It's A Girl!

So here we were, parents of a beautiful 8 lb. 10 oz. baby girl. Now the responsibility of what we had created weighed on us. Our first order of business was a name. We knew the significance of the naming ceremony. We understood how the name sets the stage for your child's entire future social structure. I mean a name like Blanket doesn't even work for Michael Jackson's kid and Apple, really? What would you have said about a kid named Apple in school? I mean, my kid's no offspring of a celebrity, in fact, she's the daughter of a self described "band geek" (my husband--not me). We were going to need help.

My husband and I knew better than to name our first born after a family member. As far as we can tell it never works out for the kid or the parents. The kid is stuck with a name that sucks and someone is always pissed off at the parents for choosing one side of the family over another (and no one ever gets left anything fantastic in the will because they were named after great-aunt So-And-So’s favorite cousin once removed). But we consulted with family anyway to get ideas. Names like Lucille and Gretchen surfaced and were dismissed much to the disappointed of many family members. We also consulted books and we were disgusted by the numerous spelling for common names, for example Mali (Molly), Viktorya (Victoria), Airyka (Erica), and Emeleigh (Emily). We consulted friends who refused to assist in fear that we would steal THEIR names of their future children. I found that really funny since most of my friends at the time were single and solidly in the "Pill" camp.

So after much "discussion" (code for all out warfare), a lot promises we would never keep and a few promises of elicit favors, we christened our first child Myriam Adair. Myriam, after a friend of mine in college, who was and is the coolest chick on the face of the planet and Adair, after another strong, uber-intelligent, beautiful woman that worked for me back in my job holding days.

Myriam grew to be in the 99^th percentile for height. We subscribe to the old wives tale that if you measure a child on their second birthday and double that measurement you will deduce the child’s adult height, within an inch either way. She’s going to be between 5’10 and 6’ tall. She’s a beautiful child and I’m not just being partial. Complete strangers actually stop me on the street and tell me how beautiful she is. She’s also frighteningly intelligent. She taught herself, via pre-school television, Spanish and Mandarin! Now I'm not claiming that she's fluent but she can count and has a 100 plus word vocabulary in each language. (If I was one of those Mommies I would take credit for that. But I’m not.) We would eventually learn that her intellect was hiding something from us but at that time we were proud of our achievement, our little Myriam. We patted ourselves on the back and reveled in our superiority. And then our world was rocked by prescription failure.

The Pill was my religion. Every night, nine o’clock, one Pill. Every night, nine o’clock, for three weeks the Pill was white. Every night, nine o’clock for one week the Pill was green. Every night, nine o’clock, without fail I took my one Pill like the sacred communion it was to me. My belief in the Pill was holy. The Pill was my lord and savior. The Pill was my Jesus Christ.

My savior failed me! The pill became just another golden calf. Or maybe I was just found unworthy? Regardless one night, when my daughter was seven months old, I woke up from a dead sleep, sat straight up in bed and knew I was pregnant. It was then when the nightmares began.