Due June 2005, Thread 4

[Scraggyaggy]

Happy New Year everyone!

Following Katzguk's suggestion I've started up the new thread - hope no-one minds.

Well, I did absolutely nothing for New Year. I have the cold from hell so I was in bed by 9pm. I was very disappointed as we were supposed to be going to a party but I decided not to go as I wouldn't have enjoyed myself and then I'd have made dp miserable too. So, I celebrated by having a lemsip topup at 12 o'clock! (One for the books!) Hope you all had a nice time.

Have been reading your threads about what to buy and what not to buy. I started buying after Christmas as I want to start really enjoying this pregnancy now. Dp is incredibly worried that something will go wrong and we are tempting fate but I don't want to be walking on egg shells for the next 5 months .... yup 5 months already!!! Scary stuff!

Anyway, we have bought a Graco travel system as I have spent hours in the shops clipping and unclipping and puttin them up and down and I found Graco to be lightweight and really simple to use. Then I trawled the internet on boxing day and found that Toys'r'Us was doing some good deals.

Cot is going to be an Ikea special. They are so cheap, I just don't think you can argue and we are big fans of Ikea. However, if anyone has any experiences of this then let me know. We aren't bothering with the moses basket.

I've got a 2-way baby carrier from e-bay, which is still new apparently, although I haven't received it yet so I'll hold bck on judgement.

And then the mumsnet wanted and for sale boards are fantastic. I've got a bottle warmer and a travel cot through mumsnet. I'd reommend that anyone here use them.

There are three things which I need help with though:

• steriliser; microwave or electric??? Any opinions?
• breast pump; is there one which is comfortable and easy to use? I don't want to spend a fortune and then not be able to use it.
• baby monitor; I definitely want one. Am planning on sitting in the garden over the summer, and baby might not want to be moved. Should I get a normal one? A digital one? Has anyone used an under mattress sensor type one? Need big help with this one.

Have bought myself some books on motherhood and new babies too. Am such a planner, I need to be having a good read now so I can put all the theory to practice in 5 months time!

Hope you are all well and not being sick any more! x

Welcome back Tessie I go gooey when I hear the heartbeat too - esp as ds came with me yesterday and is now telling everyone he heard mummy's baby go 'boom boom..' bless

Re the London meet - I have posted on the meet thread and hope this is ok with everyone... better go and get ds from mil - she only though she was having him for the time of a cut and blow dry (3 hours ago!!)

catch you all this afternoon/evening.

My honest opinion is one thing that never is revealed with shades of grey, so I hope you meant it when you asked for it. Please don't be mad.... But....

Reuben Thomas William surname
Very nice. Not too common yet traditional. Sounds distinquished. I like it. And "Ben" is nice.

Cordelia Margaret surname
I like Margaret (in fact it is DD's middle name in honour of my gran). Not sure about Cordelia. It's pretty, but I fear a bit too unusual. You run the risk of her hating it, and then deciding herself that she is going to be Margaret instead. I am living proof that children do this. When I was 20, I up and decided to be called by a nickname of my middle name because I didn't like my first name. My parents (and everyone else I knew) thought I was crazy. But I did it and never turned back. Also, this child will spend the rest of her life explaining how Leah came out of Cordelia. Leah is in itself a proper name. If you really like Cordelia, what about Cordelia Leah or even Leah Cordelia. Also, I have a niece named Haydee (pronounced eye day). She will NEVER have a store bought mug or picture frame or anything else with her name on it.

Now I hope you really did want my honest opinion. If you totally disagree with me and you love the name, then you should use it. I have a friend who has had two children. With the first one, she was talked out of the names she really liked and later realised she didn't really like the name she gave her. So when she was pregnant with the second one (about 12 years later) she told everyone to bugger off and she was naming the child what she wanted.

thanks uwila - honest opinions are great, i can try out name shere without the normal 'thats nice' for fear of offending.

I apologise to anyone planning a Leah or who has a leah but i don't like the definition or the biblical connotation of the name, but DH loves the name. We both like Cordelia and this is a good compromise for him to get a Leah although we would probably shorten it to Lia rather than Leah. I'm not too worried about not being able to get things with her name on since DD also has similar problems and her name aint that unusal (Phoebe). plus lots of places now do there own personalisation.

What we really want is a flowery girls name simialr in style to Phoebe which doesn't begin with the letters K, A P or F (because Phoebe really is an F sound!) all of which are taken by our family. So happy to take suggestions.

I would have thought Cordelia is more popular nowadays after Buffy and Angel? (Lord knows, people seem willing to call their children Willow and Oz, at least Cordelia is a proper name!). Just please make sure she is never nicknamed 'Cordy' like Cordelia in Angel, that is just awful

I have a quite unusual name and I like the fact that I never had to be identified by surname as well - there were a number of Lucys in my school so there was Lucy B and Lucy W etc. Much better to be unique (with no offence intended to Lucys everywhere).

