@Kibby Oh yes, we’ve talked about the pros and cons of finding out or not a few times. In the end, there’s no perfect way - we have friends that found out and wished they didn’t and friends that didn’t and wished they did, and everyone’s reasoning is different. I like the notion of feeling more prepared, and he feels that a surprise would be really special. I don’t considered either view right or wrong, just different. In the end, I know it won’t matter that much, so I’m okay with him getting the surprise he wants. It’s going to be a big life change regardless of if I know or not.
I think it’s definitely culturally appropriate to consider the implications of a name when there is as serious a problem as there is going on. I think that shows you have a lot of respect for his culture and family.
We haven’t particularly considered culture or ethnicity is chosing the names we like. It’s more a coincidence that we like a lot of Greek names and hubby’s heritage is Greek. I am 50% [name_m]Dutch[/name_m], and we do have a couple of [name_m]Dutch[/name_m] names on our list - my grandparents went through so much during the war, and it kind of amazes me that I and my life as it is only exist because they chose to come to Australia and met each other here. It would be nice to honour that heritage in some ways.
Picking names feels so hard after losses because I am constantly plagued by the feeling of “what if this is our one and only…” We love so many names, and I can’t fathom only getting to use a couple of them! Our girl name is pretty much set in stone, but we are still deciding on middles - we have three middle options we love and that are meaningful, so we’re trying to decide which two to use or to just hang the expense, as it were, and use all three (because this might be our one and only!) Boys name are less concrete - we have a couple of first name options we like, but no middle combinations that we love or that feel super meaningful.