Anyone who knows me will confirm that patience is not my forte, combine that with being a bit of a control freak and my idealistic views about not finding out the sex of the baby before it was born were swiftly abandoned given the opportunity at the 18 week scan. At the time though, I was absolutely certain it was a boy so I thought I’d just let the radiographer feel validated in doing her job and confirm that little fact for me. I don’t know why I thought this when I had absolutely nothing to base it on, no medical knowledge, no psychic capabilities – hell I struggle to remember my own phone number let alone predict the future! All I can claim is my ‘mother’s instinct’, you know, that intuition in which a mother is innately in tune with her offspring. As it turns out my mother instinct is rubbish, we’re having a girl.
One of the first questions that comes up as soon as people find out you’re pregnant is the sex – not are you having any, the sex of the child I mean, clearly there has been at least some of the former in efforts to get me into my current state. And apparently everyone loves girls; girls are sweet, cherubic, pretty little creatures. This I know to be a perpetuation of all the many lies of pregnancy. My own mother has told me in no uncertain terms I was a fat, funny looking baby not dissimilar to a muppet, the word pretty has never entered into it. So much for the blind adoration of a mothers love!
But I digress. Sex confirmed, the next question is invariably about names and this one has the potential to open up a whole wriggling can o’ worms. Not only do many people have very strong views about the suitably of names (which they are surprising unrestrained in sharing), there’s also the responsibility of lumping your kid with a tag it has to lug around for the rest of it’s life. And the more research I do (from highly scientific sources of course – credit to Cosmo Pregnancy et al), the more it dawns on me what a massive responsibility it is. Thanks to helpful articles like ‘How your baby’s name will influence it’s future’ detailing how our choice will dictate whether our child grows up to become a world leading politician, corporate CEO or junkie crackwhore, it’s begun to feel like a bit of a minefield. While I don’t want to overthink the whole thing I feel like we do have a duty of care to avoid the obvious doozies. We’ve agreed we won’t be adopting the place of conception philosophy, ‘petrie dish’ just doesn’t have quite the right ring about it, nor the favorite things approach that saw a particularly unfortunate set of South Auckland twins dubbed V8 and Khalua .
We have had a list of names on the fridge that’s been a work in progress since before we knew the sex. There was a drunken conversation sometime time ago (pre-prego obviously, I generally try and avoid drunkenness these days) where we agreed that if we had a girl I could choose the name and if it was a boy it would be husband’s call. However, when I saw his addition of William to the fridge list I quickly reneged on this arrangement. Seriously? William Clitherow…Willy Clit??!! You’ve gotta see that one coming a mile away, it’s just a gimme for childhood torture. For a very intelligent man, my lovely husband sometimes surprises me bless his cotton socks. Other useful contributions he has made to the list include ‘Meg’, with the following note ‘shut up Meg’ as inspired by Family Guy which I just know he would have found highly bloody entertaining. Cute darling, very cute.
Currently we’ve managed to narrow it down to a couple of favourites; only problem being that his favourite and mine are not the same. So when asked we cheerfully dish out the same line ‘Oh, we have a couple of options in mind, we’re waiting until she’s born to make the final decision’ blah blah… All the while in my head I’m thinking ‘Of course I’ll win, if I have to squeeze this child out of my clacker I’m sure as shit getting first dibs on what it’ll be called’ – after the inevitable variations on ‘get goddamn this thing out of me’ of course, that’ll just a temporary name I’m sure.
During our naming negotiations clever husband did attempt to play on my love of all things sparkly and tried to trade push presents for naming rights. Fool man, with the Willy Clit episode fresh in my mind there’s no way I was going to fall for that one. Never fear, I’m a woman of purpose and intent and I’m confident I’ll get my diamonds, just not at the cost of having my child named after genetalia. Or a cartoon, or a beverage or goodness knows wherever else the male mind may find misguided inspiration.
High Heels to High Chair 
Classic Katie !