You're listening to Chapter 7, Pregnancy Tales.

How the days went while you were blooming within me. I remember each upon each, the swelling

changed planes of my body, and how you first fluttered, then jumped, and I thought it was my heart.

An excerpt from Audrey Lord's 1968 poem,

Now That I Am Forever with Child.

My pregnancies are always kind of difficult.

I gain like 80 pounds and I'm like unhappy and always nauseated.

But Tiades was easier.

Lili Nui's was way harder.

Seara was going through it this time around.

This pregnancy with Lilanoi was no joke.

She thinks it has a lot to do with the Hawaiian goddess Pele.

She's real and she's real intense and she rules the islands, especially this island and she

is a goddess of fire, like literally.

And one of the things is she, the day that Linoi was conceived, she went off.

Like, she started flowing.

Known for her power, Pelle, or Madame Ple, is the creator and destroyer of land.

Legend has it that she created the Hawaiian Islands, and she rules over all the volcanoes on the big island, where Ciara and her family call home.

Like that's when we had a huge, like huge, like, how big was that earthquake?

Six. It had to been more than than that it was almost like a seven

it was so huge it was like so crazy like lily noi was conceived that morning and then like we had like

the earthquake and then pele went off like she started flowing and it was really bad and it lasted for like

...