How He Made His Entrance Into This World

For as long as I was pregnant (and even before that), my mom reminded me that I was two weeks late; she had to be induced and, even then, it took something like 36+ hours of labor and the assistance of some forceps for me to be born. Because of that family history, and because of the common knowledge that first babies are always late, I assumed that Zachary would be late. But! I didn't take into account Eric's contribution to Zachary's genes.

One of the first things I learned about Eric was that he is very punctual. He claims to be a "time J," i.e. he is always on time, if not early to events, and gets very stressed if I make us late. In fact, he's so good with time that, when he was in Chem 6BL, he would write his lab reports the day he finished the lab, instead of starting at midnight the day that it was due...three guesses as to who employed that method! So I guess it's no surprise that Eric's son made his way into the world one day ahead of schedule, on Monday, September 22. I guess I should be grateful he didn't arrive one week early (like his dad's lab reports!) because I was still working up until the Thursday before. As it was, I only just finished washing all the baby laundry and setting up the baby stuff.

The last thing I did was hang up all the marine-themed artwork. 

On Sunday morning, the day before Zachary's arrival, Eric wondered whether we should go to church or not. I said that I felt totally fine and no different from any other day, so we might as well. It turned out to be a good thing we went, since we haven't been able to make it back since! Anyway, that night we joked about how some people say that having sex causes labor to start since semen contains cervix-ripening prostaglandins (Eric, ever the overachiever, won a prize at our birthing class by knowing that piece of trivia), so we might as well give it a try since I didn't have work the next day. Well...

At 5 AM on Monday morning, I woke up feeling strong cramps. Previously, I had been mildly worried that I wouldn't know when labor started; having now experienced contractions, trust me when I say there's no mistaking that feeling! The contractions were about ten minutes about and still very bearable, though not entirely painless. Walnut was a dear and sat very close to me on the beanbag chair while I timed them. Eventually, I woke Eric (I wanted to give him as much sleep as possible before things got crazy). At 6:30 AM, I felt a weird gush and realized that my water must have broken. After that, the contractions got suddenly and progressively worse. I'm afraid I must confess that I turned into every woman-in-labor stereotype, getting down on all fours in our bedroom and bellowing/grunting/moaning like some bizarre cow. Walnut was very concerned. Finally, when they reached the 4-1-1 stage (and beginning to be intolerably painful), we grabbed the go bag, poured extra kibbles for Walnut, and hustled over to Eden. 

By the time we arrived and got settled into a room at around 10 AM, I was pretty insensible with pain and only dilated to 4 cm, and my vague notion of having a natural, medication-free birth sounded like the stupidest idea ever. Eric made the call to order an epidural since I was not in any state to be making decisions...and it ended up being amazing. Seriously, drugs are great, people. There's a reason why we live in the 21st century; avail yourself of the painkilling discoveries that come with living in the modern age! Once I got the epidural, I was back to being cheerful and sane, just in time for my mom and sister to arrive. We chatted and eventually I took a nap, I was that relaxed (again, yay for drugs!). I woke up around 3:30 to be told that I was fully dilated and could probably start pushing in half an hour. It was frankly a bit shocking to realize that our baby might be born before a normal workday was over!

The only problem with getting an epidural was that I couldn't feel how or where to push. Thankfully, our wise old nurse (I mean really, she was older and had gray hair!) had a trick up her sleeve: Eric would play tug of war with me using an old sheet. Somehow the act of pulling against his weight caused me to push with all the right muscles; unfortunately, this meant that Eric had the miracle-of-life view of crowning, sliding out, bodily fluids and gore, etc. Still, he says it was nice to be able to participate in bringing Zachary into the world in such a, well, interactive way. Half an hour of pushing later, we had a baby boy! I surprised my rational, T-self by bursting into tears.

Eric holding Zachary for the first time.

I finally get to hold him in my arms after carrying him in my body for almost ten months!

