Wait until you meet the baby

We’ve all heard this before, that a couple wants to wait to meet the baby before naming them. [name_m]Can[/name_m] anyone attest to this sensation? When we had my daughter we were team green and just had a name for each gender. No consideration was made to their “energy” so i just can’t relate but am very intrigued!

So I decided my daughter’s name before she was born and announced her name to the world before she came as well. We all knew despite last minute hiccups she was going to be [name_f]Lilia[/name_f].

However one of friends (we are no longer friends now but used to be very close anyways) waited till her daughter was born to name her. She had [name_f]Eva[/name_f] + [name_f]Sienna[/name_f] floating around but when she was born my friend felt she was no longer a [name_f]Sienna[/name_f] or [name_f]Eva[/name_f]. I was very close to this friend she was going to be a single mother so I was very much involved in this baby being born (I was her birthing partner and stayed on/off with her at the hospital until they were discharged) and when her baby was born she didn’t name her. Her baby was nameless until she was 6 weeks old. She wanted to get to know her baby and ascertain what name suited her. She settled with Peyt0n-R0se and even though this name isn’t my style it really does suit her no nonsense, sassy princess warrior lover off mud, tractors and [name_f]Elsa[/name_f] daughter. So using my friend as an example I think waiting to meet the baby to figure out their name does work!

I can’t speak from my own experience, but I vividly remember my mum having [name_m]Louis[/name_m] picked out for my youngest brother from early on, only for her name him [name_u]Sonny[/name_u] after he was born because “he wasn’t a Louis”.

I have a boy name picked out for a future son that I am certain about using, regardless of appearance/personality/“energy”. For a future girl I don’t feel as definite, and even though I imagine I’ll have settled on a name before she’s born, it could come down to meeting her to decide.

ok, so my mom was dead set on naming me [name_f]Violet[/name_f] since my dad suggested it soon after finding out I was a girl. it ruined my life, I am not a [name_f]Violet[/name_f] what so ever. in fact, I am so not [name_f]Violet[/name_f] that I am going to be changing it as soon as possible. I would say waiting until the baby is born to decide on a name is a good idea, have some names picked out, but generally wait until the baby is born to be dead set on the name.

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I don’t have children yet, so I can’t speak from personal experience. I have always liked the idea of going in with 2 options for each gender (I would prefer to be team green). I feel like that narrows it down enough to where you aren’t scrambling when baby is born, but it also provides a bit of wiggle room based on what baby looks like.

They look like potatoes. They could literally have any name and be that :sweat_smile: that’s why I’m curious to hear from ppl who had a strong feeling one way or the other

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I totally agree with you - they do look like potatoes :smiley: and it’s pretty hard to guess anything about their personality when they’re just born. I never had any thought of seeing what they were like in order to choose their name, even though DH and I were always undecided on boys’ names (we never found out the sex before birth, but we always had girls’ names picked out beforehand, but not boys because we could never agree).

When my first was born, as soon as he emerged DH yelled out “it’s a boy!” and for the next few minutes, we discussed the boys’ name that was our frontrunner and agreed that we did in fact like that name the best.

[name_f]My[/name_f] experience with #2 was interesting. She was born after a precipitous labour (10 minutes after we arrived at the hospital, and about 2 minutes after the midwife told me it would be another couple of hours at least …!) After all the excitement they put her on my chest, and I cuddled her for a little while, just happy to have my baby there.

Eventually one of the nurses asked, “did anyone check the sex?” No one had thought to, and at the time it absolutely didn’t matter to me and I wasn’t even thinking about what the name would be. Since she was a girl we had the name picked out, so she would have been that no matter what.

[name_f]My[/name_f] twins were born prematurely so while we had their first names picked out, we hadn’t fully agreed on middle names. So we announced their first names and told people we’d let them know later what the middle names would be. It wasn’t anything to do with the babies themselves (they were premmie, they were covered with wires and leads and were on ventilators, so I couldn’t even really see what they looked like) but we had some honours to work out.

[name_f]My[/name_f] mum did this with me - well, she didn’t really plan to, she had a name picked out, but wasn’t 100% set - and then she looked at me and decided [name_f]Grace[/name_f] was the right one :person_shrugging:

I’ve never waited until our children were born to pick a name. To be honest, I don’t thoroughly get the concept of “he/she looks like a Michael/Eloise” (for example). I believe very strongly that the person makes the name and grows into it, and not the other way around. When our children were born, and they were in my arms, I honestly couldn’t have said “oh yeah, he looks like a Barnabas” or any of my other children’s names. No, [name_m]Barnabas[/name_m] was the name we chose for him, and he’ll make it his own as he grows up.

I do believe that sometimes the name someone has picked out doesn’t feel right after the baby is born, but I think that’s just because the name wasn’t the one after all and somehow doesn’t feel like the name you’d want to use. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t feel right because the child doesn’t look like that particular name.

