Dear Dot

Dear Dot,

You can come out now. I know you want to. It can't be comfortable for you in there, otherwise why would you persist in doing the YMCA and split jumps on my bladder? Maybe that's your idea of fun, but at the moment my idea of fun is lying on my back with a guy cutting open my stomach in an air conditioned room. 3 days, that's all. Actually, 2 days and 18 hours, give or take a few minutes.

Strange that, knowing exactly when you'll arrive. We could write your birthday in the birthday book already. I watched Mum write 'Dot due, 1:30pm' in her diary the other day - that was weird. With your brother we knew he would be induced on the 14th of June (his due date), but after the first induction failed we didn't really lend much faith to that method. This is different, come Friday they will cut you out no matter what.

We still have no name. Well, that's not true, we have one; Aoife (pronounced 'ee-fa').
According to http://www.babynamesofireland.com/ it means "beautiful, radiant, joyful."
Known as the greatest woman warrior in the world, Aoife was the mother of Cuchulainn's only son, Connlach. Aoife Dearg ("Red Aoife") was a daughter of a king of Connacht who had her marriage arranged by St. Patrick himself.

We have loved the name since before Euey was born. The only drawback is that it's taken us this long to learn how to spell it - so how long will it take you? I'm sure you'll be clever enough to get the hang of it.

The real problem is: what if you don't LOOK like an Aoife? So, we need a list. But we can't find the baby name book we used when Euey didn't look like a Jack or any other name we picked. Maybe we'll download some stuff from the net. But really Dot, as disorganised as we sound, we actually have everything else completely ready for you, I promise.

Love Mum