About Rebecca Eckler
Since becoming pregnant with her daughter Rowan, Canadian journalist and author Rebecca Eckler has penned three hilarious books, including the best-selling Knocked Up. Catch Rebecca’s weekly unique perspective on motherhood and single parenthood.
After nearly seven years, I finally like my daughter’s name. Yep, you read correctly. I know it may sound completely insane for a mother to announce that after six years, that up until last week, she still wasn’t comfortable with the name she had given to her daughter at birth, but it’s true.
As any of you know who have read my first book, Knocked Up, you’d know the fiancé (at the time) and I got into wicked arguments about baby naming.
I, of course, liked the odder names. Aside from, ahem, “Apple” (Hey! I gave birth BEFORE that
GOOP Girl!), I also liked names like Happy, Blu, Sky….etc.
If you’re pregnant now, unless you are REALLY very lucky, you’ll be discussing and arguing about baby names with your partner.
My daughter’s father liked the name Rowan. He thought it was a “solid" name, yet unique, without being completely insane. With a name like Rowan, she could be an artist and still be respected as a lawyer, he argued.
I gave in, if memory serves, because I was a nightmare of a pregnant lady, and it was the least I could do to let her father pick the name, after all the midnight runs to ice cream stores I made him do for me.
It’s not that I hated the name Rowan. I just didn’t LOVE it. And I think you should LOVE the name you give your child, because you’ll be saying it, oh, about a gazillion times.
When I looked at my daughter when she was born, she didn’t seem like a Rowan. I’m not sure why this was. She didn’t seem like a Rowan when she was two, or three, or four to me either.
Everyone else seems to love her name; when either of us are asked her name and we say, “Rowan,” the response is ALWAYS, “What a great name!”
But even though others love it, I still didn’t. That is until yesterday, when she breezed in from her day at
camp, super hyper about the fact that she scored four goals in soccer and won a medal. I was so proud of her. It was at that moment that she seemed like a Rowan. Isn’t that strange? I have just truly accepted her name — just recently. Now, I can’t picture her as anything else but a Rowan. She’s the perfect Rowan.
Any of you out there been through the same thing? Any of you picked a name that just didn’t work for your baby? Or took a long time to get used to? Do tell.
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