The Baby Name Saga

My whole life I have loved unique names...really unique names. As a child I used to doodle on my pages in class with the most unusual names I could come up with. One still sticks in mind:
Katridiana Narisia. And that is what we have decided to name our girl.

Just kidding!!! LOL (though that WAS a name I created at one point, I now realize how horrendous that is!)

Later I loved the name Larissa. All of my eventual motherhood dreams included a baby named Larissa. In sixth grade, I made up the name Kella (which, incidentally, I still think is an awesome name). My friend and I decided we hated our names and were going to change them at school. One day we came wearing name tags...mine said, "hello, my name is now Kella". It stuck for a couple of days and then I decided it was too much work to change my identity and gave up.

It's an amazing thing, after years of dreaming about names as a young girl, to have the opportunity to ACTUALLY give someone a name. It's really one of the most amazing things about this whole experience so far. It's just so common for little girls to fall in love with names they want to give their baby eventually...and to actually get to the point to pick one name out of the entire world to give your precious baby, is just an incredible honor. And we get to pick two!

I could talk about baby names with B for days and days on end, as he quickly found out. B is the type of person who HATES indecision, even about fun decisions like this. He hates ongoing discussions about possibilities. It makes Christmas shopping (or any shopping) with him excrutiatingly painful because we'll find something and I will have to continue looking to make sure we have picked the perfect gift...while he thinks we had already found it 6 hours before. :) I could see that we would never come to a decision unless I implemented a more structured process so I did.

I went through the top 1000 boy and girl names from last year, copying into a document all the ones I would seriously consider for our own kids. I guess I'm pretty picky because I only had about 12 names each for the girl and boy! I LIKE lots of other names, but love a lot fewer. So here was the list I made:

Boys (the number in parentheses is the rank of popularity in 2007):

Ethan (4)
Connor (8)
Alexander (15)
Aaron (16)
Tristan (18)
Nathan (23)
Collin (38)
Luke (46)
Mason (56)
Tyler (66)
Carson (none)

Girls:
Ava (1)
Hannah (11)
Haley (15)
Ella (16)
Savannah or Savana (33)
Sara (49)
Riley (52)
Alexis or Alexa (74/60)
Rachel (62)
Avery (71)
Kenzie (81)
Kenna or Makenna (none)

B agreed that if I made the first step to make such a list, that would be the list we would work with. I made this list and sent an email to B. It said, "your children's names are on this list somewhere. Please remove your least favorite name from each list and send back to me." I didn't know if I could finally intrigue him enough to pick names, but the process was just what he needed...a couple of minutes later I got an email back that he had taken a couple of names from. Gleeful that I had found a way to engage him, I removed 2 more names and sent it back to him. Couple of minutes later, he removed 2 more names. We continued the back and forth. Through this process we got down to the following:

Boys :

Ethan
Connor
Aaron
Tristan
Nathan
Carson

Girls:

Ava
Ella
Sarah
Kenna

I have to say something about Kenna. When we did our first IVF, naively thinking it might actually work, we went to lunch at the beach to have fun talking about names. At some point we came up with the name Kenna and both felt it was perfect. In the course of the last 2 years, whenever we would refer to our future possible child, it was always by the name of Kenna. Kenna has felt like a part of our lives for much longer than before we knew we were pregnant. I just always assumed if we had a girl she would be Kenna. The problem with the name is that it is unusual and people always have weird/uncomfortable reactions to it (when we have mentioned it) - friends, family, everyone. That said, it was a given that it was on the table since it had been with us so long. At the end of the list I provided B with "suggested pairings" (yes, like wine and cheese) that I thought worked well together:

Connor/Carson and Kenna
Ethan and Ella
Nathan and Sarah

I have to say that Nathan is one of the few "classic" boys names that I have always loved, so it seemed to fit nicely on the list. It seemed like it should go with a nice classic girl's name so I wrote out "Nathan and Sarah". For some reason, they instantly sounded right. I've never thought twice about the name Sarah in my life. If you had asked me to think about it I would have said it's a pretty name but it never stood out to me. The fact that it struck me when going through the top 1000 names is really interesting in retrospect...but even more interesting that it made it to our mutual top 4 girls' names. Nathan and Sarah just sounded like they belonged to our family.

