo to support this delivery.

 

Once we settle down after the busiest period with Emma, we’d like to share stories about maternity life and raising a child in wheelchair. Stay turned!

Notes:

1. The doctors explained to us the procedures and medication in Japanese. We did our best to translate the content to English but due to our limited English literacy the medical terms in the English translation may not always be correct.