No Time Limit!

Do you remember as a kid when your parents used to set timers, give warnings about time limits, etc... either for bedtimes, friend visits, electronics, school, etc...  Well, I guess I am that mom now, I just gave my kids a 5 minute warning about having to go to bed, but in reality, I am still just a kid and I really hate time limits!  I mean come on, we were made for eternity after all, and of course God still has limits on times and seasons in eternal life too, but goodness, being able to feel the stop and go- isn't that so much better?  Who likes to feel rushed, pushed, and snuffed out by schedules?  Not me!  And yet, I love the appearance of order that schedules bring when they are listed out on a piece of paper, but in reality, I do not enjoy confining myself to the original ideas that I have...  I am more apt to be excited about others schedules that I can ebb and flow through at my own pace, but I feel trapped sometimes to DO what I first SAID when I wrote it down on paper.  It all sounds pretty silly now, but I digress...  my five minute time limit for my kids is long up, I better go so they don't always think 30 minutes is the same as 5 minutes.  Oh parenting!  So often I find that I am still parenting myself.  Ok, ok, Goodnight!!!  ;)

Throwback to when it was 2016

 Malakai's Birth Story

Rebekah Boss

September 20, 2016  · 4 min read  · 

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I have trouble keeping things short, but here is my attempt! All praise to the Lord! Every birth is a miracle and I am constantly amazed and humbled to be a mom... this story is no different ❤

We arrived at the hospital about 1:30pm after my contractions had begun just after 12pm. I was so thankful to make it while still being in soft labor. Oh what an answer to prayer!

It was hilarious though when we went to check in they didn't seem to have any record of me in their computer system! It took us a good ten minutes to realize that they were just spelling my name wrong. So goofy!

Then I sat in the waiting room for only like 2 minutes before they brought me in a side room and took my vitals. One of the nurses found out I had been almost 4cm for 2 weeks already and she exclaimed: "I had my epidural at 4cm! Wow!". That made me feel all tough and enduring haha but I also just laughed because its not like I could have lived with an epidural on me for those last 2 weeks lol so that was never really an option for me.

Finally we made it to the hospital delivery room around 2pm! Praise the Lord my labor was still pretty tame. I really had not wanted to deliver this child in the lobby or the car. So, with my mom, my mother in law and my hubby all in the room with me, our waiting game began!

I was still in denial that I was actually in real labor yet, but since we were at the hospital and all checked in, I decided to try and get myself comfortable. Jeremy hung up my written out verses, set up our portable speaker with my labor playlist going and then pulled out our coloring books. I kept trying to color but by the time my labor really started getting harder sometime between 3 and 3:30 I kept having to focus so much on relaxing through my contractions that I definitely didn't get very far with coloring. lol.

Things were definitely progressing but I didnt really know how far because I had asked the nurse not to tell me what my dilation was whenever she checked me. I thought maybe the fancy bathtub in the room might help me to keep relaxing, so I asked Jeremy to start getting it ready. My mom was like, "I dont know that you will have time for that..." and so I smiled and Jeremy just said, "I will start it and then we can see..." Sure enough though, before he could even fill up the tub a quarter of the way, my water broke! lol.

When my water broke around 4pm the nurses came in and so did the Doctor on call at the time. He didnt stay long though before he walked out again. The OB I had been seeing the month before had not arrived yet, but I was already feeling the urge to push! My mom was totally picking up on this and so was Jeremy, so they put their gloves on and stood faithfully beside me, but the nurses were talking so much with their backs turned, right next to me that it seemed like they had no clue. To be fair, there was a nurse in training there, but still... lol.

I was totally in position for pushing, at least for me, it feels way more natural to be on all fours, but I know hospitals like to put birthing moms on their back. So even though it did not seem like anyone else was ready, except my mom and Jeremy, I gave out a solid push and baby Kai's head popped out. The nurse finally noticed and told me to stop in a half teasing but half serious tone because she didnt want to deliver without the doctor today. I was basically like, whatever lady, this baby is coming... but thankfully I had to wait for another contraction before pushing baby out all the way. As Dr. Hughes rushed in and put his gloves on, he barely made it in time to help catch Baby Kai with my hubby. Wow!

I was in shock, like for real, did this baby really finally come? I put my head down and prayed to hear him breathe. A few pats from the burses and only moments later, I heard a precious little cry along with "It's a Boy!"

It was super weird not to hold my baby for like a half hour or more because they were clearing him out and I still had to deliver the placenta and get cleaned up. So strange. Very different from my homebirth experiences... but finally Jeremy was able to lay our new baby boy on my chest and I basically just cried with joy and relief! What an overwhelming gift! A new person ❤

Welcome to the World Malakai Raymond Boss!

Thank You Lord!

• 

The stories I tell...

 As I was laying in bed with Malakai tonight, cuddling him to sleep, his little hand on my neck, it occured to me that there are a lot of stories that I like to tell others, but have never really written down for myself or for my family.  Knowing that life is short and I never really know if I have tomorrow, I was realizing that now was a better time than never to start in with writing down these memories.  Since I was just cuddling with Malakai, let's begin with the story of his namesake and move backwards from there!

I have only been to Hawaii one time, the big Island, Oahu, Ewa Beach and Honolulu.  What a dream!  I even got to spend my 27th birthday there, big thanks to my amazing in-laws.  My precious mother in love chose to share some of her Father's inheritance with me and my little family... and this is also when Jeremy and I decided it would be a good time to add to our own family, I mean let's be honest, we didn't really plan to get pregnant, but we were in a gorgeous beach house in Hawaii!  Sleeping right there next to the sound of the sea and listening to the big open breeze across the waters with all that warm tropical air around us.  It would have been silly of us not to enjoy those moments and we did!  Hence, why I insisted that whatever gender our newest little baby would be, we were going to name our little one Kai to remember our island trip and the beauty of that sweet season!

Kai means the sea and the sky.  This name embraces freedom, wonder and comfort in my mind.  Our cherished Malakai has been all these things and more- he is only 4 years old now, but I am confident the Lord has placed his life in the most timely of positions.  His first breath was given to us at a time that I imagine we have never really needed God's Grace and Goodness more.  A huge tragedy and loss had taken place in our family just over a month before and we really needed some physical reassurance and faith again that our Father God was still a Good, Good Father.

You see, my sister and I were pregnant at the same time back in 2016.  We were both due only 2 days apart from each other!  Incredible really!  When we found out about this, I was beyond thrilled, as well as amazed- what if my sister and I actually gave birth on the same day?  How crazy would that be?  The same sister that I got to share twin baby sisters with (then 19 years old), the same sis who went along with me on all of my adventures as a young child and even on into our college years!  Wouldn't that be amazing if we got to share a birth date for our kids too?  Cousin twins?

Those were some of the dreams that went through my mind as I imagined the days ahead!  And yet, none of those plans were meant to be.  God was writing a different story.

At an ultra sound for my sister, about half way into her pregnancy, the technician recognized some abnormalities inside her womb.  Her baby had a unique birth defect called Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH) and it occurs in anywhere from 1 in 2,000-5,000 births, but the effects of this development can be life threatening.  While inside my sister, her baby Noah was fine and growing well, but once born, his lungs were underdeveloped and he was unable to breathe on his own.  He was born on June 24th, 2016 at 33 weeks gestation and lived a beautiful but much too quickly 17 hours and cared for by some of the most incredible Doctors and Nurses in Minnesota.  This is also why my own little Hawaiian conceived baby, Malakai, ended up being born in a little Minnesotan hospital too, because by the time I was staying with my sister for the summer, just to be near her through whatever took place, well...  it was simply too late in my pregnant days to travel anywhere else!

Malakai and Noah, two cousins that were formed the same year but were given 2 very different stories, sometimes it still blows me away at the reality of our own lives.  I never would have thought that I would have to live with a mothers survivor guilt alongside my own precious sister, and not by her doing in any way, she bore her grief as a blessing, to which I still marvel at her up to this day!  Every day with his little life inside of her, she was hopeful of keeping him with her, even with a 1% chance of survival, there was always that 1%, so why wouldn't we all hope?!  We had all prayed for a miracle!  And yet, in the end, there was a no.  That was hard to swallow, especially when my miracle had a yes of life.  There was so much guilt, so much frustration, I knew this gift of my child was undeserved and until I had to walk out my life, I didn't know if I could, but God gives us strength in our greatest weaknesses.  Strength and peace that don't really make sense!

I went on to raise a little baby boy earth side and my sister was left without a baby in her arms for almost a year.  She had a daughter who was only a toddler when she lost her brother, and this sweet girl was so very little herself that she never did meet him face to face.  And yet, I know that his life made an impact on her story too!  Precious Annarose!  She was such a trooper through all those changes of moving, hospitals, cousins, family, tears and a heartsick momma.  I know her little arms are what kept my sister comforted and that Annarose soothed my sister's aching chest during that transition without Noah, I still praise God that He provided a solution to nursing for my sister with the needs of a 1 year old sibling.  God worked in totally incredible ways during that time, he was present in a way that was exactly what we needed, full and soft, gentle and kind, whispering to us all that He really was still a Good, Good, Father and Noah was with him now, whole and not suffering, as he is now until we all meet again heaven side!

Let's back up again to before Malakai and Noah now, as I am remembering when I first started using the phrase "Heaven is ahead".  In 2015, I experienced my own infant loss, not with a full grown infant, but with a little pea of a baby at only 10 weeks, my little Charlotte Joy, or as we call her: Charli.  We didn't really know if I had a boy or a girl, but I remember holding that tiny broken body of my baby and marveling at the tiny poppyseed eyes of my child, not fully formed, but very present.   The grief I felt was beyond anything I had ever experienced- my faith in God and His character was tested like never before and in that wondering too I realized that Heaven is closer and more real than I had ever comprehended.  

Yikes!  Those are some of my heavier, deeper, more intense stories, just little glimpses, but I think that is good for now.  I hope to write again later today!  Off to bed now, I still have 3 kiddos to home school in the morning...  work is a gift and I have my hands full of it!  Thank you Jesus!