The Golden Grahams

 On Monday, March 29 I went to what I was hoping would be my very last prenatal appointment this pregnancy. I was 39 weeks 5 days along and felt more than ready to have this baby. The midwife I saw checked my cervix and said I was still the same as my last appointment - about 2.5-3 cm dilated and 50% effaced. She asked if I wanted a membrane sweep and I said yes! Since I wanted to give birth already but didn’t want to get an induction. Her sweep was more painful than the one I had gotten the week before, and since I was further along in weeks I felt like it would probably work. And I believe it did! Immediately after my appointment I started having super spaced out, but painful contractions. I didn’t want to focus on it or time it since I know my body has long labors. I just continued on with my day and went to hang out with some friends. We had scheduled a play date so our kids could have some fun together. It had been a really long time since we’d gathered like that due to the pandem

 Well, just 2 blog posts ago I wrote about Napela's birth story, and here I am writing about the next baby that's about to join our little (growing) family! Right before Napela was born, my midwife had asked what my plans were for birth control after I had him. I told her, "Uhhh, nothing." I explained that since I have a history of infertility, and that it took 4.5 years to conceive Mikala, and then 2.5 years to conceive Napela, I would not be using any sort of birth control as I want to make sure my body can conceive a third child.  I just assumed that it would take a few years again like it did before. I did acknowledge noticing a pattern that it took less time to conceive the second baby, but again, I thought it would take 1 year or so. I was exclusively breastfeeding Napela since the day he was born, so I was kinda peeved when my period came back at 10 weeks postpartum. I also don't lose a ton of weight while breastfeeding like a lot of women do. So all the pe

I recently read an entry from mine and Josh's "Spiritual Impressions" journal that we keep together and felt that this one was so important I wanted to post it here, just to give another place for it to be saved hopefully forever so that I can read it again and again: 2/5/20 Ari I learned a very hard and humbling lesson today. While at the beach, Mikala could have drowned. We were at Ko’olina, which is a man-made lagoon and known for its mostly shallow, calm water. I always put Mikala’s floaties on as soon as we arrive at the beach, for his safety. I did this today however halfway through swimming he got cold and wanted to come in, take off his floaties, and sit wrapped up in his towel while he ate some snacks. As he did this, I was nursing Napela who fell asleep. I then put Napela back into his carseat to take a nap, while Mikala decided to run back into the water to play and swim. In my mind, Mikala still had his floaties on so I trusted that he would be safe.

It's been 3 weeks now since I gave birth to our second son and I've been meaning to write this birth story since we first got home from the hospital. Needless to say, adjusting from 1 kid to 2 has been hard! Hence why it has taken me so long to write this down. I finally have a minute to sit down and write this and I should probably be taking a nap while baby is sleeping (hello sleep deprivation, my old friend!) but this is too important to forget. I want to quickly preface this story by saying that I suffer from SPD in my pregnancies - symphysis pubis dysfunction. Basically, my body does too good of a job releasing the hormone relaxin to ready itself for birth and my pelvis gets totally unstable and misaligned and causes me so much pain. This time, it started early at 13 weeks and as baby grew and got bigger, the pain also increased. By the time I went to my 39 week appointment, I was completely miserable. I had already been waddling for months and some days the pain shot