We had a brief scare when a surplus of mucus in Zachary's mouth and nose meant that he had to be taken away for suctioning and a bath (to stimulate him to cry it out?) before we could have our skin-to-skin time. That was my first experience with the overwhelming worry that I'm sure is the special province of mothers. Thankfully, the separation was brief and he was in my arms, nursing like a champion, before too long. The next several hours were spent marveling over the speed of his delivery, what an overachiever he was for latching perfectly right off the bat, and how marvelously not wrinkled or squished he looked. Maybe they were just humoring us, but all the nurses and doctors commented on how cute he was for just being born. To be honest, I was kind of afraid of having an ugly baby, so I was gratified to hear those comments from people whose job it is to see newborns. I know, I'm so superficial.

After an uneventful next two days, we brought Zachary home on Wednesday afternoon. And thus began a series of long, sleepless nights and hazy days of bonding and learning about this new small human being.

Walnut's first encounter with his new little brother. 

First night at home: baby is wide awake, parents are dead tired. 

How We Decided on a Name

In my family, there is a tradition that names must go in alphabetical order. My parents' names start with A and B, then there's me, Cindy, and then Derek and Emily. Even the cats got in on this: Fenxi, Gummy, and Walnut, aka Hup-toh. So when we were trying to figure out what to name this new addition to the family, we started with I-names, but Eric didn't like Isaac, and the rest of the boy names were frankly kind of weird (Ichabod? I love Sleepy Hollow, but no thank you). So finally I had to give up that dream, and we decided to just pick any old name that we liked, regardless of the letter it started with.

Eric wanted to name him Eric Junior, but I immediately vetoed that. Maybe it's just me, but Asian names with "Jr." or "III" just sound silly; you really need to have a last name with at least three syllables to pull that off (e.g. Wilmingtonshire or Vandercreston or something).

Once we both gave up our initial ideas for baby names, we just started throwing around all sorts of names, but that wasn't without issue either. We had to make sure that not only did we both love the name, but we also had to check that it wasn't too trendy or outdated, that it wasn't bad nickname fodder, that it didn't make for weird initials, and most difficult of all, that it didn't bring up any bad memories of former students. The problem with being a teacher is that I've had so many students in the past eight years, so almost any name will have a former student associated with it. It took some doing to finally come up with Zachary. While I have had two former students with this name, thankfully they were both likable, intelligent, well-spoken, quirky individuals with lots of potential (who weren't too much trouble).

Zachary means "Remembered by God." This was especially meaningful to me because of my worries during early pregnancy. I was afraid that 1) I wouldn't like my baby, and 2) I might forget it somewhere. See, I've never been one of those girls that gushes and gets all excited by babies; my thought process when encountering a small human being is usually something along the lines of please don't ask if I want to hold it I'll probably drop it oh crap what if they just shove it in my arms oh I know maybe I'll just pretend that it's a very small cat oh wait but cats can hold up their own heads oh no oh no oh no. As for the second concern, I have a history of forgetting my purse or my leftovers whenever I leave a restaurant. Either I take my purse but forget my leftovers, or vice versa. I really, really, really don't want to be one of those sad headlines about parents who forgot their kid in a hot car. Well, whenever I'm in a rough patch or find myself needing some reassurance, I turn to the book of Isaiah. I was reminded of Isaiah 49:15, where God says, "“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you."

I find it comforting to know that not only does the God seem pretty sure that I will love and won't forget about a kid I birthed, but that even if I do, He will remember. Which is good, because one time my parents forgot to pick us up from school. I want Zachary to be sure that His Heavenly Father will never forget him.

As for his middle name, Augustus (Latin for "majestic")...besides conveniently allowing for his initials to spell a shortened form of his name, it's also a nice tongue-in-cheek reference to Eric's high school Latin career. It's a little bit of an inside joke: somehow, despite having been Latin club president and helping to plan a nationwide Latin conference, he still manages to incorrectly translate most of the Latin phrases we come across. Case in point: when we went to London on our second anniversary trip, he translated the motto of the city, "Domine dirige nos" as "our king the ship." It actually means "God guide us." *facepalm* So it's kind of a fun way to remind us of our travels in Europe (it also doesn't hurt that it also references the wingaling dragon Trogdor and all his majesty).

Side note: Before we had decided on a middle name, my students made all sorts of suggestions, like Hercules, Ares, Arsenic, their own names, and all manner of other ridiculous ideas.