We are now deep into the season, at 30 weeks. Only 8 - 12 more to go until our tiny harvest enters the world as a unique individual. You can see in the pictures below that we are growing fast. Baby is now gaining a half pound a week, and I, nearly an entire pound a week. By the end of the month I could take Adam in the Heavy Weight. The impact of such growth manifests as having to pace the blue-hairs at the gym and finding new positions that make shoe-tying possible.
We just got our crib! Yippy! And are crafting and sale searching to outfit the rest of the nursery. We've hired a doula, and for an explanation of what a doula does and is, I've quoted DONA (Doulas of North America) below:
"A birth doula is a person trained and experienced in childbirth who provides continuous physical, emotional and informational support to the mother before, during and just after childbirth...The word “doula” comes from ancient Greek, meaning “Woman’s servant.” Throughout history and in much of the world today, a cadre of women support a woman through labor and birth, giving back rubs and providing continuous emotional support. Like their historical counterparts, DONA International birth doulas know how to help a woman in labor feel better. However, today’s doulas are much more diverse than their predecessors. DONA International membership includes men and women from a wide range of ages and cultural backgrounds."
Adam and I are very exited to incorporate our Doula, Anna, into our birthing team! Also, we are starting to narrow down our list of names, which you can vote on at your right. For a baby girl, I'm leaning towards Freja...which can be spelled Freya, Freja, or Freyja (the traditional spelling) I love the name Frejya Linnae Kestler for a girl. Freyja is a name pulled from a beloved goddess of the Norse/Germanic pre-Christian pantheon. For a boy we really like Finneas Neruda or Finneas Rudolph Kestler...these may change a million times. My mother is not a fan of any of our chosen names, so I am guessing she will come up with a meaningful nickname or just stick with Geronimo, as many of our friends and family will regardless of what goes on the certificate, which we like. Geronimo is a terrific nickname! The name Finneas is not inspired by old literary or mythological characters that have entertained me in my reading. We actually came across it in a name book. After some research we decided that spelling the name with an 'F' instead of a 'Ph' would be more fortuitous than foreboding. The one famous Phineas - Phineas Gage, gained notoriety through a debilitating 19th century railroad injury in which an iron rod pierced entirely through his head ravaging his frontal lobes and resulting in radical personality changes. This event landed Mr. Gage at the apex of neuropsychological stardom. This is not to say Phineas was unlucky, surviving such an accident suggests otherwise. It's simply not the image I want to follow our baby boy if we name him so, and what a great name Finneas- with an F, is! Pascal has won more of me than it has Adam. I love that the name is part romantic and part triangle - much like Adam and I, part science, part literature, poetry....it's a meaningful name without a gory history. It is hard to name a child. It is much different, I imagine, than an astronomer stumbling across a distant and unknown star that begs from him a name, or naming a newly patented gadget or a new species of house cat. These are indexable names. Being a farmer, I can, kind of, liken this to grafting the herbaceous stems of two distinct herbs or the woody trunks of two unrelated trees to make a unique flora: Limequat, Tangelo, Loganberry, Peppermint... but often times the best name is hard to conjure until the hybrid has actually bloomed, or has been smelled and tasted. If we followed biological protocall our Baby would certainly be named Asdam Anneremy Hawinler.
Well, the baby is boxing the uterine gymboree and dinner is calling to both of us leading this post to an end. Much love to you all!
