T-Minus 11 Weeks

There are only 11 weeks to go until the birth of our second child.

It may sound like an unbelievable exaggeration, but I’m feeling less well prepared for this one than I was for Eloïse.

When Sarah fell pregnant the first time, there was an endless stream of visits to the midwife, shopping trips, childbirth classes, reading and research. This time around, I have a better idea of what to expect, so there has been much less to do. For example, there have been no childbirth classes and only a couple of visits to the midwife. We just haven’t felt the need this time. Furthermore, with an arsenal of baby items in house, we haven’t needed to shop for much at all, so there have been few products to research, either. And with more knowledge and experience of babies, there has been less need for reading this time around.

With Eloïse taking up so much of our time, the circumstances are thus such that Sarah’s second pregnancy isn’t on our mind day and night. Although I haven’t exactly forgotten about it, the 29 weeks to date have absolutely flown by. Sarah’s starting to feel increasingly tired now, however, so we’re becoming more constantly aware of the pregnancy than we have been.

When I sit back and contemplate just how soon the new baby will be here, I must say I find it a bit daunting. Although not much practical preparation has been required this time around, the consequence of not having done any is that these daily activities haven’t been subtly and gradually adjusting my mind to the idea of a new family member.

So, it’s suddenly hitting home quite hard: there’s a new baby coming in 2.5 months!

We’re not totally unprepared, however. We’ve bought a few items of clothing recently and I’m about to order a new ISOFIX car-seat.

We’re probably going to invest in a new cargo bike (bakfiets), too, although we haven’t yet decided which make and model. Bicycle or tricycle? Which colour? If a tricycle, do we get wheels that turn independently of the box? Decisions, decisions.

I bought a preprinted baby logbook yesterday, in which we can record all of the milestones along the path of our new child’s development. I also eyed with envy the 2008 models of the Bugaboo Cameleon pram, but our almost three year old model has plenty of life left in it yet, so I can’t justify a new one of those. Sarah doesn’t even want to buy a new set of fabrics for it, so it looks as if we’ll be sticking with orange over blue.

Names are something we’re still wrestling with. We didn’t start seriously looking at names until a couple of months ago. Much of the groundwork was, of course, done for Eloïse, so we didn’t feel the need to start as early on.

Although I would emotionally be just as happy with a boy or a girl, I’m almost starting to lean towards preferring a girl. There are a few reasons for this:

1. I am familiar with being a parent to a girl. For example, one thing I know about girls is that their anatomy renders then incapable of squirting urine at me. Girls are therefore more practically engineered than boys (in this regard, at least).

2. Boys seem to be generally more trouble. If there’s a stabbing at school, it usually involves two boys. Who causes all of the wars in the world? Mostly men. Boys need to prove themselves to survive amongst other boys, whereas girls don’t; at least not in the same way. Girls can present serious problems too, but on the whole, I suspect they’re statistically less likely to die tragically. Yes, I’m a pragmatist.

3. It’s much easier to choose a name for a girl than for a boy. Why is that?

This article by Laura Wattenberg delves into the reasons behind ‘boy block’ and provides some compelling evidence for the phenomenon. Sarah and I are definitely sufferers, but I didn’t know why until I’d read this article. I’ve been convinced.

Since we’ve chosen to follow nature and not discover the sex of our baby until the birth, we have double the workload when it comes to finding a suitable name. The task is further complicated by the fact that Sarah and I are from quite different cultural backgrounds. Even amongst names that are phonetically or stylistically similar, we find that we have quite different taste.

We’re not even inclined towards choosing the same number of names. A first name and a middle name is pretty much the de facto standard in the US, whereas I do not feel bound by what I view as an artificial, self-imposed template.

Nor do I believe that the first name has to be the one that the child goes by. It’s very common here for the child to be known by its second name or even some (often more colloquial) derivation of either the first or the second.

That means that I may want to put a name that Sarah really likes in second position, because the B-A order sounds more pleasing to the ear than the A-B order. To my mind, nothing is lost, because the child can still be known by name A. To Sarah, though, this is often unacceptable. A must precede B, because the first position is where the child’s everyday name goes. I care more about the phonetics than the positioning. Sarah would rather solve this issue by choosing a different name altogether for the second slot.

Tricky, isn’t it?

There are other issues I’m not going into, because they’re mostly the result of our different culture and its accompanying popular heritage. For example, your average American has watched (or is at least aware of) a vastly greater number of films and television programmes than I have.

This means that certain names that, to me, have little or no association are unacceptably linked to a certain, often fictional personage in the US. Brand names, too, can turn out to have irretrievably tarnished names that are, to me, at least, still perfectly usable.

This phenomenon also works in reverse, from me to Sarah, but it’s less pronounced. I’m more likely to think that a name sounds stuck-up or pretentious. At least we can both agree that Adolf has been sullied beyond patronage; I would also claim that George has suffered a similar fate.

I’m also revolted by the continuing American trend to bestow surnames on children, particularly boys. Often these names, like Hunter, Cooper, Parker, Carter and Porter are derived from old professions, to which, in my mind, they are still inextricably linked. It would be like calling your child programmer or system administrator. What a nice name!

Fortunately, Sarah’s not drawn to these professional surnames-as-first-name, nor to the non-professional variety, either. Surnames are best left as surnames, in my opinion. You don’t want your child’s name to read like the engraved plate over the door of a firm of solicitors or accountants, do you? Well, apparently, many Americans want just that. What to me sounds ghastly and pretentious is very much in vogue over there.

We have a short list now, but as mentioned before, we’re closer to a result with the girls’ names than with the boys’. Be a girl and make life easy for us! We could probably name this child and a third without much difficulty now, as long as both were girls, of course.