A Sam By Any Other Name

Like most of the other girls/women I know, I have had an ongoing list of names I'd like to use for future children. Kourtney and Katie can attest to my horrible, HORRIBLE name choices from elementary school. My Cabbage Patch dolls were named Amaryllah Daisy and Savannah Marigold. Beautiful!

Eric and I loved so many of the girl's names we were considering. Girl names are easy to love! Finding a name for a boy is much harder. Shortly after we were married, we were discussing names while on a long car trip. We decided that we loved the name Jacob, nickname Jake, even though it was so popular. (Eric now denies this conversation ever took place and claims he never liked the name Jake. But it happened. He liked it. And now everyone knows.)

After my pregnancy was confirmed, we knew our choice for a girl name right away. While on a car trip (where are we always going?), we went through the boy's section of a baby name book. I literally read every name out loud and crossed off the ones we didn't like. We only made it to the C's, and all the names were crossed off. We gave up.

When I was in middle school, my friend Johanna had a little brother named Samuel. He was always called Samuel, never Sam, and even at 10 years old I thought it was such a nice, solid name. It was a favorite of mine but I thought that overall, it was too plain.

I don't remember announcing it as THE name, but I know I bounced it off of Eric and our families. My brother-in-law, Mike, was the only one in my family to believe we were having a boy. The rest of us insisted it was a girl! A week before my ultrasound, we visited my sister's family in Rochester. I remember walking away, and him saying, "Bye, Em." After a five second pause, he shouted, "And bye, Sam!"

The day of our ultrasound, we were so excited. Eric and I bounced around in the waiting room, hardly able to contain ourselves. Finally, I was laying on the table and the ultrasound tech got her machine ready. We assured her we DID want to know the gender, and she placed the paddle on my stomach. There, on the screen in front of me, was my baby's face. The first thought in my head, upon seeing the face of our little miracle, was, "Hi, Sam!" I didn't need her to go any further with the ultrasound to confirm what I already knew.

He was healthy, he was our son, and he was Sam.