Showing posts with label boshi techo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boshi techo. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Boshi Techo

I did some more research about the Boshi Techo.
Here is a page on Tokyo With Kids that explains some interesting things about it:
http://www.tokyowithkids.com/fyi/boshi_techo.html

After reading the page on Chiba website (in Japanese), it seems that a pregnancy certificate (妊娠届書) made by a doctor is required to get the Boshi Techo.

Now when i type 妊娠届書 in Google, most websites seem to indicate that in order to get this certificate, the doctor must be able to see the baby's heartbeat (心拍) during the ultrasound.

Monday, November 8, 2010

2nd prenatal visit

We are still convinced that my wife is at her 6th (now almost 7th) week so we decide to go to another hospital. This one seems to be pretty popular and is recommended by many Japanese women on review websites.
We go there at 8:30 on a holiday, wait for 2 hours before the 10 minutes visit (and i don't even get to enter the examination room). The hospital is full of new-born babies, women waiting for some surgical procedure after something went bad, and pregnant women of course. This is kind of scary to me....
This time the doctor can see a gestational sac on the ultrasound, he explains clearly that despites the date of my wife last menstruation, her ovulation probably happened much later and she is only at her 4th week at that time. She needs to wait and come back to the hospital 2 weeks after.

We leave the hospital a bit disappointed. In Japan when the doctor confirms the pregnancy, you can then go to your ward/city office and ask for the Boshi Techo, some kind of pregnancy notebook that also contains coupons for some of the prenatal visits and make your pregnancy somewhat official. My wife having trouble getting arrangements made at her office for her not to work 14 hours a day like she is doing now, we were hoping that we could get the certificate and be finally taken seriously by her company.
Now we hearing several things from different people about the certificate and the notebook, some doctors seem to require to see the baby's heartbeat (around 6w) to call you officially pregnant, some doctors seem fine with just the urine test performed at their hospital. The second step is the ward office and this time again, it is not clear what is required to receive the notebook, and it probably also depends on the city where you live.
More about it as soon i can...