Rang in the new year with my little guy from the hospital bed. Things went well and we were discharged home on the 1st. He truly is the littlest e -- the smallest of my three boys, born the earliest, at 37 4/7 weeks. We've been struggling with his weight, hydration and jaundice so it's been a bit more stressful than we had even anticipated these last couple of days. But at today's check, he's much more active and starting to gain weight, so I am hopeful that we are turning the corner.
Little e loves his second baby brother....so much so that he's asking where his third baby brother is right now (he thinks he must be in Daddy's belly). Littler e is too young to really know what's going on...and has been a wee bit jealous. But looks for him constantly if not in his line of vision. While I'm not delusional, I am hopeful that this moderate amount of harmony lasts.
As for the name. Now, little e was almost Henry...and we never would have found ourselves in this little dilemma. As it is, we were sort of stuck with the task of finding another boy e name that we liked. Turns out, after 2, it gets harder and harder. Particularly when there are several restrictions (not too common, not too weird, not monosyllabic, reasonable nickname if absolutely necessary, etc).
So, despite knowing for the last 15 weeks or so that this newest addition was a boy, we hadn't decided on a name. We hadn't really even come up with the last few contenders. Chalk it up to wishful thinking, but I suppose we just hoped that seeing him in person would result in some sort of epiphany. It didn't happen. But waking up every 3-4 hrs in a hospital bed for vitals checks, meds, breastfeeding, pain, has a way of making one do some thinking. After way too much discussion, and even some unprecedented asking for advice (which we have never done with names), we narrowed it down to 2. We tested them out. Every hour seemed to result in a changing decision. We told our family (including little e) the 2 remaining choices.
The morning of hospital discharge arrived. The birth certificate paperwork was completed, aside from the actual name. Time was running out. The hubs arrived in the morning and had decided on the name (let's just say it was e1). We really liked them both, so at that point, I was just happy that a decision had been reached. I finally completed the paperwork, but as I was about to hand it to the nurse, we all realized that we had forgotten the check for the Dept of Health. No big deal - hubs was going to come back to pick me up in a couple of hours anyway.
So I spent the remainder of them morning waiting for my scripts to be filled, packing my bags, getting littlest e dressed. Then my phone buzzes. It's a funny little text from our nanny's daughter, saying that little e is furious. According to him, we were WRONG on the name. This baby brother was supposed to have the other name, which we'll just call e2. Little e had apparently been referring to his new brother as e2 since the previous day. We all laughed a bit and assured him that if there was another baby brother, we could use e2, but that the name had been decided and it was e1. He adamantly insisted that we were wrong. This was simple to him. Baby brother's name was not something we could decide because he already had a name. He just kept insisting that baby brother was e2.
I was annoyed and tired. I mean, come on. After all of this, my 3 year old was going to scold us about his brother's name? Then I thought about it. Maybe he was right. This wasn't about a name that we liked better or whatnot, it was about who this new baby brother was. And then I thought about everything else. Maybe it was more than just forgetfulness that resulted in us not having brought the check for the form. Maybe it was just exhaustion that had made me mess up something on the paperwork that I'd have to redo anyway. Maybe the stars were just aligning to give us enough time to make things right. Maybe there was more wisdom to little e's frustration than we'd ever think to give him credit for. Maybe God was trying to tell us something....
or maybe I was just too tired to fight my 3 year old's completely random fixation.
Whatever it was, when they brought me a fresh form to fill out, Hubs and I put in the other name, which by the way, means fruitful and increasing -- which is exactly what this newest baby has been for this family.
So you know what? I think that little e was right all along. Thank God for my children. :)
