Nothing good lasts long … does it? Nothing good in this life, anyway. Here’s my baby with her Valentine’s Day frog and candy.

My calm, sweet-tempered, cheerful, super-active baby got her shots today, FOUR shots, two on each thigh, and underwent a personality change. She’s feverish, scared, screaming, and needy and her arms and legs are limp. I want to cry.

Meanwhile, here are her stats from the pediatrician’s office this morning. She’s gained over an ounce a day for the last two weeks. I’m glad that all that nursing is doing something.

• head circumference: 38.3 cm (50th percentile)
• height: 22.25 inches (50th percentile)
• weight: 9 lb 2 oz (25th percentile)

She’s small for an American baby but way ahead in terms of baby development. She’s not quite two months old yet and is in the fourth month stage [BAK] for everything except recognizing names, laughing when being tickled and the pick me up arm signal.

Every day with a baby is special in one way or another, but today was especially special. A few weeks ago I posted a picture of me with Berith in the Baby Bjorn we have. Kristen, NINO Leader, saw the picture and let me know the potential dangers of having her head hanging like that. I started being careful about her head flopping around inside the carrier. I also started having worse and worse back pain lugging her around in that thing all day. So I started looking at some baby-wearing sites, mainly MamaToto and TheBabyWearer. Finally, Ben and I went to a fabric store and bought some stretchy cute purplish/pinkish striped fabric that was on clearance and voila, I had my first wrap. It doubles as a shirt, too. I need to take a picture of it. Here it is!!

I wore Berith all day today, morning till late at night and my back is fine. No pain, but lots of gain. Baby and Mama were both really happy today.

I also framed a couple paintings I bought in Vancouver, BC last October and and hung them in the dining room. I really like them. If you do, too, you can buy them here.

Today is the day my baby girl was baptized and excommunicated. God made her communicate, and Man excommunicate.

All those men throughout the centuries who have not suffered little children to go near Him will suffer sorely themselves. Or rather, they already have and still are as they look at Europe now, gone so appallingly apostate.

Life is bitter bliss, but bliss, nonetheless. She just smiled at me. And I trust that God is smiling down on her.

May God have mercy on us all.

On Wednesday night, a little after midnight, Berith threw up a handful of bright red blood. Mama, Ben and I were all totally freaked out and we called the 24-hour nurse hotline. I answered questions for 15 minutes and the nurse said we should go to the ER immediately, so off we went.

The doctor there ordered a battery of blood tests so the phlebotomist poked her heel with a little knife and started squeezing out blood from her heel into a vial, drop by drop. Berith screamed so hard her whole body started turning purple and her face went from pink to red to blue to ashen grey. I felt sick and was trying really hard not to cry and Ben was trying not to pass out. Mama was there and kept me strong. I don’t know how else I would have gotten through it. The poor phlebotomist looked like he was going to cry, too, but he kept going. After filling four vials of blood, I thought it was all over, but no, another phlebotomist came in and had the first one hold her down while she poked her tiny arm with a needle and drew more blood. My baby tried to fight them off the whole time and never gave up. The whole ordeal took an hour. She’s a strong girl.

We waited forever and the tests all came back completely normal. The doctor also wanted to order x-rays but I said didn’t want any unless they were absolutely necessary. He phoned the pediatrician on call that night who said to skip the x-rays and come in the next morning.

The next morning, before we went to the pediatrician’s office Berith threw up more bright red blood. I was worried and didn’t know what to think.

Growing up in Tokyo with a different medical system, we never had a family doctor or a pediatrician, so it was really interesting to see how they did things. First, the nurse checked her head circumference, height, and weight. She was a wonderful nurse, very careful and precise, gentle and cheerful.

• head circumference: 37.5 cm (50th percentile)
• height: 21.5 inches (50th percentile)
• weight: 8 lb 2 oz (25th percentile)

The doctor was really, really friendly and was surprised that Berith’s first name is Rinah. He said that was his wife’s name and that he had never met anyone besides his wife with that name before. Even though I had no visible cracks, he said that he was pretty sure that the bleeding came from me, not from the baby, and told me to get a breast pump to pump the blood out before I fed her.

We picked one up on the way home and sure enough, he was right. Pumping showed a big crack way inside. I had to pump an ounce and a half of blood and bloody milk before the milk came out white. Eww. So, Thursday was bloody milk day. Friday, things started to get less bloody.

