Show Us Your Life : Names

I had to participate in today's topic!

If you have ever been pregnant and/or had a baby, you know how stressful it can be to pick a name. Okay, maybe not everyone worries about it the whole 9 months but I would bet most couples spend some time arguing over, I mean discussing, name options for their unborn child. There is the "I have had my favorite name picked out since childhood!" approach. The "We narrowed it down and this is the same he/she will be called." approach. And the "We'll just wait until we seem him/her to pick a name" approach.

Now on to our baby naming experience.

I have a feeling this is going to get long so I will just tell you know that if we do ever have a boy his name will be Chase Alan. We both love Chase and this is one name Dustin will tell you is not changing. I originally brought it up because it is the name of my favorite Phillies player, and it stuck. Alan is both Dustin's middle name and his dad's middle name!

With Brooke we made one simple mistake. We shared our name options with friends and family. Of course the normal, "Oh my gosh I love this name but that name sounds like something you would name a dog" speeches commenced and we became self conscious. We were told not to care about other people's opinions and to go with the name we loved, but I was getting anxious. Why did people care so much what we named OUR baby. They had a chance (or would have a chance) to name their babies, didn't we get the same courtesy?

Now people actually loved out first name option, Audrey Grace, but it got to a point where I felt like it was being pushed on us. "Oh Audrey Grace is a beautiful name, much better than the other names you have picked out." It got to be too much and by the time "Audrey" arrived, I couldn't do it. It wasn't a special name that Dustin and I had picked out anymore. It was a name that other people wanted for our little girl. So we ended up being the couple in the hospital with Baby Girl Miller on the hospital charts. The nurse came in at least 5 times to talk about the birth certificate and a day after her birth, I started panic. Luckily, Dustin was calm enough to come to the rescue.

I was sitting burping her after a feeding session and Dustin came and sat beside me. He looked down at her and said, "I think I know what her name is". I wanted to yell "Thank God SOMEONE does!" but quietly waited.

"I think she is a Brooke". And so it clicked. Brooke. I loved it and so did Dustin. I had to laugh because it was NOT on our final name list and I think Dustin even turned it down way back in my first trimester when I was name happy. Grace was my favorite middle name at the time but it did not flow with Brooke, so we chose to give her my middle name. Lynn.

Our beautiful Brooke Lynn.

Wow that got long. Are you still reading?


For Baby Sister we learned from our mistakes and did not share our name list with ANYONE. Okay, maybe I did share with a few close friends but I could count on them not to give me selfish opinions. Dustin definitely has opinions when it comes to baby names, but he waits for me to bring him a list and crosses the names off one by one. This time I gave him my four favorite girl names. We knew we couldn't use one of them because of a family conflict so that narrowed it down to three. I was strongly pushing one name and even though he does not love it a much as I do, he finally agreed that it would be Baby Sister's name. I knew he had really come around when he leaned over to talk to my belly and called her by name!

Once we had the name set and the wall letters bought, we decided it would be okay to tell our family and friends. We pictured it to be much easier this time because instead of saying, "We like X, Y, and Z", we said, "Her name will be _____".

So bloggers, her name will be....

Molly Grace