Baby #3

You would think I would have seen it coming, right? I mean, I got all these "signs " the last two times ... Why wouldn't I see the signs this time? 

I was soooo not ready for this one. We were so busy. Slammed. My summer days were early morning emails, website updates and corrections, reading papers, responding to inquiries, confirming deadlines and appointments, on top of diapering my one-year-old and attending both his and my 3yr-old daughter's constant need for mom. Did I mention constant checking of my husband's wardrobe and making sure his teeth were clean before he left the house to attend his completely packed 7am - 8pm seven-days-a-week schedule... The house was a mess. Like, more than the normal toys on the floor and laundry piled cause-you-have-two-toddlers-mess. Like, did we wash the sheets in those 8 weeks? Most of the food in the fridge was just sitting there going bad for weeks because we were only eating what could be made in ten minutes or on-the-go. I kept buying soap everytime we were at the store cause I couldn't remember if I had any under the sink or in the storage because we were that busy ... So how did we have time to get pregnant? That's what we both said at the end of August when those blue lines showed up on the pregnancy test... When? How? No way! In fact, I took two tests because I just could not believe it. It had to be wrong. It had to be. Makani, you bought a cheap one, didn't you?  😁

There weren't any recent dreams this time to warn me... Of course there was this ONE, a while ago but I guess I didn't want to hear it, huh? Can you blame me - 3 babies in four years? That's nearly a year pregnant, a year breastfeeding, a year pregnant, a year breastfeeding (which just ended in April), to be again, pregnant (by June) and again, breastfeeding ... Which means by the time I'm done breastfeeding this baby, it will have been 6 years straight of my body as a re-sizing, baby-building, milk-squirting, hormones-ranging, no-sleep machine. And the pregnancies are definitely not the easy kind for me... Doc says all women are different and I just am one if those that is naseus nearly all the first 6 months or more and this time it was PAIN in my seat, my groin, down the back of my legs... In bed half the day. For real. 

So getting excited for number three took awhile. We are finally feeling a little better the last week - I actually made it out to a dinner with a girlfriend and was able to get through my days without falling asleep every two hours. And, well, people have been telling me how happy they are to see us having more children which has been a huge help. Us moms really need that support. 

We find out in two weeks if it's a boy or girl. Everyone has been asking what I think it is - some think it's a girl because I'm so sick (girls give more estrogen which means double estrogen in your system), but I was much more sick with my son's pregnancy then my daughter's. You never know... But then I did have that one dream, a few months after the birth of my last one, Kana'i...

I was standing in the dirt driveway of a small farm. It was Hilo. Small, red peppers poked out of the shrubs to my left, palms towered, fruit trees and bush variations were abundant around, the covered structure on the right led to a barn. The snorting of the pigs could be heard; Makani used to fed, bathe, and birth pigs out of that same barn when he was a teen. It was Lohe's farm. (My husband's beloved Uncle Lohe with whom he spent his summers with as a child.) I had been to the farm once with Makani when my daughter was 10-months-old. Lohe was a kind man behind a guarded wisdom. He talked parables and with a fatherly tenderness.

A young boy appeared in front of me. Tanned from the sun, mixed in features, brown haired, strong presence. His eyes fixed on me. "If you want me, I'm yours," his little voice proposed. No smile. No charm. Just a matter-of-fact. 

"Not now," I said calmly, turning to walk away. I had just birthed a son 3 months before.  

"I have a sister, too,"  he voiced louder, as if to win a sale. "If you want her... We both will help you with your purpose, we won't be as hard as the first two." He was genuine. But I was exhausted with two in diapers already. I just kept walking. That's all I saw of the farm boy. A few months later, Uncle Lohe passed away. 

As we are due late April, the anatomy scan takes place in a couple weeks. If it is indeed a boy, I'm sure Lohe will be apart of his name... We could very well have the farm boy's sister - either way, I'm looking forward to what is hopefully, our last baby 😉.