Did anyone feel/ think of a specific name when you met your baby? Did you end up going with that name or something else?
Meeting her didn’t inspire any new names, but it did solidify our top choice. I always said I wanted to met the baby first before finalising names, and I’m glad we did as it gave me a chance to process it all.
To me newborn babies just look like newborn babies, and they grow into their names. So meeting my children has never affected the names we picked for them. Of course they had their own personalities from the second they were born, even before that, but I never felt like my child looked like a specific name.
When I was pregnant with our twin boys, we couldn’t decide on a name for baby B. I’d hoped that if we met him something would just click or seem right intuitively, but that didn’t happen.
I agree with @Rosebeth i didn’t think my daughter looked like a name when she was born. She just looked like a newborn baby all sweet, snuggly and almost chicken like
I had already chosen my daughter’s name however her second middle name was all very unclear as it was an honour that we played around with. Anyways I think her being born did help settle the middle name choice as the anxiety surrounding the birth was no longer present so I was more at peace and could finalise her name. In relation to her second middle name this name was not on my radar at all my sister suggested it but I think the anxiety surrounding the birth disappearing helped me actually listen to suggestion and see how lovely those suggestions were!
Yep I agree with @Rosebeth and @tori101 to me they just look like a baby. Soft sweet and squishy, but they don’t look like a specific name to me. It’s easier for me if I have the name picked out before hand, otherwise I think I would be agonizing over it.
Almost the opposite with the most recent babe… we’ve never found out the gender before delivery.
First time - dead set on boy name and basically set on a girl name. Had a boy, no question that was his name.
Second time - in typically second child fashion, we weren’t dead set on boy or girl names. We had more less decided the middle name for either gender and had a first name short list. [name_f]Baby[/name_f] was a girl and went nameless for 24ish hours. Meeting her didn’t change her name but rather told us none of our short list was her name. Both me and my husband knew 100% that they didn’t fit and were absolutely not her name. We eventually came up with the right name before it was time to go home and it was the right fit.
Oddly enough, it was a name one of us had mentioned to the other in passing months before delivery and then a friend mentioned it to us the day she was born and that was it!
As others have said, she just seemed like a newborn baby to me. I am also not really one to think that people look like they should have a particular name. Names tell you about the namer more than the one named, in my opinion, unless someone is choosing their own name.
We were going to have the same first name for either sex and then [name_m]Theodore[/name_m] or [name_f]Tabitha[/name_f] would be the middle name. I asked “Tabitha or Theodore” when she was born and my husband told me, and the nurses were confused because in the prior shift we told the nurses what the first name would be and those nurses told the nurses on the next shift. It was pretty funny.
When I look at her now I can just as easily picture her as other names I loved. She is herself with her name, but it was the right name because it was a favorite for both me and my husband (rather than just one of us). Eventually maybe I will also only be able to see her with that one name, but she is still so little that she hasn’t had a name for nearly as long as I spent thinking about what her name might be.
Thank you for sharing your experiences! I agree, all of my kids came out looking like aliens it was more of a feeling of peace when I felt their names fit them/ I was happy with the name.
I’ve had different experiences with naming my kids. With my boys I felt like the names we picked fit them and felt right when they were born. But with my girls I didn’t. I wish I had gone in with options instead of trying to have a name picked before they were born. With my first daughter we decided on a name and felt good about it, but when she was born I was immediately unsure. When she was around 2 weeks old I knew that I wanted to change her name, and when I thought of the name that we ended up naming her, it immediately felt right. I’m actually still struggling with our name choice for my second daughter! We planned on one name and then when I first held her (my second daughter) I immediately thought a completely different name! I’m trying to figure out if thinking that second name was some sort of sign that it’s her true name, or if it was just showing that I was feeling unsure about what we were planning on. We ended up changing her name to the name I thought when I first held her. But I’m still waffling.
I always thought we’d use [name_f]Linnea[/name_f]. But throughout our pregnancy I’d think of the baby as [name_f]Olenna[/name_f] once we found out it was a girl. We always said we would decide at birth when we met the baby. We didn’t choose a name immediately and brought her home and called her [name_f]Baby[/name_f] for almost 2 weeks while we thought about what her name would be. She didn’t really look like anything, and it thoroughly annoyed everyone that we took “forever” to decide her name but I’m glad we gave ourselves a chance to settle in before choosing. I’ll likely do the same with any future babies.