What's in a Name?
May. 3rd, 2005 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jule1122Despite the fact that I run screaming in the opposite direction whenever I see the words Mpreg, there is no story I love as much as ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jasmineskie's Unexpected. I never thought reading reading slash would help me come to terms with my own experience in becoming a mother, but this story has. I feel such a strange kinship to the characters as she has written them. And I finally got to the chapter I have been dying for - baby bonding! While it was nothing like my own experience, it did get me thinking.
Because we couldn't hold the boys when they were born or even spend much time with them, the most important thing we did was name them. We had our list narrowed down to 4 names, but were waiting to decide until after I hit 28 weeks. That was going to be my reward. Well, the boys had other ideas. I told Rick in the delivery room that baby A looked like and Aidan (I didn't know then that every 3rd baby is named Aidan), but I wanted him to name baby B. I was fairly sure he would pick Kieran, but because it was a more unusual name I wanted it to be his decision. That took more thought on his part and it was close to an hour before we told anyone their names. He later told me their neonatologist wanted names ASAP because she thought it was important to think of them with a name and not baby A or B.
I realized later what she meant. That night Rick came back to the room after checking on the boys (I couldn't go as often) and said Kieran was having some trouble with his blood pressure. I knew who Kieran was. I didn't have to stop and think that he was baby B or wonder which warming bed he'd been in. I knew which baby Kieran was and I knew he was my son. They were no longer baby A and B, but Aidan and Kieran. Two distinct individuals who couldn't be discussed as one entity anymore. And they were my sons. It was the first time I felt like a mother.
I dont' understand families fascination with who a baby looks like. I guess they are looking for something of themself in this new life, but that just wasn't important to us. Maybe it was the circumstances of their birth. Our focus was on ventilator settings, Iv's and bllod gases we weren't too worried about whose nose they had. And maybe we were looking for ways to distinguish them. I wanted Aidan to look like Aidan and Kieran to look like Kieran. That meant distinguishing features that set them apart form each other - who had more hair, whose face was rounder, not trying to find ourselves in them. And truthfully they didn;t look like babies. We thought they were beautiful, but I don't see how you could look at them the same way you would a normal baby. I remember my mother-in-law saying Kieran had Rick's toes and Aidan had my chin. I thought she was insane. I knew that I loved my sons for who they were not because they were a part of me or Rick. That didn't matter to me so I never bothered looking for it.
jasmineskie's Unexpected. I never thought reading reading slash would help me come to terms with my own experience in becoming a mother, but this story has. I feel such a strange kinship to the characters as she has written them. And I finally got to the chapter I have been dying for - baby bonding! While it was nothing like my own experience, it did get me thinking.Because we couldn't hold the boys when they were born or even spend much time with them, the most important thing we did was name them. We had our list narrowed down to 4 names, but were waiting to decide until after I hit 28 weeks. That was going to be my reward. Well, the boys had other ideas. I told Rick in the delivery room that baby A looked like and Aidan (I didn't know then that every 3rd baby is named Aidan), but I wanted him to name baby B. I was fairly sure he would pick Kieran, but because it was a more unusual name I wanted it to be his decision. That took more thought on his part and it was close to an hour before we told anyone their names. He later told me their neonatologist wanted names ASAP because she thought it was important to think of them with a name and not baby A or B.
I realized later what she meant. That night Rick came back to the room after checking on the boys (I couldn't go as often) and said Kieran was having some trouble with his blood pressure. I knew who Kieran was. I didn't have to stop and think that he was baby B or wonder which warming bed he'd been in. I knew which baby Kieran was and I knew he was my son. They were no longer baby A and B, but Aidan and Kieran. Two distinct individuals who couldn't be discussed as one entity anymore. And they were my sons. It was the first time I felt like a mother.
I dont' understand families fascination with who a baby looks like. I guess they are looking for something of themself in this new life, but that just wasn't important to us. Maybe it was the circumstances of their birth. Our focus was on ventilator settings, Iv's and bllod gases we weren't too worried about whose nose they had. And maybe we were looking for ways to distinguish them. I wanted Aidan to look like Aidan and Kieran to look like Kieran. That meant distinguishing features that set them apart form each other - who had more hair, whose face was rounder, not trying to find ourselves in them. And truthfully they didn;t look like babies. We thought they were beautiful, but I don't see how you could look at them the same way you would a normal baby. I remember my mother-in-law saying Kieran had Rick's toes and Aidan had my chin. I thought she was insane. I knew that I loved my sons for who they were not because they were a part of me or Rick. That didn't matter to me so I never bothered looking for it.
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Date: 2005-05-03 06:22 pm (UTC)Actually, the baby bonding I wrote in Unexpected is nothing like my own experience either. I did not know whether my daughter was a boy or a girl before she was born, but my husband and I had already decided on one boy's name and one girl's name. And like you, my daughter looked like my daughter. I didn't spend a lot of time inventorying her features and deciding what feature she got from whom. But my experience was a world away from what happened to the fictional Viggo and Orlando in Unexpected. You were right on the money when you said they needed to see bits of themselves in their daughter just to confirm that she really was their daughter, a combination of both of them. And I think that's why they couldn't name her until they met her. It was, for them, the final step of bonding with her.