At 8:28 AM CT on April 20, 2009, my wife delivered our son by c-section. He is our second child and he will be our last. My wife had her tubes tied during the delivery, and I will be getting my lines snipped in the coming weeks. Even though I wanted to revisit our options in the last week of pregnancy, we had effectively named him months ago.

Miles Chauncey Wolfe

Our use of ‘Chauncey’ was never in question. Chauncey was Sarah’s grandfather on her dad’s side. He passed away long before I met Sarah, but if he was anything like his son (Sarah’s father), I’m sure that we would have gotten along great.

‘Miles’ was surprisingly hard to come by. I had hoped to find a good name somewhere in my family tree, but Sarah wasn’t too keen on the likes of ‘Harlan,’ ‘Halvor,’ or ‘Arno.’ The closest we could come on any Wolfe or Wiesner names was ‘Everett,’ and that just didn’t work as well with ‘Chauncey.’ In the end, we chose ‘Miles’ from a growing list of about 20 names that we had written down over the months. It’s a clean and short name that works well with Nora (his older sister). And even though his initials now make him sound like a mid-90’s rapper, the full name sounds perfect to our ears.

As it happens, the Latin root of ‘Miles’ means ’soldier,’ while the Germanic root suggests ‘uncertain’ or ‘peaceful.’ So far, he’s all three. Miles was born with trisomy 21… more commonly known as down syndrome.

Thus far, Miles has been an easy going baby. He’s mostly quiet and content to sit and observe. He’s been poked and prodded by the doctors a number of times and has spent the better part of a day under UV lights to treat some jaundice. DNA lab tests have been able to confirm his down syndrome, but they can’t tell us anything about its severity. As a result, his future is uncertain.

His muscle tone is great, his heart and lungs are perfect, and his hearing and vision appear to be normal. The only thing we don’t know about is the brain. We are hopeful that he’ll be alright in that department. After all, he’s got some smart parents and a super-smart sister.

We’re still learning about what life will be like with down syndrome. The only thing we know for sure is that Miles is likely to develop at a slower pace than other kids. He will eventually reach a plateau of cognitive ability and will simply live and operate at that level. He may never be that NFL linebacker I was hoping for, but he could still be an athlete, artist or musician. If his plateau is high enough, he may even surprise me and become a scientist.

For now, he’s just Miles. He’s cute as a button, and he poops like a monster.