The more we talked about various name pairs for the twins, the more we realized that although we love a lot of modern names, we don't picture US with kids having those names. We just don't seem like a family that would have unusual names. And then the most unexpected decision came. After a legacy of unusual name creations like Katridiana Narisia, we are going to name our children.......Nathan and Sara.

After deciding on the names once and for all I was really excited...then I felt sad about losing Kenna. So after further discussion, this has been solved and all now seems right in the world...the full names of our children will be:

Nathanael Bryan (B's name is Bryan)
Sara Makenna (Makenna sounds better than Kenna with Sara)

Now I can go buy those cute wooden letters to hang in the nursery. :)

THE GENDERS!

THE GENDER RESULTS ARE IN:

Yes, they are boy/girl twins! And everything measures great! We went to Target right after and bought a cute little outfit for each. :) The babies have grown so much since we last saw them. They weigh 10 ounces and look so much more human now. The girl even yawned on the ultrasound! At the end, they were facing each other where we could see both at the same time and the girl reached out and punched the boy a couple of times!

I will post ultrasound pictures after I have a chance to scan everything in!

Thoughts at the Half Way Point (almost)

We will be 18 weeks on Sunday and most twin pregnancies are delivered around 36 weeks, so we are almost exactly half way through. I can't believe it as I type this! It just amazes me. I wanted to post about how differently I feel now, half way through, versus early on because so much has changed! I love lists, so here we go!

1. I realize more than ever the profound sacrifice that J and R and their kids are making for us. From the moment that J offered to do this, I was indescribably grateful and in awe that anyone would make such an offer. When it actually worked, I was blown away that the offer was transitioning into a true life-changing event. I knew conceptually what a big deal it is to give birth and all the risks around that but what I didn't have a full grasp of was that pregnancy is more than giving birth - it's a true 9 month sacrifice. I guess I *knew* that logically but I never really thought much about the pregnancy part, only the birth part. I envisioned that J would be carrying a beautiful belly around and that we would magically have a baby in 9 months after the hard sacrifice of labor. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to be so close to J, both in physical proximity and in friendship, because I do get to experience a lot of the pregnancy to the degree that I can; we see each other weekly (at least), email multiple times per week and B and I go to all the appointments. Because of this, I am intimately aware of all the complexities of pregnancy (and potential complexities). J experienced frequent morning sickness until 15.5 weeks and it was really hard to feel like the cause of it (of course she never for a moment made me feel that way). R had to come home every day from work at lunch time to put their youngest to bed because J wasn't allowed to lift her. J still isn't allowed to really lift for the rest of the pregnancy so she constantly has to be aware of what she is doing and it limits what she can do with her own kids. While J had such low energy during the first trimester, she wasn't up to playing as much with her kids in the same way she would have if she weren't pregnant. J's mom and R have been looking after the kids every time we go to one of these appointments. It truly is taking a village for us to have these kids, and the every day sacrifice of J, R, and their kids - for 9 months (and before during the IVF procedure) - is mind blowing. These are the things I didn't know the extent of at the beginning of the pregnancy. I feel sheepish often because I HATE, HATE, HATE to rely on anyone for anything and this is the ultimate reliance, especially when you realize how much goes into it. There is no way to ever thank anyone for this kind of sacrifice.

