Baby Names

Naming a baby is tricky because you have to think about derivations.  Sometimes a nickname is worse than the original, so before I got pregnant I thought about how to control that.  It was impossible to come up with a boy's name I liked, but I knew what I wanted to name my daughter if I had one.

My husband's mom comes from a town in the Mexican state Nayarit and I always liked the way it sounded.  I thought Naya for short would be perfect and my husband liked the idea because he lost touch with his mom when he was younger.  He took naming our baby after her as an homage and it made him feel good.  So we agreed if we had a girl, we would call her Nayarit.  

But once we received a poor prenatal diagnosis and the amnio showed that she was a she, I didn't know what to do.  My therapist said naming her would help with the grieving process if we decided to terminate the pregnancy, but my husband couldn't bare to name her after his mom because it was too sad for him.  I never asked why, but I wondered if Nahuatl's diagnosis represented the dysfunction between him and his mom.  And even though I didn't know for sure, I had to respect my husband's feelings.  A father grieves differently than a mother and I wanted to help him as much as I could.  But I wouldn't give my daughter any name just for the sake of moving on.  I wanted to put care into it.  So I went through traditional Aztec names and found the language Náhuatl is sometimes used. Though Náhuatl literally means "someone who makes an agreeable sound (someone who speaks my language)," some sites indicate Nahuatl depicts the migration of Mexican Indians by meaning four waters. And since I'm a sucker for meaning, we named our baby Nahuatl.  

Now that she is gone, I am compelled to do things for her.  I make sure she always has flowers (we decided her color is purple).  I kiss her everyday.  I look at my ultrasounds and touch her handprints/footprints frequently.  I rub the foot that was missing a toe.  I find ways to share her with people.  And I buy her a variety of memorial pendants.    

But a vendor has to replace one of the pendants from the necklace I received today because Nahuatl's name was misspelled.  And it's funny because I was upset at first.  I was initially horrified looking at it and couldn't understand why everything always goes wrong despite how hard I try to make life work. Nahuatl's chromosomes didn't separate right after doing everything I could to ensure a healthy pregnancy and now someone misspelled her name after leaving specific instructions at the check out. I spent all that time thinking about nicknames and choosing a new name we cared about, but at the end of the day Nahuatl was processed as Nahuati.

I sat with it for a while and I had to laugh.  A typographical error for a meiotic defect.  No matter how much I try to control events, I can't.  Some days this upsets me.  While mothers push baby strollers, I'm the one standing in line purchasing purple flowers.  But sometimes I can breath through it and find hope in acceptance.