Chiquitita

Almost two years ago, Heidi, Mindy and I went to Nicaragua for Thanksgiving.  We had a week off at the same time, and needed a new stamp in our passports, but preferred somewhere not too far away – so Central America was our obvious choice.  We ruled out a few countries that one or more of us had already visited, and then decided on Nicaragua because the flights there were the cheapest.  Wanderlust at its finest.

Halfway into our trip we were on a ferry, leaving the island of Ometepe and on our way to the beach, when we started talking about my plans to have a baby.  While we were talking, the TV started to play old ABBA videos (which seemed oddly out of place in a ferry full of Spanish speakers), one of which was for the song “Chiquitita.”  This musical masterpiece inspired one of them to say, “Shannon, you should name your baby Chiquitita!”  The rest of the weekend we’d find ways to bring up the baby using the name.  “What if Chiquitita loves the beach?”  “What if Chiquitita is a boy?”  “Do you think Chiquitita will like seafood?”  "Do you think Chiquitita will know to avoid mayo based products in third world countries, thereby avoiding food poisoning?"  (Oh, no, wait, if we'd said that last one, then one of us would have avoided the misery of being hit by food poisoning while watching baby turtles hatch two hours from town.  But that's a story for another day.)

And it stuck.  I continued to refer to my future baby as Chiquitita, and that’s what I started calling my baby when I got pregnant in April.  You all know what happened next with that pregnancy.

It bothered me, that I had called that baby Chiquitita, because I felt like I’d given the name to the wrong baby, and now I couldn’t use it again.  Then I came across a post from a blogger who wrote about her conversation with her husband about their lost baby, and the pet name they had for it.  I’ve lost the blog, which so disappoints me, so I’m not really sure what the pet name was, but let’s say it was Doodle.  Her husband said to her, “That wasn’t our Doodle.  We just thought it was.  We’ll get our Doodle, and this one will be the real one.”  ETA:  The woman who shared this wonderful bit of wisdom is over at The Treehouse Blog - go visit her, you'll be glad you stopped by.

That completely reassured me that it was ok to call my next baby Chiquitita.  But I couldn’t bring myself to do it until my ultrasound yesterday.  And now, I’m happy to say, the name is in use, and I’ve got me a Chiquitita in the oven! 

Before you point out that Chiquitita is a female name, I’d like to add that until I know the sex, I’m using it as a purely unisex name.  If it turns out I’m having a boy, I’ll change it to Chiquitito.  But for now, it’s the generic baby name, no sex preferred over the other!

For your viewing and listening pleasure - the exact video we watched on the ferry: