(This post could also be titled--The Dorkiest Way to Name a Baby)
Josh and I didn't find out if Noah was going to be a boy or a girl. We knew the entire pregnancy that if he was a boy that his name would be Noah Gregory. We also discussed girls' names the entire pregnancy but never really agreed on one. In fact, we discussed girl names on the way to the hospital after my water broke. I clearly remember saying at a stop light, "Well, we have a few more hours to decide." We never talked about names once we entered the hospital though so it was probably a good thing when Dr. Neville said, "It's a boy!!"
Fast forward to 2009. Well, really no need to fast forward since it was only about 10 months after Noah was born....we found out we were pregnant again. We almost instantly decide that this time around we will find out the sex of the baby. Our purpose is clear--so we can pick a name. We knew a boy name would be hard because we never really considered anything except Noah and we knew we'd had issues picking a girl's name before too.
At 20 weeks we found out the baby is a girl! We begin to discuss names. We talked about LOTS of names. We tried calling the baby by a couple different ones for several days. Nothing seemed to stick. Our families (well, really just our moms) were starting to get anxious.
16 weeks after finding out it was a girl and four weeks before delivery Josh told me we absolutely had to pick a name. Being the logical, mathematical thinkers that we are we decided there was only one way to do this. Make a list!!
Josh looked up the Top 1000 names from 2008 on the Social Security website. He made a list of all the ones he liked. Separately, I looked through the Top 1000 names and made a list of the ones I liked. Surprisingly it didn't take long to look through the Top 1000. There were lots of names that were automatically out.
We then compared lists. We had about 20 names each and many of them were the same. This wasn't a surprise since between two pregnancies we've been talking about girl names on and off for almost two years. We talked first about every name that only one of us listed and eliminated several choices. Then we talked about all the similar names on the list. We talked about what middle name we might use. We looked up name meanings on the internet. Slowly we crossed off names until there were only 2 left.
We talked about the 2 names for the next few days. We tried referring to the baby by each name.
And finally, only one felt right. We finally picked a name just short of the 38 week mark. I took something to get monogrammed the next day and before I left the store I called Josh to verify that he was sure it was our little girl's name.
Tomorrow I'll post a picture of what I had monogrammed as well as a recent picture of my baby belly. Only 6 days left!!!!!
