I quite like giving things nicknames. I also don't much like being just like everyone else. There are a few standard nicknames people tend to give their baby before the birth, like "bump", and that's lovely, but I can't help but be otherwise.
One way in which we're being a bit otherwise is not wanting to know the baby's gender before we meet hir. It makes it even harder to refer to the baby because you can't use "he" or "she"; "he/she" is stupid; "they" is clumsy; the gender neutral pronouns "hir" and "ze" confuse people; "it" is horrible. And none of the names we like are gender neutral.
Early in the pregnancy a term sprung up from somewhere in my weird brain, where it had been lurking since matric (high school senior year) biology. One of the very first stages of a baby, when the two parents' cells have just joined together, is called a zygote. And right then and there a nickname was born: Ziggy the Zygote.
Ziggy is long since not a zygote any more but we've become quite fond of our little Ziggy and even other people in our lives refer to hir as such by now.
So, no, it's not after Ziggy Stardust, and it's not the name we have decided to give the little one once Ziggy makes an appearance in November; but it's our way of referring to the baby and it makes us happy.
And now you know.
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