Fiona arrived in the world on 8/17 at 12:39 in the afternoon. She weighed 8 pounds, 13 ounces and was 19 3/4 inches long. She was born after only 11 or so hours of active labor, and 1 1/2 hours of pushing. You'd never know she didn't come out by other means given her perfectly round little noggin. She had a lovely head of strawberry blonde hair and a serious set of lungs. I may be biased, but she was also incredibly cute straight out of the gate. She looks unnervingly like her daddy in nearly every way except for her mouth, which she appears to have gotten from me.
We've been calling her Weeble for so long, I thought maybe it would be a challenge for me to switch to her real name. But it is so natural to call her Fiona. The moment we saw her, we knew that of the two names we had in the tank, Fiona was the right one for her.
Each name we gave her has some significance. Well, sort of. Fiona is a name we simply landed on and both loved. It was the first name we test drove, and the name we both always wanted to go back to when other names seemed not to be right. It is a Gaelic name that means "fair and white".
Morgan is a name I've loved for over a decade. It is a variation on the name of the main character in my favorite book (The Mists of Avalon) and means "from the sea". Since I grew up in a land-locked state, I've always been fascinated by the ocean, and its relative nearness is the best thing for me about living near the coast now. Morgan was considered as a first name for her, but M (whose initials are MMM) wanted no more alliteration madness.
Elizabeth is the name of the dear friend who is the reason M and I are together. She had been friends with M before I came, to UMass Amherst for a yearlong exchange and was my accidental roommate. She introduced us, naturally, and served as a liaison for the many years he and I spent trying to figure it all out. Now, she is now more like a sister. So Fiona bears her name.
It's a long name for such a tiny little girl, I suppose. But it seems to suit her so well. Pretty name for pretty girl. And she is pretty.
The first week has been a mixture of pure joy, complete frustration, a mental breakdown or two (or four), utter exhaustion, lingering soreness, and more emotion than I generally know what to do with. But every day gets better and tends more toward the pure joy side than the complete frustration side.
As I manage to find the time, I'll be recording as much as I can about this awesome experience. Of course, there's no describing it. There's no way to really relay just how utterly awesome it is to look in Fiona's face and know that we made her, and she is ours. I'm pretty sure nobody can really anticipate how it feels - and to be honest, it's not all good. Some of it is so, so hard, for whatever reason. But it's all worth it. That's the weird part that can't be explained. The exhaustion, the pain, the mental and emotional roller coaster. It is ALL worth it.
2 comments:
Beautiful girl, beautiful name! Welcome, Fiona.
I know what you mean about changing names from nickname to real name. When my friends had everyone calling their in-utero son "Q," it started to become so natural that I wondered if he'd ever shake the nickname. But the moment he was born and his real name announced, nearly everyone forgot what they'd called him before.
So, congrats again! And off we both go on this adventure, huh?
you both look beautiful
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