So, Oliver hasn’t been born yet. When he finally arrives (any day now, hopefully), we’ll know the actual hair and eye color–which could go a number of ways. (We’re both betting on dark hair and dark eyes, though he might be like Richard and my mother, and start out light-haired and end up with darker shades of brown.) At last reading, Oliver was estimated at nearly seven pounds, and there’s no telling how long he is, with his body curled up inside the womb as it is. His head is positioned on my right side, head down, and his feet are curled up on the left, and that’s been his positioning for some weeks now. I feel his movement more and more in these last days, and I’m not sure if that’s because he’s itching to get out or he’s just trying to get comfortable in such a tight space.
Based on the “fetal surveillance” we’ve been doing for the last two weeks (almost three), his resting heartrate is about 115 to 120, and his active heartrate can get up to about 158. Apparently that’s on the low side, but still normal–I like to think that he lives very efficiently, just like his parents. He nearly always practices his breathing during the ultrasounds we now get twice a week to make sure he’s still alive and kicking in there, and it is a marvelous, special thing to see his heart pumping on screen.
As to his name, Oliver Twist isn’t what prompted us to name our nearly-born child Oliver, but the connection was certainly a nice bonus. Richard’s first ever performance was as the Artful Dodger in an elementary school production of Oliver Twist, which I just love. My mother named me after the title character in Madame Bovary, and I have always liked that my name had literary origins. I also tended to pick out English names to bounce off of Richard as we were trying to name the child we had thought was for sure a girl, for whatever reason. Oliver felt right. It isn’t overwhelmingly popular, though more popular than we would like, it has two syllables, goes well with Lyders, can be shortened to an endearing nickname (something that was important to Richard), and had meaning for at least one of us. Oliver means “affectionate,” which reminds me of Richard, and as luck would have it, my master’s program that I graduated from a couple of years ago is offering a class on Oliver Twist this semester. I began reading the book, which I’d never read, and the character is one I might have wanted to name him after, had I known more about him.
