Blogs

My first son was born at the beginning of Japan’s typhoon season. It was great knowing that I’d got him out and my stomach had shrunk in time for the big swells, but I underestimated how much time it would take me to get the strength to surf solid waves again. Despite remaining incredibly fit right throughout the pregnancy, only us mothers really can know just how draining childbirth is. Hours, sometimes of days, of incessant pushing through extreme pain is followed by feeding like a dairy cow every two hours adding to the sleepless nights that many husbands don’t realize we experience right throughout the last months of pregnancy. Then there’s the hormones…jumping and twirling all over the place, launching us into barrels of tears and bouts of depression no matter how grateful we are for our little bundles of joy. And that’s just scratching the surface.

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For me it was hard to take. My cousin had surfed right up until she was seven months pregnant, and being my personal surfing inspiration I had planned to do the same. But when my bulge started poking out well beyond my own control, at around 4½ months, I had to give up a hard surfboard and look for alternatives.

I still remember that day. The sun was shining, Japanese spring had approached and we were all out of 5mm semi-dry steamers and into 3mm jerseys. Torami, one of our local breaks here in Chiba, was offshore, small and glassy-perfect for the new twin fin Kuni and I had received as a wedding present from shaper Ryosuke Hori. Trying to ignore needing to stretch my wetty far more than I had predicted, I kept reminding myself surfing is my key to a happy, healthy pregnancy and nothing would stop me dancing along those waves on my feet, right up to delivery if possible.

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In particular, there’s one person in my life who I owe my love for surfing to. A brave woman, who in an era dominated by men would dare to show her skin in a two-piece bikini, took to the ocean like a fish and in her teens begged her inventor/boat builder father to build her a wooden surfboard.

Her name is Christine Cox, better known to me as Aunty Chris - a past inductee into Surfing Australia’s Hall of Fame, tireless promoter and pusher of women’s competitive surfing, pro level judge and surf coach for decades, supportive wife for half a century to a never surf deprived wave junkie husband, and of course devoted mother to four surf-crazed kids (all Australian champion surfers in their youth).

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