Day 61: Spreading the Word

Today I'll start spreading the news to some of my friends & family. Told my mother last night. She cried. It's interesting the reactions some people have. Many just don't give a damn! That's about what I'd have expected from most people, because frankly, historically, that's often been my own reaction to this type of news. What's taking me by surprise is who does react with genuine enthusiasm.

Day 60: Cat. Bag. Not In.

Hearing our future baby's heartbeat was a very cool moment, as I previously noted. And, as previously expected, it did have an effect on our patience regarding our "Tell Date". Last night, two weeks ahead of schedule, Mary called her parents and gave them the news. They were sufficiently overjoyed, which was good.

My younger sister is currently undergoing a course of IVF. This is their second time around. Mary and I were very lucky and it just happened without our having to get too particular about the timing, and trying, etc. I'm a bit hesitant to give our news to my poor sister, who's putting so much of her time, money, physical strength and especially her emotional energy into trying to get pregnant. Feel a bit like it might be disheartening for her.

I know on paper she's supposed to be happy for us, but if the tables were turned I know I'd feel a bit left out. I think I'll procrastinate this decision by keeping to our "Tell Date" for my side of the family. My sister may be pregnant by then!

Day 55: Heartbeat

We went to our first obstetrician appointment today, and even though we're only at 9 1/2 weeks, we were able to find and hear a heartbeat via ultrasound! It was a surprisingly emotional moment. Unexpectedly so. Makes us want to bump our "Tell Date" forward now that we know we have a healthy heartbeat. It's possible we'll cave and start telling some people tonight... although we might be wisest to wait and make sure we get no negative feedback from the early risk assessment Mary underwent this afternoon.

Very exciting day. It's getting more and more real!

[6/25/2007 Correction: it wasn't technically an ultrasound. Ultrasound is an imaging device, this just gets sound. I was unable to learn its proper name last time I was at the hospital]

Day 54: Enter the Doctor

Tomorrow is our first doctor's appointment. With all the advice online about how important nutrition is to a healthy pregnancy, I wonder why most obstetricians won't schedule a first appointment before 10 weeks (or whatever). At least give a phone call, or send-out some documentation... if Mary and I hadn't been proactive and/or hadn't had access to good information, it's quite probable we'd be putting the pregnancy (or the fetus) at risk during the most important time for fetal development.

So I can draw two possible conclusions: either we ("we" as a society) don't care that much about the prenatal health for under-privileged & under-educated individuals, OR... it's all ridiculous and having exactly the right balance of pholic acids, etc. just doesn't matter that much. When I think of all the healthy babies born in parts of the world where people, including pregnant women, get no real health care, and suffer from poor nutrition, I begin to suspect the latter conclusion is more valid.

So when faced with the decision to buy no prenatal vitamins, $12 prenatal vitamins, or $40 prenatal vitamins, what did we do? We went with the expensive vitamins, of course!

Day 44: The "Tell Date"

They say you're not supposed to tell anyone you're having a baby during the high-risk early part of a pregnancy. The intelligence we've read suggests waiting until LRMC week 12. At some point we figured out the math and calculated what we call our "Tell Date" - the date where it's OK for us to tell people we're having a baby. It's June 11; a month away. That feels like a long time to wait to share our little secret. There are already a ton of people I want to tell, and the list grows every day.

There's a reason they recommend waiting - we're still in the danger zone. I hope we're not jinxing ourselves with all this blogging, and planning on telling our friends & family, and whatnot. At this point I've gotten very excited about it, and if it doesn't happen I'm going to be in for a real blow.

Day 41: Aesthetics

Just received photos of a friend of mine's brand new baby girl, and I'm happy to report that she's beautiful. The honest truth is that I don't automatically find babies beautiful or cute or adorable. Far more often, I find them ugly... weird looking.

Ever see a kid with food all over his face and a stupid grin? Drooling? Parents beaming with pride? Ugh.

Of course, Mary and I are both convinced that our baby will be actually beautiful. We don't mean parent-beautiful. Actually beautiful. When we send you our photos, please don't send back emails telling us that our baby is "beautiful"... please specify "actually beautiful" or we'll know what you're really thinking.

Day 39: Name Game - Sign of the Times

Couldn't help it, had to look. elifaulkner.com, eliotfaulkner.com, katiefaulkner.com, katherinefaulkner.com... all of them are available! So would I pay $20 to $30 per year for 21 years just so that my child can have their own domain name? No question.

Day 38: Name Game - Girl Edition

I don't want to name my girl something that would make her sound like a cotillion-hopping socialite. Madison, Ashley, Taylor, and Arianna are all girls names in the top 100 for popularity in 2005, according to the US Social Security Administration (Arianna!?). Madison, Ashley, and Taylor have been bugging me to death since I first started frequently hearing these names, in the past ten or fifteen years. To me, these are the female equivalents to the upper-class-sounding boys names to which I so strongly objected in my last post: Hunter, Tyler (and while we're at it, lets throw in Logan). Others of this ilk are Brooke, Mackenzie, and Savannah. If my daughter wants to join the snotty cliqueish set I'll accept it, but I don't want the world to think I intended her to, and named her so that she'd fit-in. Savannah. Pff.

