Names...

We had talked about names a little before we knew the sex of the baby. When we found out that we were having a boy, the real name hunt began. I wanted to pick a name ASAP because I wanted to know what to call the little guy. My husband was convinced that the ultrasound was wrong and that we would end up with a girl. He actually felt that way right up until I delivered. But I didn't want to focus on girl names at all. If he was really a she, we would deal with it when the baby was born.

Can I tell you that picking the baby's name was the most stressful part of the whole pregnancy? Don't get me wrong, there were definitely some stressful physical and emotion moments, days, weeks. But picking the name for your unborn child, the name that will be with them for the entire life, the name that they might possibly pass down to his children. It just seemed like a huge responsibility. Maybe I was making a bigger deal than I should.

There are so many things to think about. Everytime we came up with a name, my husband was in charge of thinking about how other little kids would twist it around and make fun of it. Many names that I liked were crossed off the list because my husband would think of a mean rhyme that my son's classmates might come up with. You also have to make sure that the initials aren't strange. Some names were crossed off because they were too long. How was he ever going to learn to spell and write his name when there are a billion letters in it? Do you go with a junior, a family name, an unusual name, a common name, a name from your ethnicity or culture...

And those baby name books. How many of these things can one person have? Everyone gave us a baby name book. And they are impossible. I tried to go through them letter by letter but so many of the names seemed ridiculous that I would get frustrated and just give up. I would choose a page at random and try to pick a name. That didn't work.

And people ask you all the time what you are naming the baby. I would say that I didn't know and they wouldn't believe me. They thought I was just keeping it a secret. But in reality, I didn't know if I was going to be leaving the hospital with a nameless baby.

This went on for months and months. I don't think we decided until the day he was born. We had narrowed it down to a couple of names and then waited until we saw his little face.