Our new future begins Sept. 6th, 2005

In four days, I'm gonna be a Dad... holy crap!!! We'll be meeting Nico Raquel (if she's a girl) McKible. I can be so sure about the date because Miyuki's getting a C-section. We decided to go this route because Nico-chan seems to be taking after her parents already... she's stubborn. As you can see in the x-ray above she's not turning; she's found a good spot and isn't going anywhere. A little over a week ago, we went in for a baby turning and nada, nothing, no dice, she's stayed in the breech position. Frankly I'm a little relieved about the C-section, for both Miyuki and the baby. Going into labor with a breech baby didn't seem like a pleasant prospect for anyone involved. A C-section just seems the safer thing to do. Also, nowdays, here in Japan they perform Cesarean's with a laser scapel... cool! It really appeals to the geek in me as well as the concerned lover (smaller, cleaner scar).

The (attempted) baby turning was pretty interesting. At the hospital, in the delivery ward, we were in the active labor area, which is a room where a you can move around and such during labor. It was a curtained off platform with tatami matting on the floor and a big thick rope hanging from the ceiling.... Pretty straightfoward; y'know, allot of room to move around and a sturdy rope to grab onto when the going gets rough and you need a little help squatting. Actually, before we knew Nico was breech Miyuki was planning on going all-natural. We had a mid-wife picked out and were all set.

The baby turning itself was a pretty direct affair as well. After giving Miyuki a shot to relax her abdominal muscles our doctor came in and kneeling down beside her, put one hand near where the baby's feet were and the other near the head and basically just tried to turn the baby. It seemed pretty clear after the first few minutes though that Nico wasn't having any of it. The doctor had a pretty good grip on her too. All I could do was hold Miyuki's hand as she went through it. It didn't seem very pleasant.

There was one interesting/amusing detail about the thing though... 2 nursing students from a nearby college were in the room us, basically just to observe and help out. The head nurse had fitted Miyuki out with a fetal heart rate monitor so she could check for any undue stress on the baby during the turning procedure. The two students were kneeling to one side of Miyuki in the seiza position (knees tucked under the body, back straight) with the tiny little fetal heart rate monitor on the floor between them, occasionaly straightening out a paper tape that issued from the machine. The curtained off room was fairly hot so the head nurse asked one of the students to find a hand fan to keep Miyuki cool. But the only fan she could find was an enormous uchiwa (a non folding kind of paper fan) that was a bit of promotional marketing for a jpop group called the Kinki Kids (don't EVEN ask me about the name... I've got no idea). It must have been almost a foot in diameter and had plastered on it a gigantic image of the dude on the right (below).



It was just the most surreal scene... Miyuki flat on her back, hooked up to a tiny, noisy machine being attended to by one of two kneeling nursing students who's waving the disembodied head of a well-coiffed jpop star back and forth on an enormous paper fan. Add the doctor with an iron grip on my wife's belly and all of it set within a tatami matt room with a thick, stout birthing rope hanging directly above. Just. a. little. odd.

yeah.

But come this Tuesday and we'll finally get to meet the little monkey whose been kicking around inside Miyuki's belly for the last 9 months. I'm scared and anxious and terribly excited.

Watch this space for pics, etc. next week.

Wish us luck.