I can’t remember the exact moment my husband Jason and I decided we wanted the sex of our first child to be a surprise. With friends and family weighing in heavily about our decision, I do remember feeling great relief that we were on the same page.
In their defense, they were simply just surprised that I wanted to be surprised. After all, I still shake the presents under the Christmas tree that have my name on them!
While I was pregnant I got used to the same four questions: “How are you feeling? Do you know what you’re having? Have you picked out names? Are you sharing the names?”
I generally felt wonderful throughout my pregnancy and we were firm in that we didn’t want to know what we were having. But the name questions, that was a personal matter.
For starters, we hadn’t yet agreed on names, especially for a boy. We also didn’t want to hear people’s opinions on the names we had chosen. Say we were considering the name Lonnie, someone might have said “Ugh, I had an Uncle Lonnie who had an unfortunate LSD habit.” Get my point?
I did exactly this to a friend of mine who was due around the same time. She and her husband also wanted to be surprised but shared the names they had picked. Matthew for a boy and Reese for a girl. I remarked how Matthew was an interesting choice since the couple had a close friend with this name. She fell silent after I said that, and well, could I really blame her? I had just did to her what I was trying to avoid having done to me!
The spiritual side of us believed our child would bring its own name into the world. Or we at least wanted to meet the baby before saying ‘yes, he is a Harry,’ or ‘yes, she is a Sally.’
That’s not to say that we didn’t have some front runners, we did. We didn’t want our baby’s name to be as common as my husband’s name, Jason or as different as my name, Reedu, but some place in between.
My brother-in-law suggested we name the baby ‘Pomegranate.’ And my dad liked the name “Jazz.” I rest my case.
I was more than half way through my pregnancy when we were thousands of feet up in the air on our way to my brother’s wedding in San Fransisco. I was listening to something on NPR and the reporter’s name was Milo Miles. I leaned across the isle to where Jason was sitting (a great compromise by the way for two people who hate the middle seat), and asked what he thought of the name Milo. He flashed a big grin at me and his blue eyes beamed the answer back. It was the first male name we had agreed on.
Just a couple of days before I gave birth, Jason presented me with another boy name that I liked a lot. We went into the delivery room with two strong contenders for a boy, and three options for a girl.
In the moments after our son was born there was a ton of commotion and excitement in the room. My mom was bouncing around like a kid in a candy shop and my husband was holding on to the wall, fighting off happy tears.
It seemed like a half hour had passed before our midwife quipped, “So what’s this kid’s name?!”
Jason looked at me then, quite like the way he looked at me on our flight out to San Fran, and we agreed it would be Milo. Accept we would spell it M-Y-L-O in honor of our moniker for one another, “my love.
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How did you arrive at the name(s) of your baby? Did you share it with friends and family, why or why not? Please share with me, I’d love to hear!