Saturday, my friend Wendy arrived from Tacoma for a visit with her husband, four children, and my best friend from Tokyo, Kudo-san. Wendy had heard about all my woes and as soon as she arrived, proceeded to show me the right way to latch on. Nobody ever showed me that before. Nothing I did before worked. It didn’t matter how many La Leche League articles I read about latching, having someone show me the right thing was completely different. Suddenly, it didn’t hurt. I couldn’t believe it!! It was like a miracle!!

At least I only had 6 weeks. Mama had 6 months of painful nursing. Nobody had shown her how to do things either and she didn’t know what I was doing wrong.

Now Berith is nursing like never before, it doesn’t take me an hour to nurse her anymore, and there are no more tears running down my face while I try to feed her. Berith doesn’t keep swallowing air while she tries to drink so she doesn’t cry for an hour, sometimes two, after each feeding either. She is just calm and happy. Today has been a wonderful day.

I just keep feeling so miserable and horrible for putting her through all that time in the ER. If I had been feeding her properly, that wouldn’t have happened. But now she is fine and she has a good pediatrician. He explains everything in detail and doesn’t force any vaccinations that I don’t want, so far, namely, the hepatitis B vaccination. Plus, he’s Asian. :D

Well, God is good and Wendy works miracles. After taking away all my pain, she whipped up an amazing dinner, comforting because it tasted like Japan.

So, no more blood. Now, I guess I must say that life is bliss. My baby is happy … I am happy.

There is one thing Berith hates more than anything: the booger sucker. (If you want to be fancy, you can call it an aspirator, but I don’t know anyone who calls it that.) Sometimes she needs to have it done before nursing. Although she’s usually a pretty calm baby, as soon as I start doing that, she screams bloody murder.

She’s grown a lot and it’s very exciting, but it also makes me kinda sad. When she was born, she fit on our bathroom counter (where I change her diapers) with extra room at her head and feet. Now she’s just barely fits when she stretches out. She’s even grown out of newborn diapers and needs size 1 diapers. In no time at all, she’s going to grow up and marry some computer geek and move to the ends of the earth. *sob*

She has started smiling a lot and trying to talk, too. No words are distinguishable yet, though, hehe. She’s also started imitating sounds and facial expressions of the person holding her. And in her sleep, she makes all kinds of sounds accompanied by smiles or frowns or contortions of grief and anguish. I wonder what she’s dreaming about.

For the first few weeks after she was born, she would scratch her own face when she flailed around. Some of the scratches were pretty bad. Whenever that happened, she would suddenly freeze in shock, stop breathing, and then scream. I noticed last week that even though she still touches her face, she doesn’t scratch it anymore. She’s also started grasping things with all her might. I think this means she has recognized her hands as her own now.

Her neck is getting stronger and she can hold her head up by herself. When I put her on her stomach she does some air swimming. Last night, she spent some time in front of the mirror touching the mirror and looking surprised whenever her reflection did the same thing. I don’t think she knows that it’s her own reflection. Man, I need to take more pictures.

Ben noticed about 3 weeks ago that she doesn’t like the dark. She cries when we turn off all the lights. When she’s awake, which is generally between midnight and 7 AM, she doesn’t like to have her face covered either, because it interferes with her looking around. She is really interested in everything around her and you can tell her eyes focus on and follow things that you show her.

Now, if I could just get rid of the mystery breast pain that plagues me ’round the clock and makes nursing exquisite torture, my life would be bliss. So far, I’ve been told it could be cracked nipples, Raynaud’s Syndrome or an infection or allergy of some sort but my symptoms don’t completely match anything. Argh.

And speaking of torture, I’ve been reading Lemony Snicket’s An Unfortunate Series of Events to her while I’ve been nursing her. For the last few years, I’ve been waiting for the whole series to be finished and sold as a boxed set. When Ben found out, he bought me the whole boxed set for Christmas. Yay! I need to watch the movie again. I remember I liked it, even though it wasn’t too faithful to the books.

I was going to read her the Bible while I was nursing, but it’s too big and floppy to hold with one hand. The Lemony Snicket books are small and hardcover so they’re easy to handle. We’re finishing about a book a day at this rate so I went hunting for smaller size books I can read to her while I nurse. Next up will probably be the beautifully illustrated out-of-print pretty little boxed set edition of George MacDonald’s fairy tales.

