Re: unused names

[Guest guest]

> Another name thing - what about babies that you have lost in pregnancy

I lost my first baby and always wanted a name. DH didn't. Privately I called

" her " Holly - a name I loved and knew he didn't like. Then three years ago

we got two cats and called them Holly and Chestnut (we already had a Willow

and a very tree filled garden so it felt right). I didn't say anything about

Holly meaning baby for me and gradually it has come to mean cat and not

baby - until I read the above and suddenly Holly is a baby again.

My very good friend had a Holly about the same time as I would have had

mine, then she had a stillborn Daisy on my daughter's birthday. We are not

so close now - lives moved off in different directions - but we still talk

about our babies by name :-)

Sue

apologies if that has made anyone sad, it wasn't meant to

[Guest guest]

>> Another name thing - what about babies that you have lost in pregnancy

>

> I lost my first baby and always wanted a name. DH didn't. Privately I called

> " her " Holly

All our angel babies are unnamed. I am about the only 'Angel Mommy' listed

in www.angels4ever.com who hasn't named hers - but I can't give a baby a

name until it is living, breathing and squarking in my arms now IYWIM. We

did name Joe when we found out he was a boy at the 18 week scan - this was

after a major scare at 10 weeks when I had bleeding - so we were pleased to

give him a name at that point.

Caroline

mummy to Sam, Joe and 3 angel babies.

[Guest guest]

>Another name thing - what about babies that you have lost in pregnancy. We

>lost our first baby, a boy, at 20 weeks and thought long and hard about

>giving him a name but decided not to in the end. If he had been born when

>expected, he was to be called but we decided we didn't want to use

>this name as we wanted it to be there as a tangible hope that there would be

>a healthy baby in the future (sounds daft, doesn't it). On the other hand,

>we felt it was disrespectful to him to give him a " second-best " name, so he

>was, and always will be, " Baby Garland " . All the rest of the boys have been

>named as soon as they were born so that they never had Baby Garland written

>on their cot tag.

DS1 was " Boy of Vaudin " One of my petty hates about hospital

birth is the necessity for labelling, but I liked this much better

than Baby Vaudin.

Took us nearly 3 weeks each time to do names... the midwives were

really peeved at signing us off without knowing!

I do think I understand that name thing - in fact I used to have a

feeling that 'less than perfect' living children got names they

wouldn't have got had they been perfect :-( (though it has been put

to me that what I was noticing was names that had been given by older

parents...so they were sort of out by a generation. Now that

'old-fashioned' names have come back)

Friends of mine had twins - I think they chose first names before

birth and then used grandfathers names for the middle names. Don't

know how the one who had the twin who died in utero named after him

feels about that.

I know that if I'd had a baby that died (and I remember thinking

about this when we were thinking about amniocentesis - we decided not

to decide in advance whether we would terminate, but it was a

possibility) I would have felt very strongly that s/he should have a

name and a funeral and what not - I insisted DH was comfortable with

that idea before I agreed to amniocentesis. (But then again, where do

you draw the line - do I have a name for the baby I miscarried before

I knew I was pregnant? - no) I suppose I am more comfortable with the

idea that people would name a baby - but that is about love and

respect and there are plenty of other ways to show that. I certainly

grieved quite enough (if late) over my unwanted, unplanned, unknown

till lost baby - and felt quite guilty about deciding, in conjunction

with my midwife that I would not have this baby's existence recorded

in my previous history.

--

jennifer@...

Vaudin