Baby Names

For me picking out a name was very important. I wanted to do it right away. Once the shock wore off I started thinking about names, names in books, movies, anywhere and everywhere I could. I started making list of names and talking with the baby's father about them. He kept telling me we have lots of time to pick one but I didn't care. We started crossing off names we didn't like and making maybe lists. I knew the girls names were going to be the hardest because there are so many in my family and almost everyone is named after someone. They were all the traditional names like Lynn, Mary, Marie, Dawn, Lee so I knew I wanted one of those for the middle names but figured we could narrow it down if it was a girl.

I found out I was having a boy and knew that naming him would be so much easier. The males in my family all have the name William either as a first name or a middle name since there is only one male in each generation (Grandpa, Uncle, Cousin, Nephew). However my nephew already had William for a middle name. I told the baby's father that he could pick the middle name. It took him a few days and he chose his father's middle name James. He said that he was named after his grandfather and would like to name his son after his son's grandfather. I thought it was great. All that was left was the first name.

Everyone has an opinion on names and they all will tell you about it even people who you don't really know. By the beginning of December I had a list of about ten names that I liked. Everyday I went over them and wrote them and said them out loud with the middle name and the last name. (Turns out my son doesn't have that last name, he has mine but Kaden James Shoopman sounds good and even the hyphenated name I use for the memorial items sounds good) Funny part was that there were three names on the list that were pretty similar and my family was pretty evenly split over which of the three they liked, Aiden, Brayden and Kaden. I tried different spellings of them and finally had it down to two names-Jonathan and Kaden. I don't do nicknames very often. If I name my baby something that is what I want them called. I knew that if I went with Jonathan someone would want to call him Jon and I don't like that name.

Not sure of the exact date but I am pretty sure December 5th I decided on Kaden James. I know I told my cousin Tessa on December 7th. We were helping at a dinner and I remember telling her and her rubbing my belly and saying "Hello Kaden James" and I told her to be quite because I hadn't told the father yet and he was only a few feet from us.

A part of me is happy that I did have a name pick so early because with all that happened surrounding Kaden's birth, it was one thing I didn't have to worry about and if I would not have survived my family knew the name I wanted and I knew Lacey would name him that for me. I use to say that it must have been Lacey who named him while I was all drugged up because that was the name she really liked and she was calling him Kaden before I had decided on it (she was in the room with me kinda I will explain that all later). But I do remember yelling when the nurse or someone was filling out paper work and said something like "now it's Caden with a C-A-D" and I started yelling "NO WITH A K! Are you stupid?" Not sure if I said that last part out loud but I know I was thinking it and knowing me I probably did.

Sometimes I am not so happy I had a name picked so early because I think maybe if I didn't have a name picked he would not have been born so early. I know it is silly to think that way but like I said I think of all the "what ifs" and you can tell your self it is a silly thought but that doesn't make you stop having it.

Kaden's Mommy