Hippo was born at 7:20am this morning, and weighed 8 pounds 2 ounces. Despite what Cheesefairy and I both thought, he turned out to be a boy. Mother is well, Hippo is well, and Trombone is enjoying his new role as big brother. The Cheesefairy and Hippo will be coming home on Monday morning. Pix below for your viewing pleasure.
–Saint Aardvark
Last week my doctor said, “You want The Sweep?” (a quick go-round of the cervix, intended to stimulate labour before The Big Drugs.)
And I said, “Nah – I’m OK – I’ll wait.” But then the sea changed direction and I found myself counting down to this morning’s appointment.
“You want The Sweep?”
“Take a Swiffer in there too if you need to,” I replied, knickers tossed and legs akimbo.
This week’s resident, a woman who is 16 weeks pregnant (with the attendant “Hmmmmmmm?” brain freeze going on) and also suffering from a cold, grimaced slightly.
“I’m looking forward to having a real belly,” she commented, patting her 16-week bloat.
“I’m looking forward to taking mine off,” I replied, “You know, it’s so solid, it feels like you could just pop it off, like Lego, but really, it just stays attached. It goes everywhere with me. Dammit.”
Her eyes crossed, I believe.
By the time I got downtown for a coffee date, I was feeling that ache in the bum and thighs that meant labour was starting last time. Except last time I was in the hospital already at that point so my next step was pretty apparent. Today, downtown, at 11 am, with my car parked in a $2.50 / half hour lot, Trombone at my parents’ house, 20 minutes east, Saint Aardvark at work, 45 minutes west and my hospital and doctor, so recently parted from, 25 minutes south, well, I honestly just stood at the corner of Hastings and Granville for about 10 minutes and considered asking the panhandler for advice.
But then I decided that even if I was going into labour, it would be a few hours before things got underway (I know this because I am a Doctor!) so I might as well head back across to Kitsilano, as planned. I wanted to hit Kidsbooks and a couple of toy stores, as I was searching for the perfect gift for Trombone from his new sibling.
The butt and thigh pain continued – of course I was also sitting on it in traffic, all over this city, traffic, at 11:30 am, traffic, people why don’t you all get where you’re going and get out of my road already! until I found a great parking spot right outside the bookstore and waddled in (pit pat paddle pat, as The Puddle Ducks do) where I suddenly realized that it was not a book that I wanted (sorry mo-wo) but in fact, bagels. So I pit pat paddle patted down to the very conveniently located Solly’s Bagelry and purchased 6 and a container of cream cheese for the road, the road leading past a shoe store to The Toybox across the street, where I found the most likely gift from a recently born sibling to its older brother and then I gnawed on a most delicious bagel back to the car.
Driving across town to Burnaby I discovered as I went that the butt and thigh pain was actually accompanied by contractions that were 10 minutes apart, all the way to my parents’ house, where I then drank a litre of water and sat on the couch and hey presto, the contractions abated.
Driving a standard transmission is hell on the 40 week belly and legs. But this will not stop me from going to my next doctor’s appointment, assuming I need it, scheduled for Monday morning at 11:15. For more sweeping. I settled on the following visualization (the whole “opening like a flower” thing doesn’t really work for me): there’s a Brier in my vagina, with little people in team jackets, carrying Tim Hortons coffee cups, shouting “sweeeeep! sweeeeep!” Maybe it’s these women. They seem friendly and skilled.
We’ll see what happens. At the very least, I’ll be cobweb free for Hippo’s launch.
But it is a hippo and my belly, as spotted today. Her name is Francine.
This morning I was flipping through the baby name book, “A Treasury of Baby Names” by Alan Benjamin. This is the book where we found Trombone’s name (because Tuba was too common!) so I thought perhaps his sibling’s name might inhabit it as well. Today I read the Introduction, entitled “The First Gift,” for the first time.
Thankfully, Alan (meaning: handsome) provides not only a comprehensive list of names (including Alaric) but some tips for selection.
“Remember,” he writes, “that the baby girl you’ll soon be showing off to all your friends and family will one day be a woman. So before you decide absolutely on Tinkerbelle, try it on for size. ‘Do you, Tinkerbelle, take this man…?’ ‘Aunt Tinkerbelle?’ ‘Grandma Tinkerbelle?’ ‘Dr. Tinkerbelle’? Maybe you should think again.”
(What this man has against drag queens, I do not know.)
“Remember, too, that the baby boy…will probably tower over you before you know it. I doubt that Marion Morrison would have become the American film hero he did if he hadn’t changed the gift of his name for the one we remember him by – John Wayne. Shirley Povich, on the other hand, was able to overcome the considerable odds against him and to [sic] become one of the best-known sportswriters of his generation.”
(Huh. I’ve never heard of him. Oh, but is he Maury’s dad? There’s a claim to fame!)
“But everyone isn’t so strong. The Hogg sisters of pre-consciousness-raising Texas died spinsters and recluses, the victims of their given names – Ima, Sheesa and Ura.”
Lest you bristle at this initially but forgive the writer, as I did, because surely this book was first published in 1902, allow me to clarify that it was, in fact, published in 1983. With its bald face hanging out.
Issues:
1. My sweet baboo do I hate the word “spinster.”
2. Seriously? You’re either making up people to mock or else you’re mocking real people. As a cautionary tale to name your child carefully? Alan, I don’t need your advice. I need a book of name definitions.
3. Whatever else these people might have achieved, it doesn’t matter one whit to you, Alan, because they none of them ever got a gold band and thus eternal happiness?
So I googled the unfortunately named, single-to-the-death, no-one-will-screw-them Hogg sisters to see a) if they were real and b) if the Internet would tell me anything about them.
And oh look, there was only one Hogg daughter, (three Hogg sons, though) indeed named Ima. Daughter of the Governor of Texas. Here are some of the things Ima did in her life.
– created the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health at the University of Texas
– helped found the Houston Symphony
– was elected to the Houston School Board where she fought for equal pay for women and minority teachers
– introduced art classes into black schools at a time when schools were still segregated
– liked The Beatles and
– died in her ’90s
Also, “…in June 1968, the University of Texas bestowed the prestigious Santa Rita Award on Miss Ima, the first person to receive it, for her activity in higher education.” ( from Houston History.com )
True, at the same link, she is quoted as saying, “Many people assume that if one has plenty of money, one’s situation is ideal. They forget that I have no husband, no children and no close relatives in Houston.” But I hardly think this is reason to call her a spinster and a recluse and certainly not to blame her name for it. She was a highly successful, influential woman, unlike you, Alan Benjamin, a quick google of whom turns up approximately 85 different lawyers, one Canadian band whose url is non-existent anymore and oh! yes! the guy who wrote a Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer TV tie-in board book. Just saying.
