While the birth of a baby is a joyous occasion, there is little doubt that the introduction of a tiny person into a great big world necessitates an amount of work that can be seriously overwhelming. Not to mention the hard labor already undertaken by the female half of any baby-making duo, it all adds up to a draining and emotional time. And it is because of this wearisome emotionality that we can do nothing but throw up our hands at the choices some parents make at this time. Like saddling their beloved with a name that is guaranteed to have their peers point and laugh with enormous glee at some point down the road.
There is so much that a baby needs, and it is only when a child is delivered to a couple that the profundity of a newborn’s dependence sinks in. I mean you’ve got to do everything for the kid – wash it, feed it, and deal with what you’ve fed it once it comes out the other end. Thank goodness it can’t talk back just yet, even though it tries to compensate for what it lacks in terms of vocabulary with a good solid volume.
But considering the emotional fragility with which a newborn is greeted by his or her parents, a baby’s inability to quantify its thoughts might not be wholly for the greater good. How many new parents have been induced by absolute fatigue to make shortsighted decisions? Did you really think that baby wasn’t going to throw that mush all over the floor as soon as you turned your back? Put this way, perhaps saddling our children with ridiculous names is the least of our worries.
But hang on a second – even if you haven’t had more than two hours’ sleep in a month, that’s no excuse to put the diaper on the wrong end, but let’s face it, that’s not something that is going to haunt baby for the rest of his or her life. But a poorly chosen name? Now that’s going to hurt later. It might be a family legacy, but you know sometimes it’s a whole lot kinder to hurt old uncle Hubert’s feelings now than have poor little Hubert coming home from school in tears because even the teacher laughed at his name.
So the lesson to be learned is this: don’t fill in the birth certificate until the painkillers have worn off. And better wait until you’ve had a good night’s sleep before choosing a moniker too, just in case your judgment is impaired. Actually, maybe it would be better to let the kid pick his or her own name. You can just call them ‘hey you’ for the first eighteen years. You never know, it might stick!