My baby is a sailor

Endless seasickness is an unpleasant prospect, but that is exactly what poor Chiharu has been going through. She has hot flushes, collapses asleep with tiredness, feels ill and dizzy and starving all at once. Nothing much seems to placate it. We've tried sea sickness acupressure bands, ginger tea, lemon and honey drinks, apples. Nashi seem to help.
Chiharu knows she as to eat, but has no idea what she wants. She craved sashimi (raw fish), but after an amazing dinner of sushi and sashimi, dining out at Sachi (thank you Sarah and David!), her cravings for fish have gone entirely. At the moment it's hard to find anything she wants to eat. We go shopping at the supermarket together in the evenings, hoping that the food will jump out at her to be eaten.


The baby has started to show, it has made a wee bulge above Chiharu's hips. It's thrilling to consider that our child growing inside her, and quite bizarre as well. Quite literally, her stomach has been dislodged by an animal that is growing inbetween her intestines and her bladder. Nature is more shocking in its variety and ingenuity than anything contrivance human imagination can create. A baby growing out of a person's stomach? Incredible! No wonder the ancient Aztecs thought babies were born of corn kernels ingested by adult women and growth within them.
(Note: Chiharu got shy about the photo after all. I thought that show it was awfully brave of her!)

When I was young, I mistakenly thought babies were made when a man kissed a woman and they shared an orange pip. If she swallowed it, a baby would grow in her stomach, so I was led to believe. I'm  not sure if I ever did believe the story, but I always preferred it to those grotesque biology videos we had to watch. Remember those videos with the male scientist's voice, explaining with muted excitement, how fascinating it was to see millions of slimy tadpoles racing each other. The climatic moment of a tadpole being subsumed by a gigantic pulsing orb haunted me for years.Only now does it amaze.