Thursday, June 30, 2005

Memories from the baby-planning closet

Ambivilant Infertility has a post about using a midwife and not telling her family because of their inevitable obnoxiousness about it. Which brought out a comment from altmama about the benefits of being in the baby-planning closet, "Why share information, if people are only going to use it to judge?"

Which struck a chord with me because Mr. Spock and I hid some things in that closet ourselves.

The main one was Muffin Man's name. We have a relative who has a history of being extremely negative about the names parents have chosen for the unborn baby. "What kind of a name is that?", "But there are so many pretty girl's names", and "I know you said that you decided on that name, but here's a list of names I like better."

So we chose a name and didn't tell anyone what it was. We told them we were expecting a boy, once we knew the sex. We told those who asked the story of his conception. We told people our plans for breast-feeding, daycare and use of drugs during delivery, but we kept our mouths shut about his name.

We figured once he was born and we introduced him to everyone, it'd be too late for them to complain. And no one did. Even Mrs. Name-Hater only commented on how beautiful he is. Not a word about the name.

We got some grief about our decision to not have him circumcised though.

6 comments:

Julie said...

We kept our name choices secret until after the babies were born, too. And I never regretted it. I do regret not keeping our home birth plans a secret from several people. And ditto on the previous comment, too!

Jennifer (ponderosa) said...

I love this phrase. The baby-planning closet. While for the most part I wanted to shout from the rooftops about my pregnancies, there were some people I wanted to hide from!

Anonymous said...

After being a surrogate people tend to not give me advice. LMAO

Liz Miller said...

Welcome Jen! I like your site!

APL, I will quote directly: "But he'll never be part of a minyan!"

Oy.

My answer: "If that becomes an important part of his life, he can elect to do it as an adult. It will be his choice and I will not presume to make it for him."

Piece of Work said...

We kept our children's names a secret, too, for the same reasons you cite. It was actually really fun, to have this secret, just the two of us, from the rest of the world. People were dying to know, but we kept it to ourselves. And it made it feel really special when the babies were finally born and we revealed the name. (Also it was fun since we didn't find out the sex. People were SO ANNOYED at us for that one!)

Found your site via Phantom Scribbler, I'll come back and visit again later!

Liz Miller said...

Welcome, Piece of Work! I like your site.