Who is Peanut?

Well, here I sit 5 days from my official "due date".  My cervix is dilating, my mucous plug is coming out (too much info?), my baby sits just an inch and a half from the spot where s/he will soon make the Great Escape.  My mom has arrived to help and my hospital bag is packed and waiting.  I'm in that funny zone where every plan I speak of ends with the words "...unless I'm in labour."  I'm ready.  I've switched from willing my body to hold onto the baby until my mom arrives, to willing my body to let go.  I visualize flowers opening and I welcome contractions. 

The only thing we haven't prepared is a name.  I never realized that naming a baby was such a pain.  I was never one of those people who had their baby names picked out from high school, though I sometimes wish I was.  When I was pregnant with Boodge, I assumed that somehow the perfect name would just come to me, maybe in a dream where my baby appeared and introduced him or herself.  But that didn't happen. Instead we pored over lists of names on the internet, with one of us usually vetoing each name, and the odd name going on a list of possibilities.  Very quickly each of those sessions degenerated into ridiculousness, wherein Sean would become fixated on a particular name as great for a future dog, or insist that "Maglocunus" was the name, we need look no further. 

So, when Boodge was born we also had no name.  We spent a few days in the hospital with "Baby Boy" and I wanted to make sure we had a name before we left.  My mom brought our book of Celtic baby names to our room and we looked through it.  Halfway through the A's, Sean read out a name that none of us had ever heard or considered and all of us (the two grandmothers and us) said, "Oh, that's nice."  The meaning listed was "young warrior", and we felt that Boodge was one since he had just come through a difficult start to life.  And that was it.  Boodge was named, and the name now fits him perfectly.  It also means "eager" or "ardent", which we didn't know at the time but which Boodge certainly is.

With Peanut, we haven't really put much effort into searching.  I find baby-name lists overwhelming, and eventually they all just blur into one.  And Sean has found enough names for all our future pets.  Instead we've just observed names as they come up, on TV credits, road signs, in conversations. We've hit on a couple of boy and girl names that we like, so we're not totally lost, but we also don't have anything definitive.

Our experience in name-searching has given me a lot of appreciation for other cultures who have traditions of "naming ceremonies" which occur well after the baby is born.  For me, it just feels necessary to meet the baby before I can be sure of a name.  The transition from womb to Earth is so significant, and babies seem a bit out of it at first, still floating between the two worlds.  Giving them a name seems to be a nice way to ground them in their new life, after they have had a few days to adjust to that reality. 

The only inconvenience is in making the birth announcement, since people generally like to know the name along with the other vital statistics.  On this blog, Peanut will always be Peanut anyway, so that won't matter much. But in the age of facebook and twitter, the stats can be sent out right from the hospital room, mere hours after the birth.  I'm pretty sure Peanut will still be Peanut then, and I'm OK with that. I trust that the right name will arrive to light itself on Peanut's little life when that life has settled here on earth.  I look forward to learning what my new baby will be called.