I shouldn't be too surprised

Our friends (my best woman and her husband) who had one? two? miscarriages and two rounds of IVF plus FET (again, can't remember the numbers, but I definitely supported her through it, that goes without saying) had their baby baptised this morning. I found out through a mutual friend's FB post, who is his godmother. Now, she is currently a closer (both geographically and socially) friend than I am, though I actually knew both of them first. But I'm upset they didn't even invite us.

I have no godchildren, except for my younger niece. My niece is delightful, but my brother and sister-in-law I know had little choice in "friends or family who have actually been baptised" since sister-in-law is Catholic, they live in a Catholic country, and there was no real choice of the church to use - so the godparents had to be baptised - and they wanted one from my brother's side, which basically leaves me - and you can't really be a different aunt-and-godmother when you have a niece that you are not godmother to.

I am not bitter about this in the way that I am definitely bitter, and proud, of being childless. But clearly my friends who have lots of friends who go to church see me way down the list of potential godparents. And my friends who have almost no friends who go to church (this is how my friend C got about 5 godparent gigs) perhaps aren't bothering. But at least Mr Spouse's best man and his irritating wife* actually invited us to their son's (fancy, expensive) dedication (I think they have "sponsors" not godparents but we were happy not to be them as they are Baptist and our theology is a little different).

When we thought we would have children within, ooh, a decade of marriage, we had some ideas for godparents. Mr Spouse's best man would obviously not do, as he does not believe in infant baptism (and neither would his wife. How sad). I was assuming that my best woman would be a shoo-in**, and we had some other ideas - particularly other people who'd played a big part in our wedding. Some of those we keep up with quite a lot, others not so much, but I realise I don't have any other particularly good ideas.

Few of my family go to church (though there is one couple that we were thinking of asking anyway). Few of Mr Spouse's family are alive. We have not made that many friends who are really young enough (sounds mean, but to be pragmatic), because most people our age at church have children and don't socialise with sad childless couples. Fairly new friends are hard to predict - will they stay friends? - and most of our fairly new friends don't go to church anyway. Which is why you fall back on old friends. Or at least those you thought were old friends.

*If you can't remember that far back, they struggled to get pregnant but then announced to us that she was pregnant the minute we joined them for a ski-ing holiday, staying in the same condo, no escape. OK, avoiding the wine and hot tub might have been a clue, so they couldn't really have kept it quiet, but pre-warning would have been nice. And they are currently smug about the fact that we "have to" adopt and they don't, and full of Good Advice about how to bring up children.

**yes, that is how you spell it.

You can stop biting your fingernails

We decided not to have our profile shown. There wasn't anything specific, just a combination of things adding up to us feeling there was too much to handle. I was about 75% positive but Mr Spouse more like 50/50 I'm estimating.

One positive was that we had a nice chat with a social worker at Nice Little Agency. Our profile has been shown other times (they don't tell us about all of them if it's firmly within our criteria) but we aren't currently under consideration (I didn't think we were). They don't need any other copies of our profile just now (we get them printed over there and shipped locally). All well. Apart from our impatience of course!

Restrictive

We are currently in limbo with another situation - I am away with work (fly back this afternoon so won't be able to discuss with Mr Spouse till tomorrow afternoon) and we heard about it on Weds or Thurs so there's been a bit of angst my end, not knowing what will happen. It is a bit tricksy though I think also the expectant parents are not in a huge rush, so can wait a few days to be shown profiles - but I get the impression there are not many prospective adopters lining up to be shown either so we would not be in competition, or not with too many.

This couple already knows they are expecting a boy (ultrasound mistakes notwithstanding) and after reading May's post about names (sorry love, I can't find your post, would you like to provide a driveby link in the comments?) I realised that I have very very restrictive criteria for naming a boy (and, it happens, a girl). I am not quite sure Mr Spouse realises quite how restrictive they are. One of the names must be my father's and the other must be a family name, and it mustn't be the same name as my uncle much as I like that name, because Mr Spouse has a Welsh last name, and it is the "matching" first name. And it mustn't be the same as my cousin (because that would give the child the exact same name as my dad), and it mustn't be the same as my brother (because there are too many of those in the family). There's about 2 options left.

So instead of wondering "is this our baby?" I am now wondering "is this going to be Tarquin Worthington Spouse Jones, or is a different baby going to be Tarquin Worthington Spouse Jones?". Which is a bit of an existential question.