"We're going to have a baby!" I shouted, awakening from my sleep.

"Whose baby? Not ours?"

My husband Earl was stunned, as our baby days are so over.

"No," I replied, laughing. "I had a dream."

"How soon?" he asked.

Earl and I met in our teens at the now-defunct Del Monte pineapple cannery. Since then, he's struggled to accept my dreams, visions and the meanings I felt they held for us. When I could convince him that the dreams were something beyond simply my imagination, he agreed to work with them to help guide our lives. Living in the Islands, I understood that dreaming was part of my Hawaiian culture, my heritage.

Earl, on the other hand, hardly ever had a dream.

Dreams come when we sleep because our walls of protection are down. We have wide-awake visions when something in us has broken down our walls.

"In the dream," I told him, "I was looking for baby bottles and blankets. I called my 'ohana from Kahalu'u to 'Ewa Beach, asking for any leftover baby clothing that I could borrow."

"How soon?" My husband asked again.

"Not sure," I replied, "but the baby blankets were blue!"

Earl and I had trained as foster parents, but the fear that I couldn't love this child unconditionally were coming on. It had been two years since our training, and each time they called to place a child with us, I would turn them down. But now the dream's encouragement told me it was time.

Within the week, Kaimana was delivered to us. He was 10 days old, and he was born exactly at midnight. We were told that his birthday was picked for him, since he was born at midnight between the 18th and the 19th day, of course 1+9=10 ... Tot-ten.

Over the years, my dreams have been faithful to lead the way for us, and to solve some family problems. About 15 years ago, I dreamt that my husband would be out of a job. He was stunned, disbelieving that dream. But because of the dream, he started to read events occurring in his company. My dream more than prepared us for when the company folded. It gave us an edge of recovery. With a big family to support, we needed the edge the dream gave.

The stumbling block is when I misinterpret dreams. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

Two weeks after the adoption of Kaimana, I had another dream. I told my husband about it: We were going to fulfill our name, TOT-TEN!

"What do you mean, fulfill our name?" he gave me a puzzled look.

I smiled and waited.

He's a smart guy. ... I think I saw a white streak just run through his hair!

A. Lee Totten, mother of 11, has adopted seven foster children

Reach A. Lee Totten at (Unknown address).