i am an expert at naming babies.

i came to this conclusion after coming up with two of the greatest baby names ever devised, BOTH of which i brainstormed without benefit of a 1001 Baby Names book.

The first name i came up with is Doctor. Doctor is an amazing baby name. All of the respect, admiration and awe that real doctors command upon first meeting them and hearing their names would be instantly transferred to my baby. “Meet Dr. Baby,” i would say, and instantly people would coo and curtsey to the tiny little status symbol.

When Doctor grows a little bit older, people will be astonished. It’ll be the Doogie Howser effect. i’ll say “Meet my son or daughter, Doctor,” and people’s eyes will instantly light up as they stare with wonder at my small but impressive offspring. They’ll grow cross-eyed trying to figure out how on Earth my kid earned a PhD so fast, but they’ll decide quite quickly that it would be very rude to ask, what with my son or daughter staring up at them haughtily over tiny bifocals. Also, my child will wear bifocals.

In off-times when we’re not trying to impress people, we will use the short-form “Doc,” which sounds very cool, for it is the same name that that dwarf had. You know - the smart one. i will teach my child that when the other kids say “Nyaah … what’s up, Doc?” intending to mock him or her, he or she should punch those kids immediately in the face to discourage them. It’s hard to be a smartass when your nose is broken.

The thought of such necessary and warranted brutality brings to mind the second brilliant baby name i have brainstormed, and this one is for a boy only: Clutch. This baby name is so awesome that i can barely stand it. When i name my baby Clutch, he will grow up to be a famous racecar driver and football player. i don’t enjoy either sport, but he’ll have no other options because his name will be Clutch. It will be expensive to buy clothes for my son Clutch because they will all be made of leather. Clutch won’t even give the other kids a chance to make fun of his name - he’ll punch them in the noses just for looking at him sideways. He will command a different type of respect than Doctor, but respect nonetheless. He will not bully the other children, but will rather grow up to be the cool, quiet, smouldering anti-hero who protects the underdog children at school and makes the snivelling evil children run in fear. “Stop taking free shots at Lewis! Here comes Clutch, and he looks angry!” “Let’s get outta here!” That is what he snivelling evil children will say, and they will run away comically while my boy Clutch puts a consolling hand on Lewis’s shoulder as Lewis throws up.

The name choices i have brainstormed - those being “Doctor” and “Clutch,” in case you’re just tuning in - have met with some resistance from my unborn child’s grandma. And my unborn child’s other grandma. And my wife, and my wife’s friends. And just about everyone else i’ve told, except for guys. Guys understand. So because it takes two to tango, and also two to go home after a romantic night of tangoing to have sex and make a baby, i have decided to relent a little and strike a fair compromise on the baby name.

The child shall be named “Doctor Clutch.” He will be a super villain with a metal claw for a hand, and that’s that.

It’s nice to think of ourselves as being of a higher order, and as a Christian i’ll be the first one to proclaim that man and animal are two completely separate creations … but something downright weird happens once you’ve successfully knocked a girl up.

My wife recently said, in a candid conversation that i’ll now paste all over this most public realm for all to experience, that she worries i’ll go messing around with another woman now that she’s pregnant. i told her that she was crazy, and that i’ve been waiting nearly my entire life to be a good father to my children, and that all along i’ve prized commitment and monogamy and her, her, her.

And then came the hips.

Hips – hips everywhere – hipnotically rolling from side to side down the street as the girls they were attached to went about their business in unassuming ways, and scarcely could they guess that all the while some 20-something monogamous father-to-be was staring at them thinking “there’s a spot i could cram with a few babies.”

Those of you who are Darwinists or man-is-ape believers shouldn’t be too shocked to learn that now that i’ve impregnated my wife, my mind has strangely turned to thoughts of global sexual conquest. It’s this weird, uncomfortable urge to go spraying my seed around the streets and the back alleys, seeing which splotches of goo will “take” and spawn more little babies with my likeness. In my most primal, back-of-the-brain fantasties, i reimagine myself as The Inseminator, the all-conquering, all-fertilizing phallic overlord whose sole mission is to stuff the world’s wombs with fetuses while throwing his head back and laughing paternally.

