We have decide that we aren’t having anymore kids but i still think of all these great names that i wish i had used or could use. Sometimes I drive myself nuts thinking of what could have been…
Does anybody have any advice about what to do these excess names or have had a similar experience?
I totally understand what you mean!
We are done with three (well, my husband is, I’m not 100% sure but respect his feelings on it). I’m lucky that I got to use a lot of my favourites, especially for my youngest, whose name we changed fairly last-minute to my “one that got away” name. But it still feels weird that I’ll never have a little [name_u]Sasha[/name_u], [name_f]Flora[/name_f] or [name_f]Nell[/name_f] – names that felt so natural and “right” when I pictured using them one day.
No advice, I’m afraid, but solidarity! If you’re a pet person, perhaps you could become the proud owner of a gorgeously named family of stick insects or similar 
Thank you! It bring a bit of peace to my mind to know that someone else knows what I mean 
Maybe my husband will let me use one of my “hippie” names for a pet, lol!
I know what you mean and we haven’t even finished our family! I’ve got 2 more girls names I’d like to use and one boys. It’s largely the honouring family that make them important to me. But we’ve already got 1 kid and will have a max of 3, my SO is now talking about even stopping at two.
He’s also already suggested using the names on pets! But somehow a Rottweiler named after a beloved great grandmother who was just the nicest person… doesn’t feel like so much of a compliment/honour to her?!
“[name_f]Mildred[/name_f]! Down girl!”
I totally get this and we are not even done yet, as I have already had to say goodbye to some. I call them my alternate universe babies. I had one when I was team green and my first came out diagnosis male. I was so excited as I got to use the name I had seriously always wanted to use, but also devastated that I didn’t get to use my off-the-wall girl’s choice that doesn’t feel like it could have been any other baby but the one that I would have had right then had he been a girl. I couldn’t bring myself to use it again despite my undying love for it.
We just adopted my second child and kept the name his birthmother chose for him. We love it. But in the adoption process we were considered for 15 babes over 18 months before him. I still think about using my unusable names to “name” each of those babies myself at some point. It could help me with the grief over the unrealized possibilities that didn’t come to exist, both in real life (those babies did not join our family) and in the imagined realm (all those names that have gotten away because my partner doesn’t like them or they wouldn’t fit with our sibset now).
One thing that hugely helped me after my first was writing a fake birth announcement for the forums here using the name we didn’t use. I never posted it, but I should. I still have it in a Google doc. It would actually be a better post now that we can tag users as I thanked those who had instilled in me the confidence to actually USE the name I loved.
Maybe your next baby could have two middle names?
This is a great idea, thank u 