Tikva's Name

Tikva named herself.
In a dream I had about a week BEFORE the ultrasound that told us about her CDH, at a time when I was sure I was having a normal pregnancy and carrying a healthy baby, I had a dream about her.
In it, she told me that she was a girl, and she said her name was Tikva.
That was the entire dream, and it was very clear.
I don't make a habit of dreaming about Hebrew words.
As a matter of fact, I don't really know that many Hebrew words.
But somewhere in my 36 years, I must've learned the meaning of the word Tikva: Hope.

I didn't think about the dream much until that first ultrasound, when it came back to me clearly and I had no doubt that this little girl inside me was indeed a messenger of Hope.
Tikva has been her name from that moment - it's something neither of us has questioned.
It is both her name while she is in my belly and the name she will have when she is born.

There are a lot of old rooted superstitions in Judaism, and a wealth of deeply rooted traditions.
In Jewish law, although the human soul exists before birth, human life begins at birth - at the time when the child is more than halfway emerged from the mother's body.
Traditional Jews don't have baby showers, because drawing attention to the baby also draws bad luck to the baby.
For both of these reasons, a Jewish baby is not usually named until the 8th day of life, when a male baby would be circumcised and a girl baby would have a naming ceremony.

A very sweet and thoughtful friend asked me a few days ago about how to name Tikva in her prayers.
She remembered a Jewish tradition of changing one's name in prayers for healing to distract the attention of the angel of death.
I have read about amulets used in older times to do the same.
I have seen prayers that can be recited which name all the possible horrible things that can happen to a baby and pregnant woman - their goal being to diffuse the fear of all the possibilities by speaking them out loud.
During earlier times when women often miscarried and lost babies during the first years of life, it is no surprise that all of these rituals were created to provide some sense of control over something so precarious and beyond us - life and death.

But I am not a superstitious person.
Whatever superstitions I may have carried, I made a conscious choice to let them go several years ago, when I saw superstition as a belief system that did not serve me, and therefore as something I could simply abandon.
I am not afraid of saying Tikva's name out loud, and having others say it as well, if this is something they are comfortable with.
I don't know if I would feel this way if we had chosen her name for her, rather than have her let us know very clearly that she is Tikva.

I don't feel the need to debate whether Tikva is a human life yet or just a soul.
If we are all part of the energetic dance of life, and we are all spirits in different forms and incarnations, I see Tikva as a being who has already begun her important life's work, whose journey is already unfolding.
However her journey unfolds, she will always be Tikva.
My prayer is that one day she will be Tikva, a very old woman with a very special story to tell her grandchildren about her life.

It's funny, because part of the reason a baby isn't given a name in Judaism until the 8th day of life is because of her delicate and vulnerable state during that first week of life, the unsureness about whether she will make it.
In Tikva's case, that should have an even deeper meaning.
And yet I feel no fear in naming her already, and saying her name aloud.
She has already begun to exist - her spirit is already present and real - no matter how much life she gets to live.

My answer to your thoughtful question, my dear friend, and any others who have wondered: Please feel free to use Tikva's name freely, if this is something that is comfortable for you.
I've had some people ask for my full Hebrew name, because the more customary way is to pray for the pregnant mother (my Hebrew name is Gal bat Orit; or Gal bat Orit ve Avraham, if you want to also include my father's name).
I deeply appreciate any prayers - but a prayer for just me feels limited without naming the child I am carrying.
In this case, the name of the child in my belly is so much more central to a prayer than the names of my parents.

When I pray these days, I pray for Tikva, and for my ability to continue holding Hope and Trust in her and our journeys.
My most important request, though, is this: Please pray in whatever way feels comfortable for you.
Offer prayers of comfort, of wisdom, of strength, of clarity, of trust - whatever is in your heart that you feel we might need or benefit from.
It is the wisdom in all of your hearts that creates the abundance and variety of prayers to form a web of comfort and support that holds us.
And if prayer is not for you - maybe just close your eyes and think LOVE and send some of that energy outwards in a way that will touch anyone needing a little dose in that moment.
Either way, we feel it from a very deep place, and so does Tikva.