I’ve been reading this blog (Arwen/Elizabeth) for a while now. Cute Camilla (aka Muffin) was born 10 weeks before Berith and it’s helped me with knowing what I have to look forward to. And then, of course, there’s Rick and Rachel’s blog, an old favourite. I’ve been reading their blogs from before they were married. They have a beautiful little girl. Rachel writes about a lot and takes lots of pictures of her. I’ve really enjoyed watching her grow up in all the pictures. Her name is Kyrie, which is a name I really like. Too bad it’s already taken … twice, actually. There’s a girl in my church in Tokyo who is also named Kyrie Eleison. She’s 9.

There are a lot of fascinating, beautiful, smart, artistic, literary blogger mamas out there whose blogs are a constant encouragement and help.

• Arwen
• Dawn
• Kristen
• Moriah
• Rachel
• Sarah

And he went in unto her and she conceived, and bare a daughter, and they called her name Rinah Berith. And lo, her mother got a breast infection last week, and she was down and out with fever for a few days, after which it subsided. And on Tuesday, her grandmother departed from the city of Tokyo and came unto Kennewick in the land of Washington, and her great aunt Sally from Chicago came also. OK, never mind. We’ve been reading Genesis out loud and it got to me.

Some people ask me how to pronounce her name. It’s pretty straightforward. REEEE-nuh beh-REEEETH … simple, eh? Technically, it’s not an “uhh” sound but a schwa, like the first “a” in “banana” or the “u” in circus or the … you get the idea.

Berith drinks milk desperately, day and night, and poops heaps and heaps. Her whole life consists of eating, pooping, and sleeping. Actually, that pretty much sums up my life as well. She smiles after pooping and smiles in her sleep, too. She giggled in her sleep this morning. I wonder what she dreams about. Probably milk and poop.

She is such a good baby. She usually only cries when she’s hungry or when her diaper is dirty. But even then, she gives fair warning with grimaces, which over the next five or ten minutes work their way up to warning whimpers, before she actually starts crying. And it’s not that obnoxious yelling that some babies do but heart-broken cries of wail and woe. It makes me want to cry just to hear it.

She likes baths and her little sighs of contentment after her diaper has been changed are hilarious. I’m so glad she likes to keep clean.

She likes to make faces. She has several faces in her repertoire, including monkey-face (which cracks me up to no end), disapproving-old-lady-face, I’m-a-boy-face, and I’m-thinking/pooping-really-hard-face. Mostly, she has the sweetest earnest little girl face.

So far, the one thing she seems to hate is the car seat. I don’t like cars either. *three cheers for public transportation* Like I said, such a good little baby. She screams and yells when she gets put in it, expressing the all those pent-up feelings I have about having to spend so much time in cars.

Her first soak-through-three-layers-of-clothing-poop-explosion happened today. *sigh* It was really gross. See?

At least breastfed babies have soupy poop that washes off really easily. Here endeth the pooping pictures. I will spare you the milking pictures.

Hello!!

Here are some pictures of our new baby. There are also bigger versions here.

Her name is either Berith Rinah or Rinah Berith. Haven’t decided yet. We are going to call her Berith, which means “covenant” in Hebrew. Rinah means “to cry out, sing, rejoice,” also in Hebrew.

She was born yesterday, 4 days before her due date, on December 20, 2006, at 3:50 PM after 23 hours of labour (and 12 days of contractions before that) in her parents’ bedroom with two midwives. She was 19 inches (49 cm) long, and weighed 6 lb 7 oz (2900 g). At the last minute, she flipped around and decided to be born breech. Whew.

We can’t tell if her eyes are blue or hazel. It would make sense if they were hazel, because Ben and three of her grandparents have hazel eyes. I’ll write more later … maybe tomorrow … or the day after … or next week. I just thought I should send the pictures as soon as possible. I’m so tired. I’m going to sleep now.

This is a little something about my church back home that I wrote up for a friend who has a missions prayer group.

JAPAN

In a country of about 127 million people, less than 1% are Christian, and that 1% includes pretty much anyone and everyone who claims to be Christian, so the real number of true believers is far lower. For some basic facts and figures about the country, you can take a look at the CIA World Factbook about Japan.

In addition to having so few Christians, there are few missionaries. As far as we know, after living and ministering in Tokyo for over 25 years, the Mitaka Evangelical Church is the only postmillennial, paedobaptist, paedocommunionist church in the entire country!

