Here’s my situation. I’m sorry if it’s long and a bit crazy sounding.
My husband pretty much left naming our first kid, due June 19, up to me. Names are kind of like furniture to him. They don’t mean much beyond practicality. Despite this, over the past 9 months I’ve tried to get him involved and interested in the naming conversation because I wanted this to be something we did together. He never engaged me in any kind of discussion about names or put out any suggestions that weren’t trolling suggestions as a joke. All the names that I’ve suggested have been “fine” with him. I’ve been pretty stressed about the first name situation because up until about a week ago, I hadn’t found anything that I really connected with. I’ve found things that I liked, but there was no emotional pull. I wanted something that was unique but still classic, and something that I connected with. I’ve spent so much time on baby naming websites, forums, blogs … you name it. I felt like I was going around in circles.
Last week, I found it. All of a sudden, at 39 weeks, my husband cares. He doesn’t like the name and while he has been clear that he’s not exercising a veto, he wants to actually start sitting down and looking at names together. He’s worried about how people will initially react to the name, whereas for me I’ve kept it tight lipped because naming is something that is personal and shouldn’t be determined by what other people think. He told the name to a couple of people who agreed that it was different, but told him to relax about it. I want to stress right now that I have a wonderful, wonderful husband, because that may not come out in how I am typing as I’m feeling pretty upset. After the discussion yesterday morning, he brought home flowers after work. Like, my husband is great. He feels awful about this situation and fully admits that he has not been engaged in the naming at all and that his timing on this has been pretty bad. He also stressed that how much he dislikes the name is in no way proportional to how much I love it, he just wanted to talk about some other options.
So we tried to do that, and I just started crying. I felt so overwhelmed at the process of starting this over from scratch. We all know that naming isn’t just about arbitrary lists, it’s about research and and getting to know what factors are important to you, and how those names fit in with those factors (i.e. what are the current trends in baby naming, and are you going with them or trying to avoid them?). That’s why we’re here participating in forums.
I pretty much had a panic attack of a magnitude that I haven’t seen in over 10 years. My pregnancy has been so happy and stress-free. I feel like I haven’t cried in at least 6 months over anything other than a sappy movie. All of a sudden, it’s all coming out. (Some hours later, my husband Googles emotional breakdowns as an early sign of labour and is now convinced we will have a baby by the end of the week, lol). By the end of the conversation, he says that it’s not worth talking about anymore and that we should just use the name, and that a year from now it won’t even matter to him. But now I feel like I have bullied/manipulated my husband into going with the name, and while I still love the name, it feels like something I’ve won in a battle or something. And I don’t mean that in a good way. It feels like crap. The idea of finding something else when it took me 9 months to find this is overwhelming also, given how close I am to giving birth.
What would you do?
Edit: This is probably in the wrong forum, now. I originally disclosed the name I had chosen for my son to get input on that too, but then removed it. Sorry about that.
