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.)

Someone’s got to colour outside the lines … or there wouldn’t be any colour outside the lines.

But why pick which side of the line to colour? It doesn’t have to be a choice. I colour in and out and on the lines.

Till now, the baby has been breech, facing my backbone, dancing on my bladder, intestines, and poking at other unmentionable parts, but since waking up from a nap yesterday, there’s been no more bladder dancing and my stomach is poking out in the front all over the place, top, bottom and sides. I can’t tell where the head is but with no more tapping on the bladder I’m guessing she’s head down now.

We’ll see how long this lasts.

For my friends who ask about breech, it means the baby is upside down, or actually, right side up with feet on the bladder, which is not the way it’s supposed to be. The head is supposed to be sitting on the bladder … ewww … yukk yukk.

190 days down … 76 more days to go.

Last Wednesday evening, we visited another midwife. After spending almost 6 hours on the phone on Monday, looking for a hospital or a doctor or midwife or doula, and not finding a single one, I was wallowing in the depths of despair and didn’t dare hope she would be any good. As we walked up to her clinic, which was an older house that had been remodeled, my heart sank even deeper as I saw some plants dying in her front yard.

We walked in and she had a very loud voice. You think I am loud … well, I’m inaudible comparatively. She was extremely friendly and cheerful, very outgoing but pleasantly non-aggressive. The inside of the clinic was bright and clean and nicely decorated without being cluttered. It was a warm and comfortable place. With her somewhat brash manner, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but she skillfully put both of us at ease, giving Ben statistics about homebirth vs. hospital birth and also telling us comparative safety issues and risks. Then she started talking about herself, her practice, and answering pretty nearly all the questions Ben and I had before we ever asked anything.

Even better, after talking for over an hour, we found out the midwife is a Bible-believing Christian (… charismatic, arminian, premil, pretrib …) which was a great comfort after whacko new-age midwives and doulas (orgasmic birth, female empowerment, etc.) and abortion-pushing doctors and nurses who believe you must have STDs because you must have been promiscuous before marriage.

Anyway … this midwife doesn’t do breech births. She does vaccinations (’cause she’s a doctor), but doesn’t force parents to do any of the STD vaccinations and other shots and ointments and tests at any time and certainly doesn’t recommend doing them to the baby immediately after birth. She doesn’t do aromatherapy, but apparently she uses various herbs for treatment before and after. She also has a birthing pool we can set up so I can have a waterbirth at home … which is what I’ve wanted for a long, long, long time.

So, we’ll be having this baby in a tub at home in the family room. It’s been almost a week and I can’t believe it yet. Thank you, God!!

She has capable hands.

Leithart, quoting Lewis, about D.H. Lawrence’s idealistic and linguistic aims in attempting to “make dirty words clean.”

CS Lewis in a short essay on “Prudery and Philology” … words do carry a freight of historical meaning that cannot simply be shed by repeating vulgarities in polite company or in artsy novels. As soon as you seek to describe the human body or sexuality in words, as opposed to rendering it in a painting or drawing, Lewis says “you will fin that you have only four alternatives: a nursery word, an archaism, a word from the gutter, or a scientific word.” In short, “willy-nilly you must produce baby-talk, or Wardour Street, or coarseness, or technical jargon. . . . The words will force you to write as if you thought it either childish, or quaint, or contemptible, or of purely scientific interest. In fact, mere description is impossible. Language forces you to an implicit comment.”

Read the rest of the post, “Sexual Salvation in Lawrence” …

Nobody can be neutral no matter what. Hah.

I have a choice between two hospitals and one birth center. Yesterday I had a checkup with my doctor and today I met a midwife.

Whose hands would you trust your own life and the life of your baby with?

Take your pick.

Male, strong, warm, rough-skinned hands with big-knuckled fingers, late 40s, fit, muscular, clean-cut, extremely businesslike, terse, clipped manner, controlling, always in a hurry, sees so many patients he does not remember your name, doesn’t care who you are, has never borne children and never will, and has no problem killing your baby if you want to, too.

Female, soft, wrinkly, bird-bone hands, short, tiny fingers with no grip, weak arms, late 40s, grossly obese, dandruffy, greasy, thinning hair, passive, withdrawn, not particularly personal … doesn’t ask if you want to kill your baby. Only 6 years experience delivering babies. I don’t know if she has given birth herself or not. I forgot to ask.

So, I either bare myself to a man who is a total stranger I’ve never met and do not trust (chances are the doctor on call when I go into labour is not “my” doctor), and meanwhile before every checkup subject myself to bombardment with posters and advertisements about how not to have babies and how to kill them if I don’t want them. They are in every room there, every bathroom, exam room, ultrasound room, the doctor’s office, etc.

Or, I give myself over into the care of a woman who obviously does not even care to take care of herself.

181 days down … 85 more days to go.