Almost 18 weeks in and my biggest fear in pregnancy has nothing to do with gaining weight, labor pains, or my embryonic mothering skills. My biggest fear concerns naming our child. I’m not worried that we won’t be able to come up with that perfect name in time. Rather, I am unhealthily obsessed with the possibility that someone we know will beat us to the punch and use one of Our Names for their little one.
You have no idea how much I think about this.
David and I created a document back in May 2011 (almost a year before we got married) detailing name ideas for our future children. I used to pray for twin boys mostly because we had the perfect names all set. Girl names we weren’t quite as certain on, although our current pick for first and middle can be found on that document as well (albeit not originally in combination with one another).
While our boy names have not wavered since 2011, our girl name solidified sometime in the past year. The night we found out I was pregnant, our names were already set. Firmly established. This eliminates a decent amount of stress, but arguably a lot of the fun of this season as well. When my parents told me I was going to be a big sister come the summer of ’93, I spent our entire Christmas car ride to Dallas pouring over a baby name book. I had a blast imagining all the different possibilities. That naming enthusiasm never really went away, and now (in one area of preparing for baby at least) we are ahead of the game.
While we can check one thing off the list, my irrational (or rational, depending on your perspective) fear of someone taking our names persists. Y’all, we have the PERFECT names. So perfect, in fact, that I can’t help but think someone will beat us to them. However, I have decided that nothing will steal my joy in naming our son or daughter. I don’t care if my best friend, family member, or distant Facebook acquaintance has a baby the day before me and gives the exact same first and/or middle name we’re planning. We won’t reconsider, but rather laugh and congratulate them on their good taste (and their new baby). 😉
We do, after all, have that old document to prove who thought of it first …
The D&SH 