My wife heard that when a girl is pregnant with a baby, it’s prime time for her husband to go mistress-shopping. Honestly – and i don’t say it to be cruel – i can understand why. The love and affection you’re normally accustomed to completely dries up, and having a barfy wife at home really cuts down on your romantic feelings for her anyway. It’s easy to feel unloved and uncared for in the face of non-stop nausea and tender body bits that eventually can’t be touched anyway because they’re “for the baby.” The three-year-old in me mutters “yeah, i’ve got something ‘for the baby’ – a knuckle sandwich!”

i very much doubt that i’ll be one of these casualties, tho. My excess weight keeps me from feeling attractive or appealing to absolutely anyone but my wife. That might even add to the sting of it, really – the feeling that the one person in this life with whom i’m romantically linked won’t have anything to do with me. It might make a difference in my mindset if i had a nice set of ripped abs and i thought that at any moment, i could run off with a pretty young thing and be loved by her. i wouldn’t, but i could.

It all leads me to wonder why, when i was finally ten whole months old, my father decided to bolt. As far as i can tell, he’d been through the worst of it. It was all easy street from there – stay up all night, change stinky diapers, live from paycheque to paycheque – at least he’d have someone to rub his back and whisper a kind word to him and share the experience. Why put yourself through the harassment of pregnancy and take off just when things are getting good? (Incidentally, i hear that’s why infants tend to look more like the father - to keep daddy from skipping town.)

You’d think a key piece of the puzzle is the fact that he married my mother after she got pregnant. (Sure – call me a rat bastard. You’d be technically accurate.) You could suppose that he never intended to become a father. Some men wanna, some men don’t. i, for one, wanna – let the record show.

But here’s the kicker: having been a world traveller, born in Manchester, a bartender in Morocco, world-wise in every way, do you suppose he left his wife and ten-month old son in a small house in Northern Ontario to continue his carefree gallavanting and free-spirited, no-strings-attached ways in some other far-flung locale like Peru or Latvia? Well, truth be told, he moved a few provinces over to Alberta to become a social worker at the Children’s Aid Society.

Children’s Aid. The irony slays me.

Oven, Meet Bun
The Greatest Father in Plaza des Fathersville
Journalling for Two
And in a Twinkling, We Are Hippies

The moment we’ve been waiting for, breathlessly, for about a month … (i guess we’re impatient people) … finally happened this morning.

It’s been an extremely vomitous month for my poor, puking partner in crime, and all the while i’ve been clinging to the hope that when we finally hear or see our new baby’s heart beat on the ultrasound monitor, it’ll charge us (particularly her) up and spur us on for the next x months of yakking.

Quite often on Wednesday nights, the dragonboat crew goes out for drinks, and in trying to explain to one fellow the myriad reasons i don’t like to go, i mentioned that my wife is home sick with the babies and it doesn’t feel right that i should be out having a great time. i said it’s rather a stressful time for us, and he said “well … it’s not you who’s puking.” No, it’s not - but imagine being married to someone and every single - every single - conversation you have is all about how much he or she upchucked on a given day, and to what degree he or she feels nauseous. It’s draining for the nauseous person, and it’s draining for the nauseous person’s partner to be unable to confide anything or discuss anything or spend a moment’s time together without the chunder coming between them. Sometimes literally. But that’s what the muffin bowl is for. And, in case you’re concerned, it’s been completely retired from the function it has in the making of muffins.

The ultrasound office was a secret one, i discovered. i had been to the exact same building before to have my - pardon the term - bitch tits examined (which are actually the result of some extra weight, yes, but also of an adverse reaction to a certain medication i was taking that has since been yanked from the market). When i went to the ultrasound clinic, i was herded like cattle into the waiting room for getting your - pardon the term - bitch tits examined. The place was full of unhappy people with bonus mammaries and all sorts of other impairments, and it was not a very nice place to be whatsoever.

Not so the secret ultrasound room for pregnant mommies-to-be, i learned. Here was a different ultrasound waiting room, hidden from the public eye, the directions to which are printed on a piece of paper in invisible ink or something, and you have to wrestle a pirate to find the other half of your Secret Pregnant Mommies-to-Be Ultrasound Waiting Room map. This place was much smaller, and held only a scant few reasonably happy and cuddly mommies with varying degrees of bellyhood waiting for the Russian ladies to take pictures of their babies. (Note: for some odd reason, nearly every ultrasound or x-ray technician i’ve ever met in the city of Toronto has had some vaguely Eastern European accent. i can’t account for it, except to guess that soaking up all those harmful rays makes you talk like a vampire.)

Everything was pleasant enough, discounting the fact that my wife had to barf, until one particular “lady” trundled in, lead by her fat bloated baby paunch. She was trailed by her 60-some-odd year old mom, who seemed classy enough until she opened her mouth. The “lady” picked up her Secret Pregnant Mommies-to-Be Ultrasound Waiting Room clipboard questionnaire and plopped back down in her seat, and instantly started talking in a loud enough voice as to make the other Secret Pregnant Mommies-to-Be Ultrasound Waiting Room people uncomfortable. For some reason, you must always use a hushed voice in a waiting room. i don’t know why, except to guess that when you don’t, you piss people off. Turns out it’s a very sound theory of mine.

