What's In A Name?

I have found that I am very reluctant to refer to my daughters by their names when I comment on blogs. I'm not too sure why. Perhaps it is some sort of misguided attempt to protect their privacy but given that . . . .

(a) I'm blogging under my real name with a photograph of myself as I actually look in real life, albeit with a face obscured by hair.

(b) one of my daughters is never going to worry that I've invaded her privacy

and (c) my other daughter is only nine and a half months old and I'm fairly certain that she herself doesn't even know her own name yet. Or how to read. Or how to operate a computer. Probably by the time she is old enough to do all of these things, blogs will be part of ancient history

. . .it's kind of mysterious why I don't want to write their names. I'm going to break my own taboo.

My older twin was named Georgina Jane. She weighed 1lb 10oz at birth. She had blue eyes. I don't know whether they would have stayed blue. She had a tiny wisp of fair hair. When I was pregnant, I called her 'my shy baby' as I very rarely felt her move. Maybe because she was so ill but I didn't know that at the time.

Georgina was a name that my husband and I picked out years ago. When we were first dating. We had both always known we wanted children and used to talk about (and occasionally to) our two imaginary future children. They were going to be a boy and a girl and called Georgina and Lewis. We were so stupidly naive, I don't think that we ever contemplated that our children might not live. We would call our baby girl Georgie for short and Daddy would sing her the song 'Georgie Girl'. Sometimes I miss the people that we used to be.

I wonder if we jinxed her by giving the name of our imaginary little girl. Perhaps she was destined to stay imaginary as, God knows, I imagine her all the time now.

I gave her my grandmother's name as a middle name. It is also my middle name. Sometimes I wonder if that just added to the jinx. That labelling of her as 'my twin'. Even though I don't believe in jinxes. Not really but it's hard not to be superstitious.

If anyone is reading this who has lost a baby, did you stick with the name you originally picked and dreamt over? Or did you change it, when you first saw your baby or when you realised that your child would not survive?

My surviving twin is named Jessica Clair. She was the smaller twin, at 1lb 7oz, and the younger twin. Sad to say her name was chosen on the basis that it 'went' with Georgina. Clair after my husband's mother.

Because she had such a difficult and dramatic start in life, a lot of people take an interest in her. Everyone asks after her. Even people who I don't really know that well. Sometimes even people who don't know me, know the story and know of Jessica. I must say her name at least a hundred times a day.

Sometimes it makes me want to hide in a darkened room and whisper 'Georgina, Georgina, Georgina' over and over to myself. Just to even things up a bit. I love them both so much but only one of my children is fit for public consumption. The other one is a bit of a conversation killer. I don't say that with any bitterness. I don't really know what to say about the whole sad experience either, if I'm honest.

Maybe that is why I'm writing this blog.
Georgina, Georgina, Georgina, Georgina.
Mummy loves you. Mummy misses you. I imagine you every single day.