Some of you may remember that we had planned, if the baby turned out to be a girl, to name her Sarah Augusta and call her Sadie. It’s the same name we had planned to give Tage if he had been a girl and I felt very committed to it. A couple of weeks before the baby came, though, I started to rethink it. I had already changed my mind about a boy name, and Sadie had started to feel a little stale next to the new pick. I started running through my list of girl choices again–all names that Olof had previously vetoed, by the way–as much out of boredom as anything else, I think. When we started talking names again, we had already passed the point by which I had expected the baby to have come, and the few hours we spent in negotiations provided a welcome distraction from the waiting, waiting, waiting.

We decided, after a day or so, to go with Petra Isadora if we had a daughter and, as you already know, we stuck with that choice. Interestingly enough, however, the day she finally made her appearance was “Sarah day” on the Swedish name-day calendar. Funny, that.