When Charlie was born without his twin we gave him the middle name "Thomas" which means twin. Well, that's one of his middle names. Alpha and Bravo have 1 middle name, but Charlie got 2. I wanted to honour Charlies twin that he started his life with, so we gave him the name Thomas. Had the twin been born then he would have been called Thomas. Or Amelia had the baby been a girl. Here's the thing: we never actually got to find out what the gender of the twin was. And for a long long time that really really really bothered me. Matt called the twin Thomas but I just couldn't. What if the baby had been a girl? I couldn't give the baby a name and I was saddened by that. I don't care for any of the boy/girl names, so it just didn't feel right to give the child a name I wouldn't give a living child. When the twin was first seen at my 20 week u/s the baby was in a position that they couldn't see gender parts. And it had already started deteriorating, so even had it been in a better position there is no guarantee that they could have told me one way or the other. The twin likely died between 14 and 16 weeks, so that's a little early to tell in the best of circumstances.
After Charlie was born I prayed every night to see my baby in a dream, to know if it was a boy or a girl, Thomas or Amelia. And every morning I awoke heartbroken. Matthew stopped out-loud referring to him as Thomas because it really upset me.
Then the end of August started creeping up on me. The one year anniversary of that horrible day. And it was deeply deeply affecting me. One day I just woke up and had the clearest feeling that the baby had been a boy. I had been so back and forth and back and forth on if I thought it had been a girl or a boy, but I just felt like he was a he. And it started to mean more to me that the twin had a name and not "dead baby" That started getting to be a really bad name in my head. That's how I thought of my sweet twin was "dead baby". So One morning I just woke up and started calling him Thomas. The first time I did so in front of Matthew he just looked at me surprised and didn't make mention of it. I think Matthew is sometimes a little afraid to really talk about everything with me. And now Thomas is just Thomas. He has a name that his big brother's can call him, a name that i can call him, a way to refer to him in a healthy way.
Thomas. My sweet baby not here with me, Charlie's missing twin, Delta's angel. Still, as it is, if Delta is a girl I no longer can use the name Amelia as we had been planning (it was Matthew's Grandma's name) just because on the off chance it had been a girl she would have been Amelia.
I still wait and look forward to the day when I see my Thomas in my dreams. I long to see his sweet face, even if only for a moment in a fleeting dream.
So glad you were able to come to terms with naming your baby, I think that's so important.
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