Some mission boards are pulling missionaries out from Japan because it is one of the most expensive countries in the world to live in (for example, it costs about one million US dollars to buy a piece of land 1/10 or 1/12 of an acre) and Japanese people are not receptive to the Gospel. It is more economical to send missionaries to countries where they can support an entire missionary family for less than a tenth or twentieth of what it would cost to support them in Tokyo.

Most Japanese people do not consider themselves religious at all, but they are superstitious and practice a philosophically impossible syncretism combining Buddhism (ancestor worship, via China via India) and Shintoism (emperor worship and Japanese racism). One of the weird results of this religious combo is that many see no problem believing in BOTH reincarnation AND in heaven and hell. For more info, here is a tidy little article about religion in Japan with concise explanations about Shintoism and the Japanese flavour of Buddhism. There is a short section about Christianity in Japan that’s pretty good, too.

Setting aside religious philosophies, to put it simply, though, ancestor worship is the religion of Japan. In many families, if you quit worshiping your ancestors, you cannot be a member of the family.

This, of course, creates all kinds of problems for Japanese Christians. A few families in our church have been disowned for refusing to worship dead parents and relatives at funerals and memorial services (which occur every so many days after death, and then regularly every few years for 50 years after death) and in the shrines set up for the dead in every home.

There is also a yearly festival for the dead, one of the major consecutive holidays of the year, so as you can see, refusing to worship the dead causes family friction all year ’round.

Historically, one of the main problems in the Japanese church for the last few centuries is compromise with ancestor worship and emperor worship (esp. during WW2).

MITAKA EVANGELICAL CHURCH

The Mitaka (mee-TAH-kuh) Evangelical Church started a little over 25 years ago. Due to prohibitively high land prices, it is still meeting in my grandmother’s home where it started. The church now has about 125 members, half of whom are children high school age or younger. Most of the members are younger couples with young children. The average age of our church is just 22 years old.

Although there is no persecution in Japan, it is definitely a pagan country and there are various difficulties for those who are living there as Christians. Specifically, the biggest problems would be ancestor worship (see above) and education, which are related.

Public schools are beginning to push emperor worship and private schools are impossibly expensive, especially since most of the church families have numerous children, so with a very few exceptions, all the church children are taught at home.

There’s some info about our church here.

PRAYER REQUESTS

- Pray that God will send more long-term missionaries to Japan, especially to Tokyo, where over 10% of the population is located and where people are most receptive to the Gospel.

- Pray that God will provide us with land and a building so that we can expand the ministry. The house is packed full beyond capacity (the foundations are starting to tilt, even) and we are in sore need of a place to gather during the week for classes for adults and children. Here is some info on how you can help us by letting us help you.

There are 6 billion people in the world, give or take … that’s FIFTY-FOUR BILLION MONTHS of pregnancy, people. *falls down in a dead faint*

My midwife tells me not to count down to the due date, but I have a counter on my desktop that tells me I have 41 days to go. I can’t help it. Braxton-Hicks contractions have started and before dawn this morning, it hurt for the first time, just a little. It’s getting harder by the day to eat or sleep, heartburn comes and goes 24/7, and the dreams are weirder than ever.

Baby Girl is growing daily, too, quite visibly. She used to kick a lot but probably with less and less room, she’s given up on that. This morning, she squirmed and wriggled for hours. It’s a weird tickly stretchy feeling. You can put your hand to your cheek and use your tongue to push your hand to sort of replicate the feeling. Sort of.

And speaking of stretchy, my baby has no concept of uterine symmetry. Until a couple weeks ago, it never occurred to me that when this pregnancy is over, I could just be saggy on one side but now it looks like that’s what’s gonna happen. She likes the right side and the right side only. My belly is lopsidedly stretched out during the day and it looks and feels weird. When I touch the right side, my stomach is really hard. I’m guessing I’m feeling her back. She likes to tuck her feet over my ribs and nudge from time to time. Sometimes she pushes the ribs and I can feel the right side of my rib cage opening up. Aaaaaaaaagh. The other day, I heard about a baby who broke the mother’s ribs during pregnancy … but except for one day, my baby has been gentle with my ribs so far. The left side is just empty. I can push my hand way in and there’s just liquid, no baby.

Here are some pics from a couple weeks ago that Mama took while she and Papa were visiting. The baby is a lot bigger now but I haven’t taken any pictures since they left. (The woman in the fourth pic is my midwife.)