I'm not so intent on giving a daughter an uncommon name as I am on giving a son such a name. I don't know why. If I needed to I could probably cite family tradition, and that may be part of it, but I don't think it's the whole story. Maybe it's because I'm male, so I feel my own opinions have greater relevance to boys than girls, and since I personally like having an uncommon name, I naturally feel a son would as well, but don't feel comfortable making that assumption for a girl. Whatever the reason, for a girl, I'm entirely open to names that don't sound as if they were the middle names of Victorian-age ancestors.

Therefore, the field is much more open for girls than boys. But there are certain non-starters, as I just noted, above. Another category to exclude - for either gender - would be biblical names. Mary and I aren't religious, and Mary, having the most common (in our world) religious name for a girl, has never quite forgiven her parents. The odd thing is that they're not religious either, so it's a mystery.

Obviously, for a girl, we must also exclude stripper-names. Crystal (especially when spelled with K), Brandy, Destiny, etc. These are out.

Names that sound like they're making a comeback from the 1920's don't resonate with me either. I call these the flapper-names. Lily is one of these. So is Evelyn.

There was a time when it was popular to name your daughters (especially if you had a series of daughters) after the "virtues" (or whatever): Hope, Chastity, Charity, Prudence. No. My sister the journalist (due in a couple of months) jokes that she'll name her daughter Brevity. Now that's wit.

There's another category I'd like to take off the table. I'm not quite sure how to define it, but they're a set of names popular with my friends... we'll call them the names of the daughters of the east-coast, liberal, educated... wanted to give their daughter a cute name, but with a hint of class, not too snotty, not completely "out there". Maybe they should be called the Anglophile names. Chloe, Mia, Zoe. Also Lucy. I'll add Maya and Madeline to the list too. I realize these aren't English names, but I think you get the point. They're fine names, but too... too easy, somehow. Too "expected", too on-the-nose. These are the names my friends have been using, and I don't want to pull from the same pool.

When I was a kid, there were at least two families I knew of who had many kids (four or more) where every kid in the family had a name beginning with the letter K. Kyle, Kristen, Kevin, Kayla, Kirsten, etc. I always thought that was ridiculous, and it's left me with the completely unreasonable prejudice that K-names are somehow common, unsophisticated... the names of townies, if you will. Utterly middle-America. Recall what I did with Crystal vs. Krystal, when discussing stripper-names, above. So in the past, whenever I've thought about it or discussed it with Mary, my instinct has been to stay away from K names.

I once knew a girl (or rather, my sister did) named Grey. I always liked that. It's not a family name for me or Mary. It could possibly be classified a hippie-name if spelled Gray. By the rules I've set-up, I just can't claim it. It's a bit dark for a first name, anyway, and not perfect with Faulkner. Mary and I have a secret plan to perhaps use it as a middle name, and just tell people it's a family name, always pointing to the other spouse's family.

For some reason, I want my daughter to have the name Katie. Never mind the K! That's what I would plan to call her, though we'd set her up with the option of going more formal, by giving her the name Katherine. I'd have said Catherine, given my prejudice against K names, but Mary has a fiercely strong aesthetic reaction to Catherine Faulkner as opposed to Katherine Faulkner. Apparently, the K's balance in the latter formulation, and it somehow doesn't work in the former, and how can I be so dense as to not understand that? I'm fine with that, though I bet my aunt and cousin, both of whom went by Celia Faulkner before they were married, would have a hard time understanding the problem with a C-name resolving to Faulkner. But if I'm OK with the K in Katie, how can I possibly object to a K in Katharine? I don't.

So for now, until we can find a workable middle name, the front-runner is Katherine Grey Faulkner. Little Katie. Cute. Clean. Lovable. But without weakness or vulnerability. I like it.

Day 37: The Name Game - Boy Edition

We're still spending more time discussing possible names than planning renovations or researching the Montessori method. I really believe it matters what you name someone. I love my name now, but when I was a kid my parents saddled me with a terrible, ridiculous nickname which I hated... which I have always hated, and hate to this day. I hated my nickname so much that I often lied to people about my name. Especially in my adolescence, I invented completely different names for different contexts, groups, purposes. I can't say with certainty that I wouldn't have done the same if I had gone by Waldron, or even if I had been given an innocuous, common name like James or Michael. But being embarrassed by my name had a profound effect on my social development, and while there may have been some strength-building there, I think it did far more harm than good.

So I'm thinking very hard about what to name this kid. A lot of the names that appeal to me are instantly counteracted by my erudite-sounding surname. One category of these is what Mary and I refer to as "cowboy names". We like names like Zeke and Jed, but you can't pair a cowboy name with Faulkner. Buck Faulkner? Skeet Faulkner? No.

