On Birth Nerds and Passwords: My Confession

As a website designer I have endless opportunities to share passwords with clients. New website login information, mailchimp logins, email passwords – I spend an unusual amount of time each week verifying passwords. As you know, a quality password should involve a blend of capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Now, when are talking with some random customer service professional and we need to confirm a code of some kind, typically they use the NATO Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, phonetic alphabet. This means a password AR2*FDBTVX ends up sounding like this: Alfa, Romeo, Number 2, Asterix, Foxtrot, Delta, Bravo, Victor, X-ray. Sound familiar?

Here’s the catch. I’m a birth junkie.

With 25+ years of complete immersion in the birth world it’s kind of inevitable that when I have to clarify the letter B, my mind goes to Breastfeeding or Birth Ball instead of Bravo. V varies between vulva, vagina, and vasectomy. M is, of course, Mama. O is oxytocin. You get the picture. Literally Every Single Time I have to share a password with a client, or a random customer service representative (!) I have to consciously hold myself back when it comes to the V… I had a delightful quick call with a client this morning to get a verification code from her. She provided me with the following insight into her quirky mind: CQNDLHINJVFK became…

Cat, Queen, Nerd, Darling, Love, Handles, Instinct, Nerd, Joke, Virgin, Fake, Krispy Kreme…I love it! Given the same mix of letters I probably would have gone for… Courage, Queen, Nipple, Deep, Love, Home, Intuition, Nourish, Justice, Vagina, Fontanelle, and Kind. What would you do with CQNDLHINJVFK, fellow birth nerds?