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Despite all the whining over when the hell our baby was finally going to be born, turns out she got here exactly when our OB said she would. Am I the only person to ever give birth on their actual due date? I think I might be.

Our beautiful Harlow Eden arrived at 9:41am on Thursday morning, November 15th. She weighed in at 6.13lbs and is 18 3/4″ long. She is currently fed and sleeping, which is far more than I could have said about Mazzy at barely a day old.

I don’t have the energy to go into her full birth story right now. I’ll save that for next week. But I wanted to give a quick explanation for her name.

Harlow is named after Mike’s father, Harold, who passed away when Mazzy was about 9 months-old. It’s Jewish tradition to use the first letter of the most recently deceased family member and I hope Harlow will feel a special connection to her grandfather even though they will never meet. That is how I feel about my grandfather Irving.

We narrowed down our choices to Harlow and Harper, but ultimately chose Harlow because I feared stepping into Mommy & Me class and finding fifteen other girls with the same name. Harper is on every list as one of the fastest rising names of 2012. And yes, I pay attention to such things.

The middle name was a bit more complicated.

Mazzy’s middle name is Rose, short for my maiden name— Rosengarten. I thought it would be nice to use another flower for Harlow’s middle name since together, they would make up a garden. But flower options are not that easily paired with Harlow.

Harlow Lilly sounds like a tongue twister.

Harlow Violet sounds like a celebrity child mash-up from 2008.

Harlow Dahlia sounds like two first names.

Harlow Daisy just sounds stupid.

We finally thought we had figured it out with Harlow Ivy (Beyonce usage aside), but then I read that Ivy often likes to strangle garden roses as well as slowly kill the trees which allow it to thrive… and then Ivy seemed like the worst possible choice for the name of your child.

So we were stuck.

Finally, last week, in a moment of desperation, I called my mom and my sister and told them about our dilemma. I told them we wanted to find a middle name that was related to Rosengarten but couldn’t come up with a good flower.

They called me back in about five minutes and said, “We figured it out.”

“You have?”

“Eden. Like the garden of Eden. And bonus, it’s also a kind of rose.”

Pause.

“HOLY SHIT. I really like it. And my middle name is Eve so… Eve in relation to Eden is pretty cool. Eden might actually be… PERFECT.”

“We know!!!”

“Not so fast. I need Mike approval.” (We all know how that can go…)

I told Mike later that evening. He gave me the head-cocked big-eyed nod— a Mike signature expression that means, “Huh. Against all odds, you have said something with which I agree”.

Mike told me that his father’s middle name was Edward, so Eden would give Harlow his dad’s exact initials.

As I said— PERFECT.

Thank you to everyone who wished our family well yesterday on facebook, twitter and instagram. The response was overwhelming and really touching.

I know I left you all hanging most of the day, but Mike made a special request to keep the day SOCIAL MEDIA FREE, until after the baby was born and all our family members were notified.

So… you have him to thank for the absence of my LIVE VAG-CAM.

Read Harlow’s Birth Story here.