What's in a name?

So I think I've exhausted most of the funny stuff regarding her conception up until this point so for the last few chapters here we'll talk about some of the stuff that was running through my mind as I learned what it was like to be involved in a pregnancy. 

Everything was new for both of us, so I had some questions that were probably weird sounding but not anything you'd normally ask your pregnant friends-  for example, what does this mean for the royal "we"?  Will we still be intimate?  (Again, I *know* know that you can- but I'm a big guy and already treating my wife like a sacred and delicate vessel) There was still a lot of stuff I wouldn't truly understand until I was experiencing it.  

And hey,  do you remember that unwavering certainty that we were going to have a girl before we had a miscarriage earlier in the year? 

This time?  We were super positive that we were going to have a boy.  And his name would be...


Chapter 6  "They thing you need to know about boys that you aren't prepared for is the smell...*"

Here are some early conversations my wife and I had about naming our son:

"If we call him that, (so and so) is going to think we're naming him after him"

"So and so's kid already has that name".


"Seriously?  (laughing)  Why *that* name?"

"What the hell is a 'regnal' name?"  (Hey.  I wanted a cool name, but we already knew a bunch of Henry's and Robert's and even Adam's.  We were stuck)

Coming up with a baby girl name was almost as easy as breathing.  Coming up with boy name was proving to be a challenge.  It got to the point where we started making jokes about ridiculous non-names as a name.  "Chalupa Con Queso P-----"?  "Hewlett Packard"?  "Tater Tot Hot Dish".  Seriously, we probably had a list of 50 names that made us giggle and by the time we thought it'd be hilarious to write these down to show him when he was old enough, we had already forgotten the better one's.  Acura Quidditch was probably on the list.  (And if you wanted to know where *I* was landing with the name- I told my wife that he should be a straight up junior.  "HONEEEEEEEEY... don't you think it'd be Cah-UTE if we had matching Twins jersey's and mine said "Papa" and his said "Junior"?!?!  HONEEEEEEY?!??!?!"  This was actually the closest we came to a real conversation about it.)

So this time around, we were super cautious about how we revealed this to people and when.  We made our initial appointments with her Ob/Gyn and made sure to get past the 6 week mark before telling her parents.  We ordered chromosome testing which would help determine the sex earlier rather than later- and along those lines we both agreed that we didn't want to have anything be a surprise.  (We already had the well-meaning friends who asked us, weirdly, if and when we learned the sex that we should be okay with whatever sex our child identifies with.  And look, no shit.  But cart/horse and all that, I was like "Can we just get past the being born and healthy part first?")

Along those lines, we were sort of keen to avoid getting a lot of unsolicited advice.   We're happy to ask for help and like I said- I was still thinking we had parenting classes and books and shit we needed to read...In short, we never presumed to know it all.  But you hear stories of how some parents have super-definitive child rearing methods that in spite of their well-meaning and probable success (for them), can seem overbearing, overwhelming, and occasionally obnoxious.   (My wife told me stories about a mama group on the Book of Faces where "fights" would break out like between that one relative who wears the MAGA hat to Thanksgiving and likes to make racist comments on your super-liberal social media posts.   She eventually joined a group of mutual friends in the theater and has been really happy having a sounding board, FYI.)

A funny thing that might run contrary to my last comment:   I *did* have a friend that very recently had their own kid, and he reached out to offer a $.05 worth of valuable advice:  Namely securing child care as soon as possible (Waiting lists are stupid real, and they don't always line up when mommy's maternity leave is up.), and to remember to bring an extension cord to the hospital.  Go figure. That was probably the best advice we received.

And to double back...those first few months after she learned she was pregnant was still early enough that things like how frisky we were going to get wasn't an issue, but what did happen was that suddenly I found my finances thrown into sharp relief- which, after getting the day care advice from my friend, is most apparent when you see how expensive day care actually is.  We learned about parents that just opted to quit their day job to be a stay at home parent due to the fact that child care is basically the same as their annual salary.  (It's a fucking con, is what it is.  There's a built-in day care at my current office job and I checked out the prices for full-time care and it was $450 a week.  Yeah.)    And even part-time care with gramma helping?  Is almost 2/3rds of my salary. Suddenly I started wondering if I could get or have time for a second job.

I was a little scared.

As we careened toward the end of the year and my 44th birthday-  I eventually told my bosses at the temp gig who were (unexpectedly) excited and brought up due dates and necessary time off when it happened.  And it was on a beautiful late-Fall afternoon that my wife called me at work and I once again scampered off to a conference room with a little trepidation to take the call- this time with the chromosome test results.  Look, everyone wants perfect kids while they're growing them, but there's still a gazillion things that could happen before the actual delivery.  It would be peace of mind at the very least to know what we could expect in  about 7 months, and in all honesty if any of that was going to affect how we would need to parent.  And we both didn't really care, because we knew we would love him no matter what.

Except for the part when my wife said "It's a girl."

"Are you sure?"

"It's a chromosome test, babe.  Pretty sure."


So, I mean, at least we had a name picked out? 



*Today's chapter header was brought to you by a friend of mine from high school I met for breakfast at Perkins.  My 25th high school reunion took place the weekend we returned from Italy, but I knew I probably would be too wiped out to go.  (Jet lagged and jet hung over, I had decided then and there on the 9 hour flight after multiple delays to have some wine so I could unwind and relax on the way home.  Turns out, I didn't sleep at all and "some" wine turned into 4 stadium pours.  At least I watched "Infinity War" 3 x's...I guess?)  

Anyway, he had skipped it too- and we picked that particular Perkins due to it's vicinity to the reunion and hoping to maybe spot some hungover classmates.  I still had that woozy, off-center sour feeling from only having had 6 hours of decent sleep.  As such, and for as much as my wife and I decided on waiting to tell people until after we were sure a baby was happening- I let it slip that we were pregnant and that we were, again, positive it was going to be a boy.  My friend only offered the above sage advice, as he has 2 sons and they're both in sports and at the age when you start getting funky.  "Seriously.  I had to buy extra-strength Glade plug-ins for their rooms.  You open the door to go down their and it knocks you over.  Boys smell."