do we have a name YET?

since everyone is asking, here's the low down.
get ready, it's a long, messy story.

we did not pick a name (or even settle on a small handful of names) before we got to the hospital.

then the baby was born.

and patrick said his name was graham.

after a veto and my two weeks of trying to convince him otherwise, it's true that patrick had eventually come back to me and told me he was ok with the name graham months after my initial suggestion. but we discussed it no further than that. i was very frustrated regarding the lack of discussion around names, but figured a healthy baby should be the focus.

after patrick declared the baby's name as graham at the hospital, i was left sitting with my jaw dropped in my delivery bed and asked, shouldn't we discuss it?  there are other names i like, too, and we just haven't even discussed it and i had no idea you were set on that name.

he asked what other names i liked, noting that it could not be ned.  (it's true, i like ned.)

i reminded him that he had seen the list i made 100x, but that i still loved the nickname cal.  yet patrick does not like calvin or other variations like callan. turned out he does like callum, which is gaelic. turned out he seemed to like it a whole lot.

so we left the hospital undecided between two first names:
1. callum, with nickname cal
2. graham

note, they're both 6 letters, have the short 'a' sound as in cat, and end in m. 

(little baby's middle name is definitely marden, which was patrick's mother's maiden name.)

later in the week after we went home nameless, the birth certificate people called and said we had to submit our paperwork by the next morning.  in my exhaustion, i didn't ask what the 'or else' would be but i figured the urgency would help us decide.

the next morning came, and i cried to patrick as we put a name on the papers and faxed them away.  i cried because a) post-natal hormones make me crazy and b) i just wasn't ready to commit. but we did actually submit a name about a week after he was born.  there were still a lot of other more important things going on with the baby (see "baby's first week" post), and i just kind of threw my arms up in the air and said, let's just be done with it. 

as could have been predicted, over the weekend i had "buyer's remorse" so much that i thought i hated the name we picked, which was callum. 

i wanted to know how we could change it. patrick researched how to change a first name online, which in illinois looked to be a six month process.  i was crushed, but not convinced this was true.

i tried redialing the number that the birth certificate people had called me from. it just rang, and rang, and rang. i was so MAD that they had pressured me into submitting something; wouldn't we have been better off just waiting? like a crazy lady, i tried multiple times throughout the day.

the next day i called the hospital, and got passed around, eventually reaching the the post-natal data center.  and i was put in touch with a real person from the birth certificates team!

i asked her to check on whether they had definitely submitted our papers. i thought maybe i could intercept them.  but they had already been sent in. i started crying. the lady could tell. i asked her if she knew how to change a name.

she said i had to go to the county clerk. i started crying more, and through my choked back tears, explained that we researched it and found out that it takes six months.

she laughed kindly, and said that's not the case with a newborn, and that's only when you have to work through the state.  at this point, we just have to go through the county, and have basically the first year to change the name at the county clerk's office.  she said i just have to go down with ID, and explain that the hospital submitted the name we provided, but that we've had a change of  heart.

i felt SO much better. i didn't want our son's name to be callum only by reasons of default, or because it would be too hard to change it.  just knowing we weren't stuck with the name gave me relief. 

and after i got off the phone, i instantly felt better about having a little cal.

i told patrick that it should be easy to change it to graham ... if we wanted.
and i was back at square one, undecided.
oh my god ... again!


so i have introduced the baby to nurse, doctors and strangers with both names, to try to see if one fits or feels better. 

the frustrating thing about the name callum, is that when we were in the hospital and wrote that name on the patient info on our white board, some people mis-pronounced it. it's a pretty common name in the UK.  it's just less common here, so we'd be looking at a lifetime of mis-pronunciation. however, i get that for devon, and i've survived.  but do i want to go through all that for my son's name too?  not sure!  i think callum is a great name, though, and i love the nickname cal.  and i even think he looks like a little cal.

when i asked piper to call him cal, she moo'd back at me.  that's CAL, piper, not COW!

but after i threw my fit over needing to know how to change the name, patrick figured that we were, in fact, changing cal's name to graham.  it turns out that while i thought patrick had switched his allegiance to callum in the names discussion, he actually says he still likes graham better.  graham was my number one choice at the beginning, but when patrick said no, i had dismissed it. so getting used to it as a real contender so late in the game was a shock.  but it sure does sound pretty darn good with larkin.  and people are familiar with the name graham. 

so, sigh, i still really sit between the two. 
we've asked people to take sides, out of curiosity, and the "votes" are actually pretty split as well.

if we go with graham, i've got to go down to the icky county clerk's office (with a newborn!) and find out if it's as easy to change as the birth certificates lady told me it would be.  otherwise, we just need to resolve to stick with callum.  we just have to decide!!

i'm telling people that we have to finalize paperwork either way, even though we don't technically have to do any paperwork if we stick with cal.  it's just too long of a story to break it down for everyone.  and to me, it's still a matter of finalizing anyway. 
so there you have it, folks!

stay tuned.