I’m sorry you feel that way, it must be frustrating, but that’s a bit unfair towards the parents. There’s no way of telling if a child will like their name when they’re older. [name_m]Even[/name_m] if I’d waited until our daughter was born, maybe I thought she looked like a [name_f]Vienna[/name_f], but she doesn’t think [name_f]Vienna[/name_f] suits her when she’s older. There’s no way of knowing. Also, maybe my idea of what “a Violet” is, is very different from yours. It’s very subjective.

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We did not wait until birth with my daughter, and we had her first name picked out months before I even got pregnant, and then her middle name right before I took the test. Yet, we still felt unsure about the name when she was born despite still loving her name. I think a huge part of it was that before she was born, she was more of an abstract concept we had in our minds (because we couldn’t see her, we didn’t know what it would be like to have a baby, etc., we just had evidence that she was there like my pregnant belly, ultrasounds, etc.). It’s hard to explain, but basically we didn’t have an idea what what she would look like or what it would be like, so that was not in alignment with what she did look like when she was born haha. It’s so hard to explain, but hopefully I’m getting part of the idea across haha. Anyway, we didn’t have major hesitancy about her name, but there still were some. It also felt weird calling her by her name since even though we referred to her by her name the whole pregnancy after we found out she was a girl. I think also because the name was attached to our in-womb perception of her, it might have also felt different than calling the out-of-womb baby by that name. Again, so hard to explain my thoughts :joy: We still went with the name we had chosen and it fits her sooo well! I am even more obsessed with her name than I was while pregnant.

Anyway, all that being said, I could not wait until birth to decide a name. At the very least, I would narrow it down to 2 names. One, I can be super indecisive in making choices in all aspects of my life, so leaving something as important as a name to the last minute would cause me a lot of anxiety, and I would worry that I would pick a name out of desperation just because I “have” to now that I’m at the deadline, rather than taking in all the thought beforehand that would allow me to make a low-pressure name decision. Additionally, because of my experience with my daughter, I feel like it’s almost impossible to know anything about the baby from birth. [name_f]My[/name_f] daughter’s older baby pictures look like a totally different baby than her hospital debut pictures. Some babies carry a lot of the resemblance, but others don’t.

I’m due in just a couple weeks with #2, and I kept having doubts about our choice on what to name him, but I also have had no desire to wait until he was born to fully decide because that would just add extra pressure. We are planning on using the name we have chosen unless I feel like there is some divine/spiritual intervention that sways us another way. He might not “look” like his name right away, but it’s hard to know what a fresh newborn with that name would look like anyway.

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Did your mom ever say you didn’t seem like a [name_f]Violet[/name_f] after you were born

yeah, like minutes after I was born

We had my son’s name already picked when he was born. We were flipping between [name_u]Sullivan[/name_u] and [name_m]Felix[/name_m] for a while. We considered waiting until we met him to decide, but I’, glad we didn’t. it was so emotional and I was so exhausted. I ended up with really bad ppa/ppd which started less than 24 hours after having him. We had had no sleep in like 48 hours and were losing our minds. Picking his name in that moment and that mindset would have been horrible for me. I think it might work well for some people, especially if you’re team green. but I’m very glad we didn’t end up going that route.

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This is something I have felt for both of my kids. This doesn’t mean that I have gone into labor with zero ideas. Both times, we have gone to the hospital with 2 or 3 potential names, and we have chosen after meeting our kiddo. There are a few reasons why we do this:

  1. We don’t want to get to set on a name until the baby is born. What if you choose a name beforehand and then your sister names her baby that? What if you get a new neighbor with the name you have shared with everyone? What if you meet someone absolutely awful with the name your family thinks you will be using? By not choosing a name until the baby is born, we maintain flexibility for any scenario in which the name becomes less usable.

  2. There is a decent spectrum of hair colors/complexions that our children could have, based on our genes. There are names that I like a lot more for a particular hair/complexion combination than for other hair/complexion combinations. Of course, a baby’s coloring can change after they are born, but you can still get a pretty good idea of what they will look like in those first few hours. I am now realizing that this section may sound racist, so I will just be more specific. Our kids could come out very pasty with fiery red hair. If that happens, it would change the name we choose.

  3. I don’t know if it is so much the “energy” of the baby or what, but after meeting the little one, a name just feels “right” to me. It feels comfortable. It feels natural. I don’t think I could personally feel that way before the baby is born.

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We waited until our son was born to decide on his name. I always thought that would be my approach before having a child, whereas my husband preferred to decide before birth. As it turned out we didn’t feel very strongly about the names on our list and had two late additions in the final weeks of pregnancy. We each preferred a different name so we waited it out until we felt content with our choice. That happened when our son was 5 days old. I’m glad we waited and would take that approach again even if we had a firm favourite before birth.

The reason this approach was the right one for me is similar to how @Audreymb and @namer_gamer have described the baby feeling different in utero to being outside. The baby is abstract in many ways when they’re growing inside. I knew I could choose a name before the baby arrived but I didn’t feel like I could name them without meeting them face to face. It goes from feeling like an impersonal gesture to a personal one. That’s the difference for me.

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