The Pressure of A Name...

I am sure that some of my loyal blog followers have been wondering if we are keeping the name of our son a secret until the birth.  After all, I haven't listed his name here and I consistently refer to him as our son.  It isn't that I haven't wanted to share the name with you all.  It is simply that when I shared the name, I wanted to share both his first and middle names.  So, I held off on announcing the middle name thinking that surely we would decide on a name fairly quickly.  Unfortunately, we still haven't picked out a middle name...

Years ago, before we knew that infertility had sunken it's claws into us, we daydreamed about what we would name our future children*.  One night, Derek said that he had an idea for a little boy's name.  It was a name that carried out a tactic my parents used to name me.  It combined both my name and his name to create another name.  I thought it was a perfect name** and it will be the name we use for our son.

Since we still haven't picked a middle name and I want to start referring to him by name when I blog, I am going to announce his first name now.

Our son will be named Carder.

And now you know...

For middle names, we originally had picked out my mom's maiden name which is Wade.  But, when we realized that my kooky cousin has that name as a middle name, it doesn't seem as perfect anymore.  And now Derek thinks that Carder Wade sounds like a cowboy.  However, this name is still in the running.

We also like the idea of having his middle name start with an A - this would give him the same initials as my dad.  We thought we had decided on Aiden, but then Derek realized the reason he suggested this name and liked it was because one of his co-workers has a son with that name.  It doesn't mean we can't use it, but that took some of the pizazz out of that name.

There are a couple of names that I really like, but these are also the names of friends children.***

I know we definitely don't want a middle name that starts with a C or an S.  And we don't want a middle name that ends in an "er" sound (as the poor child would have 3 names ending in "er").  So, Alexander is out.  As are Sebastian and Stephen and Christopher...

I also don't want a "strange" name like Hulk or Apple or Zeus.  Or PineSeedling.  Or Dances With Wolves.

Anyone have any great suggestions?

Hopefully, we will decide on a name before Carder enters this world sometime in the next 12 or so weeks.

*For a girl, I wanted to use a name that could be shortened into a cute nickname - i.e. Madeline (Maddy) or Isabella (Bella) - and this was long before the popularity of the Twilight series.  Bella is no longer a name that I would use even though I love it.

**I think this is the perfect name for our son, probably to a fault.  After one of our friends that didn't even want children got pregnant, they found out they were having a boy.  At an event (at which I may or may not have had too many glasses of wine), I asked if they had picked a name.  When I heard the name, I quickly informed her that it was the name we had picked and I let her know that if we ever had a boy, these children would share a name because we weren't changing our choice - after all, we had already been trying for 4 years at that point.  I don't think she was amused.  And she didn't change her name.  Not that it matters much as her son is 2 years old now and they live in Georgia...But I digress...

*** As if the item above didn't make this clear enough, when you struggle with infertility and you have been lapped by many others, the baby name pool gets shallower and shallower.  Eventually, you are going to have to name your child with the same name as one of your friends.  It sucks.