Baby Names
IHTM: My Husband Wanted To Name Our Son After The Dog
Baby naming. For most couples, this topic is a fun one- the process of choosing a name for your child should be something that you look back on with fond memories. For others, it is a time of turmoil and unrest that tests your fiber as a cohesive unit and causes more than one “divorce lawyer” search in your Google history. With our son, my husband and were the latter. This is my story.
When we were pregnant with our first child, our world was sunshine and puppy dogs. The news that we were expecting a baby girl only made the sun shine brighter and the puppy dogs…..bark more? Anyway, we were thrilled and excited and got right down to business selecting her name. Due to some health issues I was having, we got some seriously high-level ultrasounds and that shit was HD. I swear I saw our daughter wink at us during one of them- it was that defined and clear. At the 14.5 week point, our perinatologist told us with absolute confidence that the image we were staring at onscreen was in fact our child’s vagina and vagina means GIRL!!!!! My head immediately began to spin as I mentally threw out every girl name I had in mind as now that I knew this was MY DAUGHTER, none of those names were good enough.
Even though I started out thinking this would be an intrepid search fraught with obstacles and arguments, the opposite turned out to be true. My husband and I were drying dishes together one evening about two weeks after that ultrasound when I looked at him and said “How about Claire?” He smiled and said “I think that’s perfect”. We decided shortly after to give her the middle name Elizabeth, the same middle name of my 104-year old great-grandmother who passed away a few months prior and bada bing, bada boom. Our daughter had a name. We literally never discussed it again and felt very at peace with our choice.
Fast-forward 15 months, and we were expecting our second child. This time, the ultrasound tech told us at 22 weeks that it was a boy! Hurray, one of each! We left the ultrasound office elated- my husband heading back to work and me to collect our daughter from my friend’s house. I waited anxiously the rest of the day, so excited for my husband to get home so we could start figuring out what to name our little guy. With nothing to go on but the one other time we did this, I figured it would be a quick process and that I could start calling my belly by our son’s name, toute suite.
