Aya Rose Nalani
11/3/01
7 lbs. 3 oz. 19" tall
Updated 11/5/05
Aya Rose holding one of her (numerous) puppies very close.
Aya Rose makes her political statement very clear
with the Capitol building in Sacramento in the background.
Andris as a toddler and his respective clone.
Aya Rose in front of her great-great grandma's garden.
Friends: Eden, Marcela, Sofia, Aya Rose.
Cinnamon Sisters.
Doing just ducky!
Sleeping soundly with Daddy.
Someone got her ears pierced!
Piggybuns!
Cheese! (With a hint of an Elvis snarl)
In an outfit Mommy made for our family reunion.
Having a mud mask during a sleepover.
Sofia -- in rag curls -- paints Aya Rose's toenails.
Playing at Papa's.
Aya Rose, Emma and Eden at Papa's.
Mommy and Aya Rose
Home Skillet and Snoop Storky Stork.
Okay. I took a ton on this day.
In a field of flowers by the duck pond on a sunny afternoon.
Super-Cheeeeeese!
Maybe one day she'll make her own path...
Freckles and Cheetos.
Daisies!
My clothes are falling off!
How's the weather up ther?
La-la-la-lee-lee...
Flowers.
Super-Duper-Scooper Cheeeeeese!
Hanging out in the front on a warm summer night.
Riding the tricycle.
Mommy and Aya Rose. Eden took this picture.
Aya Rose on her 4th birthday.
Aya Rose on her 4th birthday.
Aya Rose and Eden.
Her Name
Pronounced EY-uh, Aya was named by her big sister. Too many months of disagreement and conflict
arose between Andris and I whenever the topic of a girl's name would come up. One day we asked
Eden what she would want to name a little girl. She kept saying "Aya Rose. Aya Rose. Aya Rose."
Her Hawai'ian name, Nalani, means "sky."
Birth Story (By: Christy)
What an amazing weekend for our family. Friday night at about 10:30 p.m. we went to
L&D because I thought my water broke. I wasn't having any contractions
or anything, but had some trickling of fluid earlier that evening. They examined me.
Fingertip dialated, thick and high. Wonderful! They did a speculum test to see
if there was any amniotic fluid present.
As the doctor took the slide to the microscope, I got myself dressed to go back home. What a pessamist!
She came back to tell me that my water hadn't broken.
I was actually relieved because I was SO tired. I just wanted to go home and sleep. So I did. Andris
knew how exhausted I was so he volunteered to sleep with Eden downstairs on the couch and let me
have the bed to myself.
At about 3:15 a.m. I woke up feeling like I had to poop. My stomach hurt so bad. I went to the toilet
and.... nothing. I laid back down in bed and farted a good one, so I figured it was gas. But the
pain didn't go away so I decided to draw a bath. The warm water would feel good, and I could fart all I wanted in the bath.
It sure did feel good, but the stomach pain didn't stop. It didn't feel like contractions, but
the "pain" was almost constant. About 5 minutes apart I'd "cramp."
I went downstairs to wake Andris. I thought maybe I was in labor. He wasn't waking up...and I wasn't
trying too hard. So I walked around downstairs to see if I was having contractions or to see if I'd
maybe fart some more. No toots, just cramps...and they hurt like mad.
He and Eden were on the couch together and Eden moved a little and woke him up. He saw me standing
there. "I think I'm in labor." He said, "Okay. What do you want to do?" I told him I wanted to go
upstairs and maybe soak in my bath some more. He asked if there was anything he could do or if I even
wanted him with me at that time. I told him I didn't care. I knew he was tired, too.
He followed me upstairs...what a long trip that was. I think I had two or three contractions on the way
up. I knew I didn't have time to soak in a bath. I didn't even feel like we had time to call the
hospital. We sure didn't have time to grab our bag. We headed out to the car and made our way to the
hospital calling my mom, my dad, and Eden's' support person, Amanda, while we were en route. My
mom was the only one who answered her phone. The
time: 4:30 a.m.
We get to the hospital. They were surprised to see me back. LOL They sent me to triage and handed me the
gown and gurtle. I couldn't get into the gurtle. I was in too much pain. That triage room was a two-bed
triage and there was a woman in the other bed and her husband was with her. Boy, did I come to feel sorry for her.
I was doing the low moans. I was in massive pain. The nurse checked me and I was 5-6 cms. I told them
that last time I went from 2 cms long and high to 10 in under a half hour. For some reason I
don't think they believed me about how fast my labors progress because they didn't treat the
situation with urgency right away, but rather like I was a wimp.
Andris had to go to the nurse's station twice to tell them that my labors progress quickly. They asked him
how far apart my contractions were and he clapped slowly to indicate that they were right on top of each
other. 10 minutes after I'd been checked and had been deemed 5-6 I was now 8-9. They believed me now!!!
They decided to call my doctor. LOL The poor lady in the other bed listening to me labor. I heard her
say, "Uh, maybe I'm not in labor after all." LOL They moved her out of the room and set up the triage
room for our delivery.
The team was great. They had my birth plan in hand and one of the nurses went over it with me between
contractions. "She wants the lights dim. Turn them off. Christy, do you still want the baby on your
stomach after you deliver?" Etc. etc.
It was so quiet. Andris stood right next to me holding Eden. She watched in amazement. "Baby.
