Finns to the left, Phinns to the right

When my father was growing up, back in the 1800's, Brian must have been an exotic name. Like "Poughkeepsie." Or "Gluten." By the time I was in school, however, there was a four Brian per class minimum. Despite what you may have heard, I was saddled with my nickname simply because there were too many Brians on our dorm floor my freshman year.

When we were choosing the boy's name, we wanted something that would stand out. Something distinctive. We thought we had it nailed.

We were wrong.

We have already met two other F/Phinns, both in Seattle, both born in March. We'd better start thinking of a nickname now. It would suck to be stuck with a name like "Woody, Jr." due to lack of planning.

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One of the other Finns is in our PEPS class. PEPS is a support group for new parents. We gather weekly at each others' houses, stare at our own babies for two hours, then leave. There is also a snack. It's very fulfilling.

Kitty's upset because during the PEPS introductions -- when we were asked to tell our birth stories -- I took the time to inform everyone how Finn's arrival was, and I quote, "the worst day ever." For those regular readers of the blog (whatup, Derek Jeter!), you know that we had some "issues" on that first day. I would like to to once again reiterate: "worst day ever."

However, and I say this for the record, if I had it to do all over again, I wouldn't change a thing. Yes, it sucked jumping in the car and chasing my newborn's ambulance to the hospital, the entire time thinking that a decision that I had made had put my baby's health at risk. And yes, it sucked having to watch my wife in constant pain for 37 hours, half-heartedly trying to talk her out of an epidural that I knew would have made us both MUCH happier. But in the end, our baby is healthy and the birth was done in a way that made the process itself as stress-free (for her) and low-impact as possible (right up until the end). It's easy to look at the bad stuff and question your decisions, but it's impossible to measure how much of a positive impact those decisions had on the experience.

And when it all works out OK, why would you ever change it?

Of course, next time...