March 2006

I've uploaded a few more pics of the little one to my gallery. I'll stop hogging blog space with wildly uninteresting entries only with pictures, but I'll continue to upload the pictures to my gallery here. They'll all be tagged as Malia, so you can easily see all of them in one go if you click on the above link (or click the Malia tag next to one of the recent pictures).

Here's one of the more recent ones

To be honest, Margit and me did not research the meaning of the name Malia too intensively before today. But seeing as so many people have asked what it means and how to pronounce it, I've done some googling and these are my findings:

According to several websites (for example this one, this one and this one), Malia is Hawaiian. A few other websites (like this one) say it is American Indian, but I am taking that to mean native American, ie. for Hawaii the original inhabitants, the Polynesians. This could then mean this name might actually be Polynesian (I'll let our Polynesian specialist answer that one!).

Regarding the meaning. For those that clicked on the above links, you'll already have seen some different ones. "Bitter" is one that is mentioned on a few sites, so that might be the direct translation of Malia in Hawaiian. Not my favourite Quite a few sites agree that Malia is a variant of Mary; another name of which the meaning is unclear (see here), so it's not so strange that they can't agree on Malia. So, what are the possible meanings???

• "perhaps/probably" (source)
  
• "calm and peaceful (waters)" (source and source with 'waters')
  
• "bitter/bitterness" (several places as above and here)
  
• "rebeliousness" (as variant of Mary - see source)
  
• "wished for child" (as variant of Mary - see source)
  

As you can see, plenty of choice I think we'll go with the last one (hey, with that much uncertainty, one should be allowed to choose!), which is kind of neat seeing as Samuel has a similar meaning (see here). Plus, that website seems to give the most reason for actually claiming the meaning and seems to be the most professional. And yes, we prefer it over 'bitter' or 'rebeliousness'

Regarding pronounciation. We'll be pronouncing it so: ma-LEE-ah . This is actually one of the reasons we liked this name so much, it pronounces exactly the same in Norwegian, Dutch and English (this is extremely hard to find!). So no hassles there and she's already equipped with a name she can travel the world with easily and without too many translation/spelling problems.

How we came about the name? While on holiday (and discussing baby names) I was listening to a random song on the ipod and the artist's name on the display caught my attention. From the album "Saint Germain des Pres Cafe - Volume 5", the song was "Yellow Daffodils" by "Malia feat. Erik Truffaz" - the song is pretty nice too (there's a snippet available to listen to under the artists website, click Music and scroll down to song one of the second album). A total coincidence in other words, but in our opinion a beautiful name. It stayed our number one pick with no other name coming near it for a girl - whereas we had gone back and forth up until then with about 5 names

And for those of you that just can't get enough (read: myself), here's another picture of sweet Malia asleep...

Hey, who says I'm not allowed to be excited about this

Following is a boring description of the birth, primarily intended so that I don't have to tell the story a million times to family and friends reading this Those not interested in details, just scroll down for a couple of pics...

Margit and me woke up at about 2.30 am this morning to what looked to be the starting phases of contractions (both of us really had no idea, but hey, what else could it have been?? ).

Being my always mathematical self I straightaway started timing these things but in the beginning they were a bit hit and miss. Anyway, about an hour later they started becoming more regular and increasingly painful. At this stage I was already counting about 6 minutes between them, which I was promptly told was not possible. Naturally, one does not argue this at such a moment. Having called the hospital (about 30-40 mins drive away), and noticing that the periods between contractions were down to about 4-5 minutes we headed over to the hospital where we arrived at about 5 to find Margit was about 6 cm diluted (is that what this is called in English?). Half an hour later it was 8 and at about 6.15 the doctor decided to give it a few tries. This while Margit insisted that this was the perfect time to hit her with pain killers, but the doctor refused. Anyway, to make a 'long' and painful story short, an hour and a half later Malia Klingen Daams was born! I didn't realize baby's were quite that blue at birth, but I was happy to hear her give some snorts pretty quick.

Margit is doing really well and surprisingly fresh, but they say that's one of the benefits of giving birth quickly (one of the downsides being that the pain is aparently more acute). Malia is healthy as can be and was doing nothing but drinking breastmilk and sleeping when I left the hospital about an hour ago.

Here's a couple of pictures of the new family.

What a beauty! More to follow but all is well!

this photo was supposed to be included in the original posting