Baby." And she kept kissing me. Pushing was the easiest, least painful part of labor for me. I
couldn't believe it! And....the baby was face up! I pushed for about 20 minutes and out came the
head...with the cord wrapped tightly around the shoulder, so they had to cut it before I could finish delivering.
Born at 5:48 a.m. (two and a half hours of labor start to finish)
Weighing 7 lbs 3 oz.
19 inches long was a perfectly healthy baby GIRL!!!
I didn't have any drugs. It was so wonderful! I did tear a little bit, and boy does my butt hurt!! Little
Aya Rose is nursing wonderfully and her big sister can't get enough of her. Eden always wants to
hold her and kiss her and help out however she can.
Pictures to come soon. But if you want an idea of what she looks like, refer to Eden's newborn pictures in this website.
Birth Story (By: Andris)
Remembering: The Miracles in My Life
My wife woke me up from a sound sleep on the sofa. Dancing painfully from foot to foot, groaning and
wailing like a plaintive spirit reaching into my dream and rattling me into a bleary-eyed awareness.
I was so tired. I mean, I remember spending a very long sort of frozen moment staring at the clock
on the wall, patiently waiting for it to reveal its secret to me. First I found the light brown
wooden circle on the wall where I knew the clock should be. Slowly, slowly the circle of numbers and
the hands and then my own impatient hand rubbing the wax out of my eyes. Looking again, I still
couldn't determine whether it was 12:15 or 3:00. Why do I recall that so vividly? It seems so strange
to me that a moment so really meaningless can come back so completely as to transport me back and show me
every little detail about the room. About myself.
She was wet, I could see, and the anguish in her face brought me away from the clock and off the
sofa. When my wife is feeling her worst, she cannot be stopped from subjecting herself to the
seeming self-abuse of going first to the hot bath, then to the bed, and back, and again, for hours on
end, and I think in an effort to return to the womb. All she returns to, ultimately,
is the freezing-cold-because-she-made-it-soaking-wet bed, and the dreadful discomfort
of shivering under the water-heavy comforter.
This frozen misery compells her back to the hot bath. Overheated by the bath and far too
distracted by the pain to fully dry her flowing long black mane, she further soaks the bed.
It's easy to pity her in her predicament.
Tonight she is grunting instructions. "Get Eden. (Our then 22-month old daughter.) Pack a
sandiwch. Get the car." She was contracting and dialating, and it was time.
I don't remember where the car was parked, or much of the drive there except in flashes of still
moments like photographs of my hand on her knee when we crossed over the railroad tracks, or of
rolling her up the ramp in a wheelchair under the bright flourescent lighting on the "Entrance" sign at
the Goliath automatic glass doors.
We'll probably always laugh at the way the triage nurses seemed so insistent that they had
to "have someone take a look at" my wife before she gave birth, and my wife screaming at them
that, "By the time they get here, they'll be taking a look at the baby!" I laugh out loud every
time I think of it. She was right, too. That birth happened so fast that, in a whole wing full of
empty birthing rooms, my newest daughter was born right there in triage while most of the nurses were
still putting their gowns on.
The thing that I love most about the way Aya Rose was born is that, not-quite-two-year-old Eden was
right there on my hip the whole time. We had been telling her that her baby was coming, preparing
her as well as we could for all the changes that were coming to her young world. She was so willing,
so understanding as she leaned in to kiss her mother's sweating, panting face.
You know, it occurs to me now that Eden was the calmest person in the room that night. She would
say, "It's okay, Mama. It's okay," as she stroked my wife's cheeks with her tiny hands. It was
incredible, I know, only to me, her glowing, proud father.
Clutching my wife's hand and kissing her pallid face that night after our daughter was born,
I was grateful for the blessing of family. I thought of how strained my relationships had become
in my family when I was younger, how alone in the world I have felt my whole life because our family
ties have always been so precarious. There was always someone not talking to someone; never a family
reunion concluded without the obligatory huge blowout. Inevitably, someone's kids got thrown in the
car with their swimsuits still wet while their parent(s) said their last few angry words through the open car window.
I was the only one in my whole family with my last name. Mom married and divorced before I was
born. She gave me his last name but then took her maiden name back. She fostered a fear or abandonment
in me by threatening to make me a ward of the Court all through my adolescence. For those and a few
other reasons, the ties that bound me to her whole family were loose, indeed, and in fact, I
haven't had contact with any of them for years and years, now.
Holding my children in my arms the night of Aya Rose's birth, I was overcome with resolve to make
a real sense of connection for my family. My nodding head filled with visions of watching my girls
graduate, and of congratulating them on their many successes in life. I dream of family celebrations no
one wants to see end, and fancied myself the patriarch to a family without...
Click the Mailbox to E-Mail Us
Aya Rose Archive 1
Aya Rose Archive 2
My family's homepage.
Visit my mom's online store.
Our Travels Page.
See my big sister, Eden.
Sisters (Eden and Aya Rose) page.
view my guestbook |
sign my guestbook
What I'm doing now...
** I sing and dance!
I try to copy everything Eden does.
** I'm good at hide and seek.
** I like wearing everyone's shoes and playing dress-up with big sister's clothes.
If I see it, I must climb it.
**I like to help brush my teeth.
**I like riding bikes with my big sister.
**I help my daddy when he cooks.
