How Trio Came to Be

Even before we were married I knew it was my husband's wish to name his first born son after his father and himself; Albert Gregg Nieto III. I had no problem with this as this was a wish Albert (my husband) had since he was a little boy. My only concern was that our son would need a nickname to differentiate him from his father and grandfather as I call my husband Albert and my father-in-law Greg (even though the middle name is spelled differently my husband is still a junior). Albert agreed readily enough and once we found out we were having a boy we thought we would call him Trey and that would be his nickname.

However once we found out we were having a boy and decided on the nickname I began to notice there were a lot of Treys in the world. I also noticed that those Treys that were children had, shall we say, "behavioral issues". I am a person who believes names hold power and I didn't want to name my child a name that I felt were attached to children who didn't listen to adults and acted out and all the other horror stuff that people read about in books where children are just hard to handle. Another big factor in not wanting to call him Trey was that my cousin had a son himself a couple of months before our son was born and he was a third himself and they called him Trey. I wanted to avoid any confusion at family gatherings where the boys wouldn't be sure who was being called over.

I expressed this to my husband and from there we started to consider different nicknames. I thought about using Tripp, another popular name for boys who are the third to have their name but Albert vetoed that immediately. We thought about Albe but I didn't like the little boy connotation that went along with the way the name sounded. The due date was fast approaching and we were nowhere near to figuring out a new nickname for our son. Ultimately my induction date came and while we had our son here we still had no nickname for him.

Due to the appearance of meconium at my induction, my son developed a respiratory problem that landed him in the NICU (Newborn Intensive Care Unit). They had him on a feeding tube so he was able to sleep and rest and therefore heal while he was being observed in the NICU. My husband and I were allowed to go visit whenever we wanted save for the two shift changes during the day. We would go in and hold my son and talk to him and try out new nicknames on him while he was sleeping and resting. We tried going through all the nicknames, even Trey to see if he would respond to one of them. He didn't.

During one visit my husband made the comment that his aunt knew a woman who named her third son Trio. When we said that name our baby stirred. We looked at each other and I said, "Trio" again, directing it right to our son. His eyelids flickered and he moved a little bit more in my arms. We looked at each other, me with a little bit of tears in my eyes and knew we had found his nickname. This was the first name he had responded to while he was there and we took that to mean that is what he was suppose to be called.

While we were met with some resistance from family members who didn't like the nickname we still call him that. There are some who still insist on calling him Trey and Albe and while that was frustrating for me at first my husband pointed out a very important fact. First is that he picked it out which is why we picked it in the first place. Second is the fact that we see him the most as his parents and he will get use to answering to what we call him. And while I'm worried about the fallout that may come when he doesn't respond to the nickname his other elders insist on calling him we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I am just happy that we were able to pick out a unique nickname for our son and that we have the feeling that he likes his nickname as he picked it out himself.