Are there any special risks when a poet has a baby?

Yes. First of all, there's the name, the meaning, associations, and meter of it. I, for example, have a trochaic name, three feet with the initial syllable stressed. Trochees are marching feet: BUM ba BUM ba BUM ba, Kristen Ingrid Hoggatt. I wasn't aware of that when I was young, otherwise I might not be so timid, but then again my parents weren't poets. My Baby will know everything of a poetic nature about her or his name. Now, my husband and I are going to use a hyphenated version of both our last names as Baby's last name, and he's Arabic so he has four last names, the last of which is dactylic (one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables) in the correct pronounciation, meaning that the possibilities are endless and I'm quite overwhelmed. My dedication to revision probably means that I won't decide on a name until months after baby is born, and even then they'll be all kinds of scratches, omisions and additions on the birth certificate.

Baby is going to be associated with the number eight. My first OB appointment was cancelled and resceduled for January 8. My doctor's office was on the 8th floor, and of course Baby is due in the 8th month, August. Eight is also my favorite number and I associate cosmic things with it, it being infiniti on its side (numerous things in my life, personally, have been associated with the number 8). If Baby is a girl, I was thinking of naming her Clio, the muse of time, but then I realized that Baby would sound like a circus tent clairvoyant and she'd grow up to resent me. If Baby is a boy, I thought of the name, uh-hum, Infiniti. Yeah, way too weird.

Then there are the poems that contain names, poems like Hopkin's "Spring and Fall," addressed to a young child named Margaret, which is a strong possibility if Baby is a girl because my mother's name is Margaret, or TS Eliot's Sweeney if Baby is a boy, except that name is associated with a murderous barber.

Nevertheless, I have numerous things to think about. Maybe if this blog gets popular, I'll set up a voting system. For now, I'm struggling to get out of my pajamas on a daily basis. Baby is still in the abstract, only a little baby bump but I haven't gained weight. In fact I feel sort of stuck in time myself, with something whispering, growing inside me, making me ill.