Pregnancy Diary Week 10: Optimism and Names

Week 10

At the risk of sounding like a smug bitch, I am on top of the world at the moment. I feel physically much better and emotionally less fragile, which has lifted an enormous weight off my shoulders and made things infinitely better, in stark contrast to the last few fairly horrid weeks. This is the first time that I have allowed myself to be really excited about having a second baby and properly think about it as a reality. We are of course still in the relatively early stages and the risk of miscarriage doesn’t dramatically reduce until after week 12, but being in week 10 is double figures at least and so feels like an important milestone. Heck, it’s a quarter of the way through! My pregnancy apps reliably inform me that my baby is the size of a green olive this week, or the size of a date, depending on which app you consult. Are olives the same size as dates? I really don’t know. But either way, that’s clearly ginormous, as well as being very helpful for either pre-dinner party nibbles or dealing with constipation, only one of which is currently relevant for me unfortunately. I am now finding myself starting to think about names, which makes things seem a lot less abstract, sometimes comfortingly and sometimes somewhat anxiously so. My husband is fairly understandably not participating in this activity until after the scan and so we have not yet had any truly constructive discussions about names. “What do you think about Seren?” “I don’t care. I’m not thinking about it yet. And it’s shit.” However, I feel like I need to get on top of this whole naming thing. Particularly if we’re having twins, or even quads (NB we are most probably not having twins or quads but I feel bloody massive and so this is a constant pre-occupation at the moment). For our first baby we pretty much ruled out every name under the sun except for our single chosen boy’s name and girl’s name. Having a boy already, this means we’re kind of OK if we have a girl this time, but if it’s another boy it could be faced with a rather bleak, anonymous existence, being referred to as: “he who shall not be named”, in honour of JK Rowling. Or we have to face choosing a name that, let’s be honest, we like slightly less than the name of our first son. And so in my view this whole naming thing needs extra consideration this time. Additionally, we set ourselves up for a rather difficult sequel having chosen two middle names for our eldest, one of which is slightly ridiculous. His first middle name is William after his late paternal Grandfather and maternal Great Grandfather, which most people seem to be agreed is altogether rather lovely. His second middle name is Ashcroft after the great Richard Ashcroft, lead singer of the Verve, which my husband and I are also agreed is altogether rather lovely, but also very aware that many might hold a different opinion. Do we need to follow the same formula this time, or do we abandon this entirely? Do we have any other suitably virtuous relatives who we can honour in this way? Do they have to be dead to ensure said virtuosity? Do we need a second middle name with a musical theme? Is Gallagher entirely inappropriate and would Mercury be too out there? If we stick with this approach and choose a first name longer than four letters are we condemning our child to a lifetime of going off the edge of the form? These are all important things that need careful thought, but I am really enjoying thinking about them and indulging in the happiness and excitement of what is to come. Even if we call the baby Bernard Voldemort Bowie Grandison, they will be cared for and cherished and loved and I can’t wait to meet them in around 30 weeks. Eek!