Namesake*

I've had a lot of people asking about where we came up with the name Evey Emaline, so I'm explaining the many origins that combined to give our little girl her name.

If you know me very well, you know that my chosen art form is motion pictures. I love the way movies take so many aspects of art (theatre, photography and cinematography, costume design, writing, etc) and combines them to make this wonderful bit of entertainment that takes you to a different world for two hours. Evey's name is mostly from a plethera of movies that have impacted Christopher and myself in some way.

Her second name, Emaline, is actaully from a song that Christopher and I have loved since we first started dating. Eight years ago, Christopher said "we should name our daughter after this song" and now we are! Who knew that the crazy plans of two kids in love would ever come to completion?!? Here's the song that inspired us.

Her first name wasn't quite so direct. If you take another look at the ultrasound picture from our "Seven Weeks Today" post on December 19th, that's where the idea for her name started. That was the first time we got to see our little fetus and she reminded us of the adorable little "EVE" robot from Disney's Wall-E. Everyone else said "Oh! It looks like a grain of rice!" But Christopher and I weren't convinced. From that moment, our baby was nicknamed Eve-a (based on Wall-E's pronunciation, of course).

When we were discussing names for a girl, I kept coming back to Eve. I guess I'd called the baby that so much, it just made sense to keep on calling her that if she was indeed a she. But I wasn't a fan of Eva because it's such a latino name and we have no latino background and I wasn't a fan of plain old Eve because it's much more common. We loved the movie "V for Vendetta" and Natalie Portman's character, Evey Hammond, was so well written. We decided that "Evey" was uncommon enough to support our character, and we liked the different spelling as well.

We got on babynames.com to find out the meaning of both names when we decided that it may be in the running - and this is what really gave made it our #1 choice.

We had to search by the name Eve, but it's origin is Hebrew and it means "life". Emaline was listed under Emmeline or Emmaline, but it has an English origin and means "work". So her name essentially means "life work" which fits her to a T. We tried for so long to get pregnant and expanding our family has been our number one priority that she really is our life's work. And now that she's really coming, our "life work" will continue forever.

Of course my brain references everything to pop culture, and as soon as I read the meaning I thought about one of my favorite children's books, Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White. The spider, Charlotte, lays her egg sack - her "magnum opus" - her "life's work", if you will. I absolutely LOVED that connection, and one day Evey and I will read that book together and I'll tell her about how her name came to be.


 

Halfway Home

Our countdown to Evey has now made a turn for the best... We're over the halfway hump and now, we can really start "counting down" to her arrival!

I can't believe five months has gone by so quickly and in the amount of time that I've had her to myself, I'll have to share her with the world! I'm not sure I'm ready for that one yet... ;)

She's definitely a fiesty little girl. Sometimes, I think she's having a party in my belly - and I'm okay with that. I love feeling her move around more than anything. Christopher and I were playing with a fetal heartbeat monitor the other day and she was so active. She did not like us invading her space and she'd move into the doppler to push it away. Christopher can't feel her yet, but he was able to put the sound and feeling together as he held the microphone and got a chance to feel his daughter for the first time. It was such an awesome experience!

We had our 20 week ultrasound and anatomy scan last Tuesday and we got some great pictures of our girl. She was a little uncooperative, which meant that we'd have to have another ultrasound at our next appointment (and we were dissapointed that we'd have to have another "medically necessary" ultrasound then - not!). I made sure to thank her for being so crazy!

In this picture you can see her perfect profile. You can see the places for her eyes and ears as they're beginning to develop and you can also see her nose and lips. She's playing with her feet, but she was all over the place during the scan. We got to see her opening and closing her mouth, wiggling her fingers and toes, and sucking her thumb (this she got from me). When it came to the "important" parts of the scan, she curled into the fetal position and wouldn't come out of the ball (this is a trait directly from her dad)!

Here's a picture of her legs from a top view. The big round spot is her tummy and you an see all her bones developing through her legs and feet.

Here are her arms and hands which are both developing perfectly. Our ultrasound tech was a little flaky and I had to ask what everything was. I even dropped hints like: I'm a nosy mom - I want to know what everything is! and she still didn't get it!


When we got in to see our doctor after the scan the report stated that my amniotic fluid was "subjectively decreased". Typically, numbers are provided and you're supposed to be around an 8, but our tech didn't give us a numeric reading at all. Our doctor said that she had no idea what this meant, and that she wasn't worried, but she was going to send us to the high risk specialist just to be safe. They asked if I had been drinking enough water, and I thought I had, but I didn't want something that I wasn't providing enough of to harm our girl.


I went home that night and started chugging water... I drank so much, I was using the bathroom every 15 minutes. And I'm not talking a few sprinkles - I'm talking like full-on, 100%, pee-like-you're-never-going-to-get-another-chance trips to the potty. Finally, Christopher said I should slow down and I heeded his advice.




When we went to the specialist the next morning, I was definitely nervous. I tried so hard not to worry, but there's just so much that can go wrong during pregnancy and even though I was smiling on the outside, my stomach was churning on the inside.


Our nurse began the scan and immediately said there seemed to be plenty of fluid in the placenta. When the doctor came in, he barely glanced at the screen and said he didn't even know why we were there... Christopher and I both breathed a huge sigh of relief. The readings for our fluid came out at a 10, which is 2 over the ideal amount. I suppose all that chugging did some good.


Since we went for a scan in the morning, she wasn't super active while it was going on, so the nurse was able to get all the info she needed. We got to go through the entire anatomy scan again and Evey is growing perfectly. We even got to see some views of her that we'd never seen before! She weighs 13oz and her heart, lungs, kidneys, bladder, arms and legs are all functioning the way they should. The dotcor also told us that her nasal ridge was developing properly. If it wasn't developing, that's a sign for downs syndrome, but we seem to be free and clear.


I asked our nurse if we could have new pictures from our visit and she was more than happy to provide them.

This is one of my favorite pictures ever! The white stripe in the middle is her foot and you can see the outline of her hand where she's holding it. Her profile isn't as clear as the first picture in this post, but behind her leg, you can see her umbilicial cord. The nurse said we have a 3-vessel cord, which means it's exactly as it should be. Evey seems to have a great time hanging out in my belly.

This is the first time we saw her portrait. Her face is on the right and you can see her eye sockets, nose and mouth. The biggest round portion of the ultrasound is her belly. The two dark circles are her lungs. Her arm is at the bottom of the ultrasound, but she's got it up by her face.


So even though it wasn't all good news at first, we got to see Evey two days in a row and I wouldn't trade that for the world! I'm so glad she's perfect and her swimming pool is big enough. Looks like we should make it through the pregnancy unscathed, and she will be here before we know it!!