On August 13, 2007, Andrew and I got to see our little guy for the second time--and learned that he had a dangler between his legs. My midwife had suspected as much, based on his heart rate, but the little tripod images we saw onscreen confirmed things: we were having a boy!
We were really excited and pleased to be told that all his parts were in the right places and developing properly. By that point I was 21 weeks pregnant, and Kippy (Jackson's in utero name) was 3 weeks large for his gestation.
The tricky part was that Andrew and I had found names challenging for us when it came to boy names. Girl names were easy enough, and we had 2 selected with coordinating middle names. Kippy's male designation forced us to work very hard at finding a suitable name for our little alien invader.
We had begun calling him Kippy from the start as I learned of my pregnant status shortly after a unique encounter with a local vagrant of sorts. Known around my home town of Palm Harbor as "the Can Man," this ragged bicyclist would travel around collecting aluminum cans in his bike basket, presumably to generate money for his beer fund. Only a few hours before I tested positive for having an inner child, I had worked up sufficient nerve to ask the Can Man's name. He very shyly had responded, half-hiding behind his long blond mane and ball cap, that his name was Kippy. So, Andrew and I decided the name was appropriate until we knew what we would really call our future munchkin. After all, the original Kippy was an avid recycler (like me) and was silently trying to help the world around him by ensuring aluminum was not wastefully discarded. Riding a bicycle around town (though probably a DUI-cycle in reality) was both giving him regular exercise and saving on carbon emissions that a motorized vehicle would have produced. What better role model could our child have?
So after we saw his dangler, Andrew and I worked long and hard to choose a name that would fit our offspring. He had to have a solid, strong name, since he had no chance of being tiny. Eventually we discussed the idea of naming him John and calling him Jack. There were a few problems with this, though. One, his middle name was certainly going to be Edward, and our last name is Adams. John Edwards was running for democractic candidacy for the office of president, and John Adams was already the name of two past presidents. We did not want to overstate his possible future attainments before he was even born. Secondly, the name was too bland, too generic. He would not be "google-able". The final problem was that Jack was already a nickname of mine.
When I was born, my sister was only 18months old, so she could not say Jessica. Her initial attempt, Jecca, morphed over time until Jacka and finally Jack became a name to which I would willingly respond. This would not be so troubling except that my niece and nephew only have two aunts, both named Jessica (it was SUCH a popular name!), so to differentiate between us, they have always known me as Auntie Jack.
Tossing ideas around some more, we settled on Jackson Edward Adams. This did not eradicate the excessive presidentiality of his name, but it didn't have to do so. My darling husband, Andrew, shares a birthday with former president Andrew Jackson, for whom he was named. Jackson is my son, therefore the son of "Jack". The name seemed fitting and was suitably strong and was not a particularly popular name--or so we thought.
As it turns out, Jackson had been rapidly gaining in popularity as a first name, placing as the #36 name for boys in 2006 and #33 in 2007.
Surprisingly, we've also frequently received the response, "That's a good, Southern name" quite often. Who knew? Though it appears to be a fairly common mid-western name as well.
Back to the ultrasound. Andrew and I are geeks. I don't mean we go about biting the heads off birds. We just are willing to recognize that there are some things we obsess over that others don't (like finance and budgeting). Within 5 hours of having the goop spread over my belly and watching Jackson suck his thumb in utero, we had ripped the DVD of the sonogram into an Internet-ready video file, added some Dido music, burnt some CDs, uploaded the show to Veoh, and emailed the link to everyone who might care enough to open an email from us.
Experience the thrill for yourself!
(The text that appears onscreen says "Boy!!!" and the arrow points to the indicator.)
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