2. I'm shocked at how quickly my injured soul from infertility has healed. Before getting "pregnant", I read all the time on message boards about how difficult it still was for people to get past infertility during their pregnancies and beyond; there was so much pain and hurt that even after reaching the goal, there was a shadow on the soul. I can honestly say I haven't experienced this for the most part (see number 3 for an exception). Infertility certainly has IMPACTED me and my thoughts in various ways, but I no longer feel the desperate sadness and anger that I felt before. I still worry more than the average person about the pregnancy, but even that has plateaued since early on. I do now believe we will have two babies in December, and I didn't believe that in the first few weeks. I no longer feel anger toward pregnant women, I no longer feel hopeless, I no longer feel sad that we had to go through 6 IVFs to get where we are. I am proud of how we got here and tell everyone about it. I have reached complete acceptance that this is not traditional and have no problems with it. It was eye opening to receive multiple emails after our big email announcement from people I knew in high school who said, "wow, that's perfect, I remember you always said you didn't want to be pregnant but you wanted kids". It's true...my whole life I have had this weird thing about not wanting to be pregnant but wanting to have biological children. I see this now as completely meant to be. And because we only wanted two kids and are having twins, I feel a genuine sense of soul completion and healing that I would never have thought possible. Our family will be complete.

3. I do have occasional moments where I feel...odd...despite everything I just said above. Odd is the best way to describe it because it's not sad or angry, it's just...odd. We are in Denver right now for a convention for B's company. Last night everyone started getting to the convention, and it's a bunch of people who all know each other (same industry and they come to this convention every year). So, last night, everyone was doing the standard greetings, catching up, introducing to new people, etc. Someone introduced us to a woman who was pregnant and due at the same time as us. I immediately had the thought, "we're due then too!" but felt I had to suppress that conversation piece because she was standing there rubbing her stomach and talking about how she was at the "fat looking stage". Even though we had something much bigger in common - that we are going to have babies in the same month and raise them for 18 years - I felt inferior because I couldn't relate to what she was experiencing right now. It would have been weird to interject our news at that point, even though if I were pregnant myself it would have been completely normal ("oh I'm pregnant too!"). I NEVER feel that way when I tell non-pregnant people our news, ever. I'm so excited to share it and explain our story. But on the random occasions when I am telling a pregnant woman about it I do feel sheepish.

4. I'm amazed at how fast my thoughts have become maternal. I stopped all advertising for my company (I own it) last week to put my career on a temporary hold in anticipation of wanting to be completely free during the 3rd trimester if J needs me and then being on maternity "leave" for several months. I'll have to do another post about the details of that. But suffice it to say that I am VERY career oriented. I have spent the last several years working as hard as possible to climb the career ladder, getting an MBA from a top school and starting my own company because the corporate world didn't move fast enough. Suddenly, that all seems less important. There, I said it out loud. I understand why women choose to not have careers and "just" (I use the term lightly) raise families. I would never, ever, ever have gotten that had babies come easily to us. I do belive it's the strange blessing of infertility to treasure children more than you otherwise would have. I'm fortunate that I'm in a position of owning my company and can just pull the plug on business for a few months without making decisions about quitting a job or formal maternity leave or anything. I do not know what I will choose to do eventually, but for now I plan to take a definite 4 months off, even up to a year. I want to enjoy every moment of having these babies we have worked so hard for. I never thought, even at the beginning of this pregnancy that I would consider taking that much time away or that I would be so happy with the decision. I do think I will want to work again because I enjoy the intellectual challenge of building a company. But I'm not putting any immediate timeframes on it. The maternal instinct has kicked in for me...I couldn't be there for the babies for the first 9 months, but I want to be there for them even more later to make up for it. :)