It wasn’t just that this “lady” was talking too loudly in a waiting room. It’s that she was griping, stupidly, to her mother that she didn’t know how to answer the questionnaire. She had already given birth to two kids without filling out a questionnaire (a fact that i’m aware of because she was sure to speak loudly enough so that everyone would know), so what was the point of filling one out now? Her mom gently encouraged her to just shaddup and fill the damned thing out. The “lady” said “I need your help! I dunno how to answer summa these.” “Like which ones?” said her mother.

And then it began.

The “lady” started going down the list, reading every single question with uncompromising clarity and volume.

WHEN WAS YOUR LAAAAST … PERIOD?

HAVE YOU HAD ANYYYY … SPOTTING IN THE PAST SIX WEEKS?

HAVE YOU DETECTED ANY CERVICAL DISCHARGE IN THE PAST N…. (i try desperately to tune out)

BLAH BLAH BLAH VAGINA! BLAH BLAH BLAH BLOODY STOOL!! BLAH BLAH BLAH METAL IMPLEMENTS PRODDING MY HOO-HAA!!! BLAH BLAH BLAH STILLBORN BABY CHUNKY BITS OF BLOOD CHUNK VAGINA MESS GOO DISCHARGE BROWN LUMPY PAST TEN WEEK FLUID EXPULSION LEAKY VAGINA VAGINA VAGINA!!!”

i was ghost-white by the time she had finished. She finally waddled back up to the desk with the clipboard draped over her too-experienced-for-the-room, two-births-in-the-bag belly and handed the survey back.

Soon after, her name was called: So-and-so Bush. i nearly threw up right there.

Luckily, i had my wife’s own ultrasound to take my mind off that experience. Boys aren’t allowed to go in for the first part of the ultrasound because apparently, even at this late stage in the game, despite having spellunked my wife’s gloopy reproductive catacombs with nearly every appendage available to me, girls still have their damned secrets to keep.

But soon afterward i was allowed in, and the Transylvanian ultrasound technician cut to the chase by maneuvering over to the jelly bean baby area and pointing out its rapidly beating hummingbird heart.

Dear readers, the moment did not disappoint.

Finally, it was all real to us, and i hope that in the coming days, there will be a more promising focus to all the (otherwise pointless) puking and huffing. People have asked me if i started to cry when i saw the heart and no, to my surprise i didn’t. That exhilerated cry-for-joy feeling eventually welled up within me, but honestly my first reaction was not unlike when you first get to see the creature in a good creature movie. “Gremlins” is a great example. It was a weird, science fictiony, partly wonderful/partly scary moment of realization, i think for both of us, that there was this black-and-white parasitic jelly bean thing living in my wife’s body.

i tried to be a hero and an expert by pointing to various things and saying “Ah, yes. That’s the head.” The technician said “Er - no. Thees ees the head.” “Oh! Uh … That’s the head?” “Yes.” i didn’t dare contradict her or say “Are you sure?” because she sounded like the dancing bear coreographer at a Russian circus and was therefore clearly qualified. She asked me if i’d like to print a picture and i said “Sure!” and with the push of a button, out it came. Hooray! Wonderful! Yay for technology!

Then her face fell stone-cold stoic and she said “You cyan pay for zat at ze front desk.”

Ah. i see. So that’s how it’s gonna be, is it?

There are certain groups of people who are targeted above all others, and prices are jacked up for them alone because they’re obviously grabbed by the balls at that point and wouldn’t dare object to coughing up the cash. A lot of these people find themselves rallied around major life events: marriage, child birth, and burial of a loved one. Of course you’re gonna pay an extra two thousand bucks for the satin-lined coffin with air conditioning and a sunroof - wouldn’t Grandpa Willy have wanted it that way?

i felt, in that ultrasound room, like they had me by the balls. There was no way to unprint the picture, and i certainly did want it, but who knows how high they’d have me go? If they had charged me ten bucks, would i have paid? Thankfully, they did charge me ten bucks and i was actually carrying cash on me at the time (not a regular habit of mine). But what if they had put it at twenty bucks? Fifty bucks? Even a hundred bucks? How can a misty-eyed father-to-be be expected to coldly place a value on a memento from such a clearly life-defining moment?

In retrospect, i should’ve punched the Romanian lady in the face and ran for it.