The tittle of this blog post is the meaning of our little sons name… Kai Tohea Beckers, came in the morning of the 22 of march 2015, at 7.05 in the morning.

He is 46 cm long and weighs 2,920g.

He is born in the town of Taiohae on the island of Nuku Hiva,in the Marquesas that are part of French Polynesia.

It all started around midnight on the 21, I was waking up every 30 min or so, with some strong contractions…. In the morning and day I tried to go about the day as usually. We went to the little snack place where we have our fresh fruit juices and do some internet. Went back to the boat and hanged out with our friends from the boat Namaste, Rachel and Patrick. Played a round of backgammon with Rachell.  While Markus and Patrick re-sealed one of our hatches (windows).

Around late afternoon, I told Markus that it wold be best if we take some pictures because I might not have this belly very long.

Our friend Jasna from Calypso just came over and offered her service…:) also wonderful Martine from another catamaran came over and took this cool artistic picture.

We where lucky that we did this because at 20.00 I had so strong contraction and in such short period of time.

Markus packed the last things to our hospital bag, and tried to clean up as much as possible, as he had been working on the boat,  at 21.00 we where at the hospital. FULL labor on!. We left the boat a big mess.. but nothing we could do…

Our wonderful midwife Ines was with us all the way from arriving on the dock with the dingy till end of delivery.

The delivery took 5 hours from when i got the epi dural. Markus was wonderful and so was Ines. I could not wish for a better delivery.

When our little boy came out, he did not even cry… Just a little wimp, kind of saying “Hello, Im here now…”

Markus cut the cord, and he was placed in my arms.

Everything felt so surreal and i have to admit that after one week with Kai, I still can’t really believe that he is ours.. A mix between Markus and I…

We staid at the hospital for 3 days, and during those days our sailing family  came and visit! 😀 It’s incredible how much love we have felt during the last month here! Everyone knows us, and everyone loves baby Tohea.

Tohea is Kai’s marquisian name, that means “trade winds” or “sea breeze”, Kai on the other hand means ocean in Hawaiian, but here it means “eat” and “kai-kai” means food. So we avoid sang Kai here, as every local person would look at us strangely and wonder why we wold name our son “EAT” … hahaha…:D

The day we got back home to the boat was very exciting, as we could not wait to go back! Ines took us in her little car and drove us down to the dock with all our stuff. We got a lot of attention even do we where kind of discreet 😀

And what a suprice we got when we came back!!!!!

THE BOAT WAS SPOTLESS!!! I was a little worried as I knew how bad it looked when we left, and i felt a little stressed about it “Here we come, with a newborn and the boat is a mess and we will have to clean up!!”

But our WONDERFUL friends Patrick and Rachel had came over cleaned up for us… And on the bed was this wonderful present.

I cryed like a baby!!!! I felt sooooo happy and torch by this amazingly kind gustier that it was just overwhelming.

So ones again THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! ❤ from the bottom of my heart!

The following days we tried to get in to a rutine, to see what worked best for us. We cant ask for a better little boy. HE IS SO NICE!! he is calm and cries only when he is hungry. He sleeps good, eats good, poops a lot and he is just super duper cute!! WHAT ELSE CAN WE ASK FOR!?!? 😀 = NOTHING!

 

I gess a lot of people is wondering what we are going to do now… Are you coming back to europe? are you staying on the boat?, whats the plan??!?!

Well of course we are sating on the boat!!!! HELLO….!!! hahaha…for us it’s no question about it, this is our life, living on the boat, connected to the sea, feeling calm and free. It wold be really hard for us to go back to “normal” life.

Also we want baby Kai to have this freedom to!

So no “coming home” for good…. But of course we going to go back to visit all our family and friends in Europe, so they can meet our little monster…:D when… we don’t know yet, but soon we hope…

The most updated news we have do, is that we are going to stay here in Marquesas for some more weeks and then we set sail toTahiti. But before we want to make sure everything is good and we feel comfortablel sailing with our little human… 🙂 but he is sooo happy on the boat so we don’t see any problem ahed…

 

We are the luckiest  parents! We are doing super good all tree of us… and enjoying every minute!

LOVE LOVE LOVE

Kai Tohea, Cathy and Markus