He was born on October 17th 2019 and our life and family has FOREVER changed… My heart is so FULL. I cannot put into words how I feel and how blessed I have been this entire pregnancy and birthing experience. Let me start with my first experience in labor so you can get an idea of what I transitioned from.

I was induced at 41 weeks with my daughter Mahina, I was 19 years old and scared as heck, I had no clue what to expect and not to mention I had absolutely NO knowledge of what I was getting myself into. My husband and I were newly weds, I’m talking 4 months newly weds still trying to figure out marriage itself and to add to that a brand new baby to figure out parenthood as well. I hid my pregnancy for about 6 months until we were married as a couple and didn’t know where this journey would take us and what to expect. Needless to say I was blindsided by the entire thing, I ended up asking for the epidural and tried to figure it out from there on to the best of our knowledge. We tried our absolute BEST under the circumstances we were in and the entire thing was a suprise/shock to us. Don’t get me wrong we are OBSESSED with my daughter and she is our world. She just came a lot earlier than expected and we were so young at the time.

This time around I wanted to prepare myself, arm myself with knowledge, I wanted to EMBRACE my pregnancy, I wanted to fully enjoy this entire journey, ups and downs and come out feeling EMPOWERED. I can gladly say that is EXACTLY what I felt, if not more. I prepared myself by constantly educating myself, looking up books/videos, free resources for mamas. I also did my absolute best to embrace pregnancy and all it came with, the ups and downs. The growing of a tiny human in my stomach, the sickness, the faituge and tiredness and growing body. I tried to embrace it ALL. For my birth I had planned to have an all natural birth. I wanted to only cope with pain using meditation, soothing methods, natural remedies and be able to feel everything going on in my body.

About a week or two before my son’s due date I was dilated to 3cm and effaced 70%. I tried natural remedies to encourage labor but nothing was working. By the time my due date came around it was so painful to walk around and he was so low the pressure was intense! We decided to induce him on his due date, October 17th, after my sister’s arrival who flew in to be there for my labor. We went into the hospital had pizza, hanged out with my sister and husband while they started the process inserting a pill to induce labor and contractions. 3 hours later I was contracting but very small contractions that weren’t too intense. They came in and checked me and I was then at 4cm dilated. The doctor examined me and said she could break my water to help the process along, I agreed. I was hoping to do this natrually and not using pitocin or any drugs to bring on labor because it makes contractions a lot harder and stronger. So Dr. Moore broke my water and from there it was a very fast process.

Contractions came on VERY strong. I was meditating and listening to my headphones. I held my husband’s hand while my sister (who is basically a duola after having so much children) counterpressured my contractions by pushing on my back and the side I was laboring on. My sister was a key aspect in my labor and I am so grateful for her. She flew in to be in the room with me and my husband, she encouraged me, supported me, was my advocate to the doctors when I couldn’t bare to talk or speak up. She was AMAZING to say the least. During the process I tried to stay completely calm and relax. My husband was so supportive, encouraging me, doing his best to be helpful and was completely amazed by the process. I started to get very strong contractions and was examined by the doctors when told I was 6cm dilated. At this point, I had been in labor for 4 hours and things were getting hard. I thought to myself if I took 4 hours to get to 6 cm. It’s gonna take me another 3-4 hours to get to a 10! During a contraction I yelled out for an epidural and immediately regretted it after the contraction went away and relaxed. They told me the anesthesiologist was 30 minutes away and wouldn’t get it for another 45 minutes.

I didn’t know how fast you could progress from a 6cm to 10cm. If I knew it could possibly be an hour I would have not asked for it but I got in my own head and thought I would be there all night until I was fully dilated, ready to have baby. Needless to say, my sister told me to completely relax to get dilated, she reminded me of my goals. I settled down and held on to my husband while I was going through the “ring of fire” as they call it. I bore down and stayed focus. Within what seemed like minutes I had dilated from a 6cm to a 9cm. Just one away from being completely READY. I immediately felt the urge then to PUSH! The doctor told me it might feel better to push so I bore down and said LET’S DO THIS!!!!!!! The doctor hyped as well said YEA! LET’S GO!!!! That was probably my favorite moment of the birth- the excitement in the room, embracing it and RUNNING towards this HEAD ON! There was no other doctors in the room just yet, and they were all scrambling to get ready and didn’t even have the leg props up just yet. So I threw my leg up looking for my husband and sister to catch it. I took a deep breathe, held on to the side bars and DID THE DANG THING.

Within 10-15 minutes of pushing, bracing, bearing down, focusing on seeing my baby, my SON had entered the world. WOW. I felt something I had never felt in my ENTIRE LIFE. A feeling of pure EMPOWERMENT as a woman, as a mama, as a wife. Everything just made complete sense in that very moment. My sister, proud and all said, “you did it mama, you did it! Natural and all!” I cried when I got my son on his chest and kept repeating over and over “my son, my son, your mine”. I died a little and came back to life feeling like a new woman. It was the BEST EXPERIENCE. The doctor left the room and came back and started bowing down to me saying YOU ARE AMAZING. She complimented me on how fast I did it, saying I did such a good job and was so pumped about how determined I was. In total my labor was 5 hours, no complications or stitches needed. Recovery has been fairly easy and I have been able to supply more milk than needed for our growing son.

This labor was not easy but it felt AMAZING to embrace my body and let it do it’s thing. My husband has been super supportive and at the hospital had stayed up till 3am to look after baby so I could get some rest. He has been so helpful in looking after our son and not to mention helping me with the recovery process allowing me to rest. I am so amazed by him and how he continually improves to be an amazing father and husband. We are so BLESSED with our son Makoa and want to share this huge blessing with the world. He is our first son, second child and has forever changed our life. HE IS SO LOVED.