Duke Scarlet

I thought after my Facebook post calling the newest member of our family "Duke Scarlet," some of you might be curious where this in-utero name came from. We had originally planned to call each baby after a different University of Florida coach while in the womb, but re-thought this plan once we realized that we had already used "Donovan" on James, "Meyer" on James' stuffed alligator, and "Champ" (Muschamp) on James' UF Pillow Pet. It just didn't feel right to use any of these names twice. We had to come up with something else.

Then, when I was about 6 weeks pregnant, Mike had a strange dream. He dreamt that the baby had arrived and while he was out of the hospital room getting food, I had filled out the birth certificate, naming the baby "Duke Scarlet." Why "Duke Scarlet?" Neither of us has any idea, but from that day on he began calling the baby "Duke Scarlet" or "Duke" for short. I wasn't really sold on the name at first, but it began to grow on me and I accepted it as the official in-utero name.

But, this baby won't be "Duke Scarlet" much longer. At today's appointment, Dr. Bernstein wrote me a prescription for the BIG ULTRASOUND! The perinatologist's office should be calling me any day to schedule the appointment. In a couple of weeks we should know if this baby is a boy or girl and can start calling him or her by his or her real name! But, don't even try to pry the names out of us before then. I promised Mike that we wouldn't tell until the big gender reveal.