It’s a boy – but we already knew that

No, not ME, you insane people!

Our good friends Taz and Tweety had their baby boy on Tuesday morning! He’s healthy and cute and has downy blond fuzz on his head. The Webmaster, the kids and I went to visit them at the hospital yesterday evening. Baby Jav (as he will now be known – those are his initials, but they make for a great blog name!) is a very much anticipated first baby for our friends, and we are so happy for them.

Recently, there was a post by Poop and Boogies (what a great name for a parenting blog!) on The Blogfathers talking about whether it is better to know what you’re having before the baby actually arrives. In the interests of full disclosure, the Webmaster and I decided to find out what we were having both times. The debate in comments was interesting, with a majority coming down on the side of “it’s a surprise whenever you find out, at 20 weeks or at birth” and then opting to let the ultrasound do the talking.

Now, my parents had an interesting experience with us three older kids. Ultrasounds were not routine when we were born, so they really didn’t have the option of finding out, unless an amnio had been performed (and my mom never had one). But for each child, they had only one name decided upon. They had a girl’s name picked for me, a boy’s name picked for my brother, and a girl’s name picked for my sister. They were incredibly lucky each time.

For my youngest sister, though, they had entered the era of routine ultrasounds. And so, the ultrasound tech told my parents that they figured at about 80 percent probability that the baby was a girl. My mother had a girl’s name all ready, though the whole family went through quite a lot of options. Mom stuck to her guns, and Auntie got her name (no, not Auntie, that’s just what she’s called here). It’s a good thing she was a girl, because I was there when she was born. While my mom was in triage (the nurses were trying to determine if her water had broken), my dad and I were tossing around boy names. None of them were working. We even tried yelling with the names (“Tommy/Kenji/Robby etc., get down here and clean up this mess!”), and nothing felt real to us. So, my parents lucked out.

Now, when the Webmaster and I picked names out, we had one girl’s name and two boys’ names etched in stone after several conversations during our engagement and first year of marriage. If you had asked us then what we planned on naming our kids, we could have told you without blinking what the names were. And we stuck to them. We have allowed for some flexibility in names, just in case the baby just didn’t look like the names we had chosen. But we have chosen some pretty traditional first names (think British royalty) and Japanese middle names. We were also never shy about telling people what we planned on naming the kids. Now, I can see some of you shaking your heads. We did catch a little bit of flak for wanting to give the kids Japanese middle names, but we ignored those who made comments about it, because everyone else was generally very supportive.

The end result is that if we have another girl, we’re screwed, because even though the Webmaster says that he’ll pretty much go along with anything I pick (and that’s because Baby Boy is named for him [and my grandfather, his father, and various other men on both sides of our families who all happened to have the same first name], and the next boy will be named for his grandfather), I know that he’s still got an opinion about it. I can read that man like an open book. If I suggest a name he doesn’t like, I’ll know it. We could have a third boy, though, because I’ve got another name all ready. (Don’t tell the Webmaster.) Why is it so hard for us to name a girl?? Why am I even TALKING about it now, when I’m not pregnant and I better not be again for at least another year??? Sorry, Jav’s birth put babies back on my brain again. So, you see, we HAVE to find out what we’re having each time. Then I know if I have to start thinking about girls names again.

But, if we’ve inherited my parents’ luck, we’ll never have to worry about it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 8th, 2006 at 12:40 am and is filed under Announcements, Children.
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