And those who have absolutely, without a doubt chosen the name of the baby they are currently pregnant with! (Sorry to the berries like myself who are just speculating on future hypothetical children, I firmly believe being pregnant and having to choose for an actual child DOES make a difference!)
[name]How[/name] did you know the name was “THE Name!”?? ([name]How[/name] did you decide, know, etc etc!)
Sorry, can’t answer this one. We don’t even discuss the name until after baby is born. (We have a history of late pregnancy loss, so we don’t jump the gun until there’s for sure a baby.)
Naming my first daughter was easy because we immediately found a name that we both adored; [name]Maya[/name]. The spunky, sweet sound was perfect, and we loved the alliteration with our last name. My husband and I never looked back once we chose our name, and that was that. And [name]Maya[/name] fits her perfectly too!
Our other daughter was a bit of a challenge. We wanted a name that sounded nice with [name]Maya[/name] and our last name, and both had so many different ideas that it seemed impossible to decide. Eventually we narrowed it down to [name]Phoebe[/name] and [name]Rose[/name], and decided to wait until we met our baby. The moment I laid eyes on her, I knew she was a [name]Rose[/name].
So I think that when you find THE name, you just know. It’s a gut reaction. Best of luck!
This is so different for everyone, but I completely agree that there’s a big difference in discussing names hypothetically and actually choosing one for a child. When I was pregnant with my son, I was one of those who absolutely wanted a name to call him before he was born, but we couldn’t find the right name (and we looked everywhere at TONS AND TONS of names). So we decided on a name that we agreed sounded good and wasn’t bad (but still didn’t have that feel of “the one”). But when my son was born, we knew he was so not that name at all, so we waited and on the day we were to leave the hospital, we finally figured out what his name was – it came to be the day before when I was breastfeeding him and then my husband mentioned it separately almost as an aside, so we knew that had to be it. It was also a family name, which is very important to us, and strangely enough, neither of us even liked the name when I was pregnant – it wasn’t on any of our lists, and now we love it and it fits him perfectly.
I think it varies even by pregnancy too because a friend of mine had the same experience with her first, and assumed the second would be similar so didn’t really look into names and waited until he was born, but they couldn’t find the right name even then. They finally just picked one, but I don’t think she’s super thrilled about it. She’s not one to focus on “did I choose the wrong name” though – she’s moved on; his name is his name and that’s it.