What’s your name?

Choosing a name for our baby has been particularly challenging this time around.  When we first found out I was pregnant with Littleman, we were so excited and started chatting about names pretty early on.  I ran out and bought a baby name book, filled with hundreds of lists and thousands of names (many of which I’d never heard of and couldn’t pronounce).

After the intial excitement wore off and we decided that we would find out if we were having a boy or a girl, we put our name selection process on hold until we knew that Littleman would be a boy.  That allowed us to focus only on boy names.

It was still tough, though.  Both of us have names that are very, very common for our age group.  If you were born in the 70s, it is quite likely that you had many of us in your class.  We knew we didn’t want that for our child, but we also didn’t want something wildly obscure or with questionable pronunciation.  Our last name isn’t easy, so the first name had to be simple enough.  And, of course, you have to think about initials and nicknames.

We finally settled on a system, where we could both add names to a list and that either of us could veto any that we really hated.  As the due date approached, we had a list of three names that we both agreed upon.  We went into the hospital armed with a list to choose from once the baby was born.  This approach worked well for us because, in the end, we didn’t end up choosing the name that we both originally thought of as the frontrunner.  And it wasn’t until seeing Littleman, that we were really able to feel that our name choice was the right one.

Fast forward three years and here we are again, coming up with boys names.  We left it a lot later this time, mainly because we have a lot less time on our hands and always had something else we needed to be doing.  Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I made D sit down with me a talk about it. 

The first thing we had to decide was whether or not to keep the names that were on Littleman’s list but didn’t get used.  We ended up keeping one and tossing the other.  We were just kind of over it, I guess.  Then, we went through our add/veto process until we ended up with two more names that we like.  Of course, this time we also had to take into account how the name sounded with Littleman’s name (for example, we didn’t want them to rhyme and we didn’t want one super trendy name with one old-fashioned traditional name). 

So, here we are again with three names that we’ll head into this baby’s birth with.  Hopefully one of them will feel right when the moment arrives.

 

15 weeks

I’m 15 weeks pregnant today and impatiently awaiting my OB appointment tomorrow.  As a slightly pessimistic person, I think I’ve been pretty successful at staying positive lately.  I’ve only really started to feel nervous for tomorrow’s appointment over the past couple of days. 

If Baby Bo allows us to hear his/her heartbeat tomorrow (please Bo, please!) I think we will start to selectively share the news of this pregnancy.  I’ve been struggling to get dressed these days, so telling my closest work colleagues will help ease that burden.  I won’t have to worry so much about finding something to wear that camouflages my widening belly.

Symptoms-wise, I have good days and bad days.  I still have random moments of nausea – usually in the evenings.  I’m still totally exhausted and my boobs still hurt.  I’ve had some cramping here and there, mostly of the repetitive poking sort.  Any cramping, of course, has me totally freaking out.  Not that I actually had any cramping with my miscarriage…

Anyway, in funnier news, we finally told Littleman about the baby in mommy’s tummy.  He wanted to know “why mommy not lift me?” so we told him.  Since he’s known, he’s flip-flopped back and forth about whether it’s a brother or a sister, but he told us pretty clearly what the baby’s name is: Baby Janet.  WHAT?  I have no idea where that came from.  I’m quite certain there are no Janets in his daycare class and we don’t know anyone by that name.  Where on earth did he pull that from?  A book, perhaps?  Who knows.  But we sure had a good chuckle when he announced that one!

5 weeks and introducing Bo

I’m 5 weeks pregnant today.  As I looked at the calendar this morning, I realized that each new pregnancy week will start on a Wednesday – the same day as my last pregnancy.  That means I would have been 28 weeks today if I hadn’t miscarried in March.  I still miss that baby every day.  Being pregnant again certainly helps me feel a bit less sad than before, but a day hasn’t gone by where I haven’t thought about what happened.

On a more positive note, my treatments seem to be working and my lady parts are feeling much, much better!  A couple more days of medication and then, hopefully, I will be completely infection-free!

At 5 weeks, I’m still not experiencing much in the way of symptoms.  My boobs are a bit tender and veiny, but not full-on sore or huge.  I’ve had some minor nausea the last couple of evenings, but nothing to write home about.  I’m pretty tired, but that could be the result of parenting an active two-year-old, rather than pregnancy-induced fatigue.

The other night D asked me what we were going to call this baby.  He wasn’t asking what the baby’s name would eventually be, but what we would be calling the baby during its gestation.  For my past two pregnancies, we’ve nicknamed our little embryos right from the beginning. 

Littleman was called “Tadpole”.  I think that was due to one of the first descriptions we read about what our “baby” looked like at the time.  Looking back, it was kind of a gross name, but, nevertheless, we called him that right up until the moment he was born.

We named our second baby “Poppy” (as in poppy seed) because that was size of the baby at the time we found out we were expecting.  That name only lasted a short while because Littleman mis-heard us one day and said “Puppet?”  From that moment on, up until our loss, that baby was “Puppet.”

So, what’s this baby’s name?  This little one – our rainbow – is called “Bo.” 

Does everyone else nickname their offspring while they’re still in the womb?  I guess, for us, it just always felt right to be able to call our babies something other than “it”, even before we knew the sex or had any names picked out.