RP and I took turns holding our beautiful baby. His poor little face was swollen and he had a bit of a cone head, but we both agreed that he was pretty perfect.

It took some time for our recovery room to be ready for us, so we began trying different names on the baby to see if they fit. We had hoped that we’d just look at him and we’d have an “a-ha” moment and know exactly what his name is. That was not the case, at all.

Our short list had grown from two names to five. One of our original favorite names was tabled because RP and I didn’t care for the way it sounded with RP’s middle name, Arvid, which we chose to use for WBP’s middle name.

For a number of hours, Dash was known as “baby” or “WBP” or “PeeWee” or “Wee Baby”. Our sweet nurses would check in and see if we had “named that baby yet.” I know that our parents were very anxious to hear what we picked.

RP decided to run to our house to check in on Manny, take a shower and pick up a few additional items. Before he left, he set the deadline that he couldn’t leave the hospital without having WBP named. After much deliberation, we decided on …

Dashiell [DASH-el] Arvid

We chose Dashiell because of the author Dashiell Hammett. He wrote hard-boiled detective fiction (his most famous novel is The Maltese Falcon). RP really likes that genre and we both loved the name. We came to find out later, it’s also the name of the little boy in the Incredibles and the son of Cate Blanchett. If it’s good enough for Cate’s kiddo, it’s good enough for me!

Dashiell broke my two rules for naming. We had agreed that we’d have a name that was easy to spell and easy to pronounce (the two things that my name is not). Well, Dashiell is neither. We decided to look past our rules because we really liked the name. Also, while Dashiell could be mispronounced or misspelled, it has a natural nickname that is easily spelled and pronounced (and sounds pretty cool).

So, that’s the story behind our little baby Dash’s name. The sweet receptionist at our pediatricians office said that we were a family of “cool names”. She was a flatterer because she also told me that I looked too good to have just had a baby (at our two day check up), but I’ll take the compliments!

We’re pretty proud of our little guy and hope that as he grows up, he thinks his name is as cool as we think it is.

After we settled on the name, all we had left to do was spend a couple of nights to heal at the hospital. RP and I enjoyed every moment of snuggling our little guy, introducing him to a few friends and figuring out our new normal. Dash roomed in, so I quickly found out what it was like to not sleep overnight! Thankfully, I felt really good after delivery and didn’t experience complications, so I was able to focus 100% on Dash.

So this ends the birth story trilogy. Dash is now one month old. I can hardly believe it. RP and I have had both sets of our parents out to meet Dash and that was so fun for us. We loved seeing the grandparents fall in love with their first grandson. He’s changed so much in four weeks and I’m already wishing time would slow down.