Casey Stoner announces that he and wife Adriana are expecting their first baby
Stoner has since opened the door to attend the rescheduled Japanese MotoGP after hearing official reports that the area is not a nuclear risk.
"There was a period after Silverstone that I felt very strongly that I wasn't going to go there. After things I'd seen and heard," the 25-year-old said.
'But that came from a very strong emotion after we found out that Adriana was pregnant.
"We've discussed it a lot since then and that's a huge thing that's happened in my life and now the most important. I felt that the best thing I could do at that time was to make my mind up. There was no way I was going to risk my wife or my family and it was very tough.
"But in these weeks I've taken a lot of data from Australia, people we feel we can trust on the matter, and I'm now slightly more open to it than I was before. I think people can understand I was taken a little bit with my safety and that of my family in this matter.
"We'll see in these next weeks, we'll continue talking and try and find out as much information as we can. I'm not saying that I am going, but I'm not saying that I'm not now. So we'll just have to see what happens in the near future."
The coming baby will be the first for the couple, who were married before Stoner's 2007 world championship season when Adriana was 18.