Mango

Today was another doctor's appointment, to mark 23 weeks, and everything continues to be fine (thank goodness!). No protein or sugar in my urine, totally normal amount of weight gain, blood pressure even lower than last time but still good (better too low than too high). Dr. M. asked how the migraines are going, and it occurred to me that I haven't had one in more than a week. Woo hoo! And I got some tips on bringing down the swelling in my ankles (besides the obvious of avoiding high-sodium Chinese food -- honestly, what was I thinking?!?). I have one more set of bloodwork to do sometime in the next few weeks, including another go at the glucose screening (I passed one in week 8, but it's time to make sure nothing's changed) which is the one thing I'm not looking forward to. Actually, the screening wasn't so bad; what I'm dreading is the results, because the odds are really not in my favor (family history of diabetes, overweight pre-pregnancy, cravings for ice cream, ... you do the math).

I also want to bring you up-to-date on our naming "saga." About a month ago, when we found out Barack's sex, S and I finally got around to discussing names. We had a lot of (self-imposed) restrictions, which made the task both non-trivial and, in some ways, easier. When you have a lot of constraints, it can be hard to find a name that fits all the requirements, but it also means you can rule out a lot of things right away. I thought that it would take a long time, but as it turns out, we hit upon a first name pretty quickly that we both love. The name is in honor of my grandmother, who passed away a few years ago, it's a cultural name from my heritage, it's a well-known name but not very common (definitely out of the top 100), it lends itself to a great nickname that we also love, and it actually goes well with our hard-to-fit last name. And, we're not too worried about finding a middle name that goes with it. (The plan there is to pick something from S's heritage, in honor of one of his grandparents.)

Even after finding the name, we kept looking, but nothing we've come across comes close to how much we love this name. So, I should have seen this coming, but somehow, I didn't: my brother and sister-in-law, M and A, who are due with their third child 10 weeks before us, chose the exact same name, as a middle name for their baby, if they have a boy. M has been keeping me up-to-date on their name picks for several months, so that we'd know to avoid even considering anything that they chose. Their list started out rather long, and they've been winnowing it down little by little, but they've never added anything to it. Until now -- this name just suddenly came out of the blue, bam!, as their definite middle name. I've tried every argument I can think of to try to convince them to let us have it (first and foremost: we want it for a FIRST name, which is both harder to find and more important than a middle name, so we should get precedence) but so far, M is digging in his heels. And there's nothing I can do about it, since he will most likely be naming his kid first.

S and I are both pretty upset about the whole thing. I've cried more in the past week than any other point in my pregnancy, mostly for this irrational but still upsetting reason: if it hadn't taken us so long to get pregnant, we'd be due first, and could pick any name we wanted. Score another point for our infertility struggle. With the pregnancy progressing so perfectly, and the chance of bringing home a real live baby increasing day by day, I thought that I had gotten past the emotional scars of dealing with infertility. Turns out, not so much.