Are you doing your pre-natal yoga, drinking your raspberry tea, doing your stretches, etc.? Are you wondering if there is more that you can do to prepare for a fast and easy delivery of your baby? Good news: There is! A hayflower steam bath. Sorry, the baths are way less glamorous than in the picture…
How do you prepare a maternity leave plan that your employer will love? When you look for maternity leave plan guides, templates or recommendations there are many articles and experience reports from the perspective of the momma-to-be. I have yet to find an article from an organization or a manager talking about how they would…
Throughout my pregnancy people would often say to me “But isn’t it scary to have a baby in a foreign country?” I have had all three of my daughters in Japan. Therefore, a pregnancy in Japan is the norm to me and I hope my experience can put other expecting mommas-to-be at ease. During my…
You just found out that you are pregnant? Congratulations! And welcome to a whole lot of planning, organizing and deciding. Among the things you have to decide is how much time off work you want to take. With my first daughter I went back to work after the end of maternity leave (8 weeks after…
Jealousy? Tantrums? A hurt newborn? Who doesn’t want to avoid these from their toddler as they are bringing a new baby home. When I was preparing for my first management role I also looked into change management and its theory again. There’s the common perception that humans don’t like change but that it can be…
Are you pregnant and still considering your birth plan? Do you want to have a natural birth but are not yet feeling 100% confident about it? Do you worry about what will happen during labour? Hypnobabies offers a complete birth education course to prepare you for it both mentally and physically so that you can…
Taxes – the one thing no one likes but we all have to do. If you’re like me, you have never spent too much attention to your taxes unless for the obligatory year end tax filing. As an employee of a Japanese company the attention became even less as they are handling all tax payments…
There are many different forms of financial support for the pregnancy, birth and baby journey. I have been seeing many different articles and posts talking about some or the other. However, I have not seen a complete list with all the benefits my family is receiving. My experience is based on having two babies as…
The term ‘applying’ for maternity leave might actually be a little bit confusing. You are legally entitled to maternity leave. Therefore, you might think of it as informing the different stakeholders of your situation. These notifications are important for your social security payments and the receipt of the financial support while on maternity leave. The…
In January 2019, I found out that I was pregnant. At that time, our wedding in Dakar was scheduled for December 2019. Invitations had already been sent. The baby would not even be 3 months at the time. I didn’t worry about the event of the wedding but was it possible to travel from Tokyo to…