I miscarried and now my friend wants to use my name

[pencilandpen]

I'm so distraught right now, I just cannot believe my good friend would do this to me. I miscarried at 12 weeks in February and told my friend (who had known about the pregnancy) that I was going through a hard time with it.

A few days later she rang me up for a chat and told me she was pregnant - she is due only a week after my miscarried baby was due :( So even though it was hard to hear, I was happy for her of course. She told me she had the CVC testing and already knew it was a girl, so naturally I asked her if she had thought about names yet.

I had already told her our chosen names - I tend to choose them before baby is even conceived - this baby had taken us four years to get around to so I had a lot of time to think about names!

So then she said she was actually thinking about Florence and what a great name it is and that her husband really likes it too. I said, but that is the name we were going to use if we had a girl. She then pretended that someone was at the door and she had to go and I haven't heard from her since and I'm still stewing.

So I lost my baby (and maybe a good friend) and now I'll never be able to use the name I've had picked out for three years if I decide to overlook this and still be friends with her! I know no-one owns a name and we could well have a boy, but by geez this oversteps the friendship mark by a looong way for me :( I guess I just needed to vent...

I'm so cross on your behalf. It's terrible. In your shoes I might feel like my 'friend' was benefitting (and saw herself as benefitting) from my loss... the name being 'up for grabs'. I think this goes beyond disregarding your feelings. Ditch the friend, but don't look back. Not much of a friend.

I named my mc babies, and could not call my subsequent dc by the same name - those had already been used. The names are between me and dp. The only time I have told anyone one of the babies' name was when my best friend kept mentioning it as a possible name for her child (she was pg). She thought I didn't like it because I always went very quiet when she mentioned it, so I told her it was my baby's name and that I would rather like it if she used it. She felt the name had already been used and didn't use it - but I was rather sad; I would actually have loved her baby to share the name.

Your situation is a bit different, and I do think your friend could have forgotten that you had mentioned the same name. Give her some time and see what she does. In the meantime, to you that name means your baby - it actually doesn't matter whether someone else uses it as well.

A 'friend' did this to me when I lost my daughter at 7.5 months we named her, buried her, about 4 months later my 'friend' tells me she is pregnant very excitingly.

A year almost to the day my daughter died, she announces her daughter, same name (and middle name too!)

I had a ds around the same time as her DD, he has special needs she constantly rubbed her daughters achievements in my face and she now wont talk to me cos I make her feel 'guilty' for her DD being normal.

No great loss.