And then there's the somewhat similar category of "tough-guy" names which we both tend to like but are equally doomed when paired with Faulkner. These would include names like Stone and Bud and Tank. You simply cannot give a kid a name which could be shortened to "Mac" if your last name is Faulkner.

The grand-sounding names like Rex or Max or anything else with an 'x' in it? Or the too-cool names like Rafe? Trying too hard. Maybe if we were yacht people. Same goes for alliterative names. Anything starting with an 'F' sound, like Fred or Frank or Forest, seems like we're setting him up to be a certain type of person. Finn Faulkner? He ends up in show business or sales. That'd be fine, but I'd prefer not to suspect it was because of his name.

Hippy names: Rain, Sky, Kai, anything of that genre. Not for us.

So we're limited either to "normal", common names like James or Christopher or Samuel - which we both feel would be a little unimaginative - or the erudite, literary-sounding names that work so well with a name like Faulkner. Like Waldron. But on principal, I have a problem with the recent trend of appropriating names that sound like they ought to be family names, even though they're nowhere in either parent's tree. Landon, Brayden, Wyatt: all of these were in the top 100 most popular names for boys in 2005. They'd all sound great with Faulkner, but it's just way too pretentious to pull a country-club name out of thin air like that. No, it'll have to be a family name.

I come from a family with a rich tradition of naming its boys with pretentious-sounding first and middle names, so there is no shortage of material. Starting with Waldron, which is just ridiculously literary-sounding. Other Faulkner men have been named Winthrop (my uncle) and Avery (my father). A great family name on my mother's side is Watson. Now there's a good candidate, right? For many years I thought it would be a great first name for a son - provided I could find a suitable nickname, because no child wants to go through life with a name associated largely with side-kicks. But to my everlasting disappointment my sister chose to name a dog Watson, and then give the dog to me, probably specifically to make it impossible for me to name a son Watson without everyone thinking I had named him after the famous black Lab who lays snoring by my side even as I type this.

Watson would have to be a middle name, if anything. No matter, it's a fine middle name.

A lot of fancy names end in "er" (including Hunter and Tyler, both of which fall into the category of pseudo-upper-class-sounding names that I detest so). There's another name on my Mom's side - Latimer - which would be unique, and a family name, and have the right tone to it, but when a first name and last name both end in "er" it just doesn't sound right. One of my famous relatives is named Dexter. Dexter Faulkner breaks the dual "er" rule, as does Latimer Faulkner.

Believe it or not, a good potential name can cross all these hurtles and still be disqualified. Addison is a family name on Mary's side. Addison Faulkner... not bad, right? Sorry, my good friend has a child by that name. Or Vaughn... that's also a name in Mary's family. Vaughn is the name of the child of my coworker. These names are taken, and so must be ruled-out.

So no matter how much time we spend on it, we still end up back where we've been since way before we ever thought seriously of having kids, with the name of Mary's great grandfather: Eliot. One couple, good friends of ours, is expecting in the next few months. They threatened to use the name Eliot, but it turns out they're having a girl. It was a close call... this is the same couple who had their wedding just two months before ours and accidentally stole our first-dance song! You can imagine how upset we'd be if they'd also stolen our first choice name for a boy.

So it might be Eliot. I have to decide if it's too wimpy sounding - Eliot Faulkner. I have to decide how it might be shortened. Eli is a great name, not too weird, not too uncommon, not too wimpy. It's also the slang for a Yale student (after the bulldog mascot). My father went to Yale, and so did his, the other Waldron Faulkner. I don't personally have any affinity for the school, but it's a pleasant association in our family. However, one has to be careful using the name of a popular NFL quarterback. The whole nation is liable to come down with Eli-fever. For now, though, we hope the contagion may be safely contained between the coasts, in Indianapolis.

So for now, if it's a boy, it's Eliot Watson Faulkner. Little Eli. And if it's a girl? Well, stay tuned.

Day 31

Sitting around the company lunch-table today, I heard the tale of my colleague's Night Without Sleep. He's got two kids: a 1.5 year-old and a 3 year-old. He didn't get to sleep before midnight, then one child had issues from 2 AM to 2:30. Then the other child had issues from 4 AM to 4:30, then again at 5, and that was basically the end of his opportunity for sleep.

A couple of weeks ago my dog was a bit sick to his stomach & I found myself leaping out of bed at 2 and again at 5 in order to walk him (lest he commit "accident" in the house). While I was out on the street, half-dressed, freezing, walking the dog, I thought to myself: people with kids do this kind of thing weekly. Granted, they don't usually have to go out in sub-freezing temperature, but for me it's a once-a-year problem, not a once-a-week problem.

I'm 41 now. There's a reason they say it's easier to raise young children when you're young. Should we have stuck to puppies?