5. This post is getting enormous so I'm going to end with number 5, though I could go on and on. Lastly I will say that at this point I'm surprised that I'm still shocked this has all worked out. I would have thought I would have gotten used to the idea more, but I still have moments ... all the time ... that I can't believe we are actually going to have the babies I thought were never going to come. I get very emotional whenever I think about that because it seems like a fairy tale given that I had basically thrown in the mental towel. B and I lead a volunteer program through our church with teen girls living in foster homes. Back in January we did a session with them on prayer and trusting God. In that session we had all the girls write a prayer on a piece of stationary about something they needed to "turn over to God". We were going to mail it back to them in several months so they could get perspective on how much things change over time, even when you think you have hit the bottom. B and I always participated in the activities with the girls, so we did prayer letters too. They then all got tucked into the garage and since then the program has changed significantly to now include a lot more teens and the ones we had at the time who wrote those letters we don't see anymore. When we were cleaning out the garage last weekend I found the box with the letters. I felt bad that we had no way to get the letters to those girls now. I was about to throw out the box and then I saw my own letter. I didn't recall what I wrote in it but opened it up to see. It said (recall this was in January, before we had even started the IVF cycle for surrogacy):

"Dear God, Please help me to accept and be at peace with whatever way we are able to have a family."

I just about lost it when I read this. I remembered the hopelessness and pain I felt when writing it in January, not having any idea if the surrogacy would work and not wanting to face my feelings if it didn't. I felt guilty for teaching these girls to do something that I couldn't even do at the time. This was only 7 months ago. I guess the shock that I still feel that this HAS worked out and that I AM at peace now will take a long time to go away. And I probably learned a bigger lesson from our letter writing exercise than any of the girls we were supposed to be "teaching"; God did answer that prayer even though I could never have imagined the answer possibly being so perfect when I wrote that just 7 months ago.

Anxious to find out the genders!

Only five more days until we find out the genders! I absolutely can't wait. I think it will be at that moment that we will go from thinking about "two babies" in general to two individual babies whom we can envision specifically. Even though I'm 99% sure at least one is a boy given the past ultrasounds, I haven't really been imagining what it will be like to have a son - what he will look like, what kinds of little boy things he'll be into, if he'll be a mommy's boy, etc. Those are magical thoughts that I can't wait to have but that I can only fathom having after we know for sure (and the same with the other baby). And then there are the thoughts of how two specific genders will grow up together, what they'll share, how they'll relate, etc. - I think that will be very different if it's a boy/boy combo vs. girl/girl vs. boy/girl. I wonder about it all the time now and absolutely can't sit still waiting for Monday. When we get the news, it's also a Babies R Us kick off party because we'll be ready to start with the nursery!

(On that note, we only finished cleaning out our crazy garage last week and haven't switched the nursery and office yet. That is still to come when we get back in town - right now we are at a convention in Denver for B's company.)

The Nursery

I forgot to mention in my last post that I appreciate those who read without posting comments too. :) I've been getting emails from people saying they are reading regularly, and that is awesome! I would be doing this even if no one read, because it's more of a personal journal than anything (that I will preserve for the babies someday), but if other people care to read along the way that's really cool too!

So this weekend we are making the first steps toward a nursery! We're not actually buying anything yet, but we have made a big decision: instead of using the small room we were planning to use for the nursery, I'm giving up my big home office, moving all my stuff to the smaller room, and officially designating my current home office room as the new nursery. This was all inspired by my recent visit to my friend K's house (Hi K! :). She has adorable 17 month old twins whom I got to hang out with for the first time at length (she and her husband adopted them from Russia a couple of months ago). It was my first experience ever being with twin babies. I helped feed, diaper, bathe and say good night. It was a lot of fun (and work)! K has a very large nursery and it gave me a good view of how much space two cribs will take up, and two (eventual) walking babies take up! I immediately started thinking that when the babies become mobile our nursery will be really tight. Sooooo...I stopped fighting the suppressed thought: I need to give up the big home office and make it the nursery. I think B had already been secretly thinking that because he immediately was like, "yup".

Tomorrow we are cleaning out the garage and organizing everything (it is a disaster in there and we want to make room for new baby stuff that will require storage). Then we will switch the office/nursery. I've never been excited for such a mundane task....it's SO exciting to feel like we are making progress toward a nursery!

Pre term labor class

First, I just want to say, thanks to those of you who have commented on various posts! It's cool to know that there are people out there who have found this and have been reading!

