Pregnant
in Japan - weeks 23 - 25
There is an adorable
day care just down the block from our house that I've always assumed we'd send
out little baby to. I get two months off work after the baby is born and
then we have winter vacation before I need to go back to work, so we need someone
to take care of little 10 week old T-Rex from Mid January till the end of
February, when Jon and I complete our contracts. Depending on what we do
for jobs next year, we could either move and have to start work in April,
giving us a month off of work, or stay in Kitakyushu and find other work that
starts in April, or keep our current contracts which would have us start
working again in June. So we’ll have between one and three months off to
spend with our little dinosaur before I decide I can’t go back to work because
leaving him/her with someone else was too traumatizing for me or before we, you
know, go back to work.
However, when we
stopped in the day care to talk about their services, they told us that they
won't accept babies till they are six months old. Hmmm... The next day we
went down to the city office to figure this day care thing out.
I figured they would
give us a list of day cares that accepted young babies and we'd call and visit
them to find out about availability and then get on the waiting lists.
Day cares are both
public and private, but both (I believe) are subsidized by the government.
Going to the city office should have been our first step anyhow, as we
need to get on the official waiting list of the day cares we want to join and
then wait till one accepts us. Apparently there is a high demand and
limited supply, so, going 7 months before we would even need one is actually
not jumping the gun at all.
We arrived at the city
office and started talking with the lady who signs people up for the day cares,
called Hoikuens for babies and Kindergartens for ages 2 through 5. (Can I
say one more time that I am so glad my husband can speak Japanese like nobody's
business? He did all the speaking and I wrote my name down and tried to
follow. Usually just when I thought I understood, "Ahh! She's
saying that they won't take kids over 4 or 5 years old!" Jon would
ask me, "Do you understand? They won't take more than 4 or 5 kids
total.")
We told the lady we
wanted someone to take our baby and she pulled out a list of Hoikuens in our
area and started outlining the rules for signing up. So, if baby is born
around Oct. 25th, then the baby can be accepted on Feb 1st...wait, wait, wait.
Jon explained that we both needed to be back to work by Jan. 15th.
She explained that they won't accept babies under three months old.
Jon explained that I only got 8 weeks of maternity leave and then we would
use up all our vacations days to get two more weeks of winter break, but after
that I had to go back to work (Jan. 15th).
The three of us sat in
silence and stared at each other for a while.
Jon started explaining
again about the maternity leave and how I had to go back and complete my
contract till Feb 28th....and then we didn't need the hoikuen any more.
Ahh! The lady’s face lit up! Success! She pulled out a secret
list of "Hoikuen Mammas," ladies who accept babies as young as 48
days old. I don't know why she was holding out on us, but as she only
pulled it out when Jon mentioned that we only needed one for 6 weeks, it must
have been related. There is only one in our nearby area, though there
were about 18 listed on the sheet, some as close as a 30 minute bus ride away,
others hours away. We started looking through the complicated map system
and trying to find out if these Hoikuens were near our home or at least our
jobs, which would make drop-off and pick-up easier. I won't go into
detail about how complicated and different the Japanese address system is,
suffice to say for now that it is nearly impossible to figure out without just
typing the address in Google maps and following the arrow to the
location. Then the lady stepped away to make some phone calls.
She came back a while later with a big smile! Success! The
Hoikuen closest to our house was full, but the one that was close to Jon's
school had one opening! I saw that she had crossed out about 10 other Hoikuens
on the list. Had she called them all and they were full? Were they
too far away and that's why she crossed them off? I don't know. I
didn’t care, we were in!
So, she helped us fill
out a few forms to officially get on the waiting list at this Hoikuen, and she
even wrote the time we applied on the form. These things fill up so fast
that us filling out the form at 4:00 rather than 6:30 might mean the difference
between getting in or not. Then she gave us a list of forms and things to
do after T-Rex arrives, but before we can be accepted to the Hoikuen.
This is what we've got
to do after T-Rex is born, but before we leave on Dec 20th to visit America
till Jan 13th.
Get the baby a
Japanese ID card.
Register the baby on
National Insurance.
Register the birth and
birth certificate at the City Office.
Have a one month
check-up
Visit the day care
with the baby to introduce ourselves to the Hoikuen Mamma.
Get a copy of our
taxes and salary from our company to bring to the City Office (This will
determine how much we pay for the Hoikuen. It can range from $250 to $350
US per month. That sounds like a steal to me, but I don't know how much
day care is in the states.)
During this busy time
we've also got to...
Get the baby a
passport.
Get the baby a social
security number.
Get an English version
of the Birth Certificate (must be notarized by a registered bilingual notary).
Register the birth
with the American Embassy
It appears that every
single one of these documents will be a nightmare of filling out dozens of
forms, paying bills for forms or notarization, and/or traveling 2 hours on the
bus to the nearby city, where the American Embassy is located. I'm
already stressing out about it! But, I need to remember that I will have
7 weeks of no work to get all these things done, so between Jon and me, I'm
sure it's possible. It has to be.
We also went in for another check-up at the hospital this
past Saturday. (T-Rex
is doing great, and weighs ~650 grams.) After
we finished, I asked about where I’ll actually have the baby and so we took a
tour of the maternity ward. I can see now why people would
spring for the Lady's Clinics. The hospital rooms where you stay with
your baby are pretty standard hospital fare—white, empty, clinical.
I thought they might spruce the rooms up a little bit on the maternity
floor, but they are as depressing and empty as in any other section.
I don't regret our
plan to go the hospital route so that I can have the option of an epidural and for
us to save about $1,000 or more, but I'm glad that we took a tour so I can
prepare myself. For example, I've always heard that you don't want to go
to the hospital as soon as contractions start, because your own home is more
comfortable for the first several hours. I can see that's true now and
I'll be staying home much more comfortably than I might otherwise have. After
the baby arrives, Jon can't stay the night, he has to go home at 9:00 PM.
That's fine, I'm sure I'll want to go to sleep early since I'll be waking
up every few hours to feed T-Rex. The rooms are empty and bleak, so I'll
add framed photos, knickknacks, and other decorations to the hospital bag to
make it homier. The nursery is the only place with baby beds, so mother
and baby can’t sleep in the same room. I
was disappointed about that, but I'll keep the baby with me while I'm
awake and let him/her sleep in the nursery and enjoy that the nurses will
change those first few days of dirty diapers. They say most women stay
for 5 days, sometimes 4, so I hope that everything goes well and I can leave
ASAP.
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