So last night J and I went to a pre-term labor class through her insurance. The peri recommended it since we're having twins and that is a risk factor. It was an "interesting" experience for several reasons:

1) At the beginning of the class the nurse giving the lecture asked, "who is the one here having twins?" and J raised her hand. She walked over and handed us (us only) a packet called "caring for your premature baby". I guess that even though we are at the pre term labor class, they just assume we'll be caring for a premature baby given that it's twins?! It made me a bit worried, to be honest.

2) We were the only girl/girl pair there - everyone else was husband and wife. It was kind of funny to see people looking at us oddly. I don't know if they thought we were a couple, but J and I were talking about getting t-shirts for future use that identify her as a surrogate and me as the "intended mother". LOL (On a side note, I started thinking about that term the other day, which is standard for the person in my position in the surrogacy. I realized that the word "intended" seems to stem from all the problems there have been with traditional surrogacies, where the surrogate is using her own egg, gets attached to the baby and doesn't want to give the baby to the "intended parents". Intended just seems so unsure, and that's not how our situation is at all! I am looking forward to having the simple label of "mother" rather than "intended mother" :) )

3) They passed around a teddy bear that was the exact size of a premature 5 month old baby. It had a tee shirt that said "premature" with a big red X through it. It felt like a "don't do drugs" or "don't smoke" talk at that point, like premature labor is completely preventable and you don't want a baby the size of that bear. I understand that they just wanted everyone to be hypervigilent about calling if they had any signs of it because many times it IS preventable but I know of a lot of people (from my online world of message boards) that have had unpreventable preterm labor and lost babies...certainly not due to any fault of their own.

4) Overall, I came away really concerned that J will have to go on some kind of crazy bedrest at some point during this due to it being twins. I know how awful that would be for her and her family. They told us about a woman who was on bedrest for 8 weeks with her feet in the air at the hospital. OMG that would be horrible!! It's a big enough deal to be pregnant for someone else, much less be in the hospital for two months! I have to hope that that is exceedingly rare and I will be fervently praying that nothing like this will happen. I don't know how we could ever make up to J for an 8 week hospital stay other than giving her our proverbial first born...but oh wait, then we are back to square one. LOL :)

Baby names

I have to admit I have always been super annoyed by people who won't "reveal" their baby's name until he/she is born. I've always thought it was so obnoxious to assume that anyone would care about your baby's name so much that you really want to keep it a surprise - no one really cares except the parents! Before anyone reading this who has done that gets offended, let me say this: I now understand. While some parents really are out of perspective about how little their baby's name means to anyone except themselves, I now get that that's NOT the reason why a lot of people hold the name until the baby comes. A much more valid reason is that when the baby is unborn, everyone thinks there is room to decide still and no one has qualms about giving you baby name comments.

A couple of weeks ago, we had settled on a boy's name we both loved. Carson. That was going to be it. We liked the name because it was not too young, not too old and sounds good with our last name (which also starts with C). Then we told people who asked about names. Some responses:

"NOOOOO! I HATE Carson Daly!" (MTV personality)
"Do you WANT alliteration?" (first and last name starting with the same sound - and yes, we did)
"The first person I thought of is Carson Daly, but I didn't want to tell you that."
"That's a weak name. You need something more traditional."

Carson was the name we picked after going through a similar experience with another name we both liked, Connor. My favorite response to that one:

"Oh, I would never name a baby Connor. That was the name of Lacy Peterson's baby." (My mom said this; Lacy Peterson was that woman murdered when 8 months pregnant by her husband.)

Truth be told, these things don't bother me like they do B. But B is immediately dissuaded from any name he previously loved as soon as someone points out a "flaw". We really liked the idea of alliteration, and now he doesn't want to do it. We were SETTLED on Carson, but now he can't think of anything but Carson Daly (whom he can't stand). I'm afraid we will never settle on a name if we keep telling people the newest decision...because no matter what the name is, someone will always have a reason why you shouldn't use it. There is no name that everyone likes!