On the other hand, you can take things too far, cf Apple Paltrow/Martin, the Beckhamlets, Paula Yates' poor offspring. I have a friend whose dd is called Coco, which I think is a bit much to saddle a child with really.

Last pregnancy I was very concerned with names. This time, we have a couple of choices for a boys first name only!! Still need 4 others, because we haven't even thought about what to call a girl! I should really get on with it

ahhh i'm not a buffy fan so didn't know that!!

but then we have a phoebe and no one has sadi oh you must be friends fans then!

i also love the name hermione but DH said since he couldn't spell it then ity veto might work on him!!

I wonder what the Beckham's next poor offspring will be, when's it due?... Just looked it up, March apparantly.

only i other Cordelia in my town and 3 Hermione's

i was a bit worried about the name Hermione because of Harry Potter but it doesn't seem to be as popular as Harry has been

hmm new baby beckham well its going to be a boy so what about
Xavier (good spanish name) or Pedro

You've obviously got a bit of a Shakespearean thing going on katz - although Phoebe in As You Like It was something of comedy peasant as I recall (? this was a long time ago in A-Level). So off the top of my head - Rosalind, Miranda, Cleopatra (!), Viola (maybe not), Isabella, Beatrice, Helena ...

Sorry Trib, didn't mean to offend unusual names on the whole. If it makes any difference, I actually boycotted my first name because it was too common. But the point was just that people don't always call themselves what their parents intended. So I firmly believe that the whole name has to be chosen very carefully -- including any and all possible nick names.

Actually it's usually Javier in Spanish itself, I would never give any kid in this country a 'J' Spanish name because of people not being able to pronounce it. Similarly I used to work with a Spanish bloke in the UK called Angel, people wanted to make an effort to say it right (and not have to call him 'angel' to his face!) but it mostly came out 'ankle'

I dread to think what the Beckhams will come up with this time. Real as in Real Madrid? Juan Carlos after the King of Spain? There was a couple in Sweden who tried to register their baby with the name Superman (only in Swedish) but the registrar wouldn't let them, on the grounds it was too daft. I think the Beckhams would be struggling in Sweden!

No, I know what you mean Uwila. You can't choose what nickname your kids end up with at school after all! One of my friends calls Coco 'Coke' as an attempt at a nickname

It always amazes me that two people named Victoria and David can come up with such weird names for their own children. Whatever it will be, I'm sure it has yet to enter any of our imaginations.

Oh, and I totally agree with "Apple". What was she thinking?

Our picks are:
Girl: Rachel Page
Boy: Alexander Robert Rathbun

Go ahead, give honest opinions. I think I deserve them.

It always amazes me that two people named Victoria and David can come up with such weird names for their own children. Whatever it will be, I'm sure it has yet to enter any of our imaginations.

Oh, and I totally agree with "Apple". What was she thinking?

Our picks are:
Girl: Rachel Page
Boy: Alexander Robert Rathbun

Go ahead, give honest opinions. I think I deserve them.

i like both first names not so sure about rathbun but i'm assuming its a family name or your surname?

i went to school with a lovely guy called alexander but the poor sod had the middle names clement carradog!!!

Hello everyone,
Sorry to have not been around much recently - have been suffering with terrible migranes

Anyway, I popped into a little independant nursery shop near me today (just for a quick look you understand) and the woman grabbed me and started raving about her prams.

It was actually quite interesting and she showed me one which I quite like the look of - so I thought I'd see if anyone here had heard of them

It by Bebe Confort and it's called a Loola - anyone know if there any good???????

Right you are. I am American, and most of my ancestory can be traced to the American side of the Revolution. Rathbun is the American branch of Rathbone. And since I have now found my way back to the "mother land" I though it would be ever so appropriate to stick Rathbun in there. I'm mildly considering going back to the "Rathbone" spelling. But, I also thing that keeping it as Rathbun shows the American heritage as well.

Alexander and Rachel are both just names we can both live with. Robert is my dad/brother's names. Page is my sister's middle name (and also a family last name).

First names also must not have known nick names which end in an "ee" sound so as to avoid the possibility of the first name rhyming with the last name... I HATE when first and last names rhyme. This rule, incidentally, eliminates most of names in the western world.

The name must also not sound too much like HAnnah, which is DD1's name. So, out the door went Emma, which is/was one of my favourites.

Loola..? I know a girl called Lula and we sometimes call dd 'Lula'...
Sorry, still on the names Never heard of it as a travel system.

My God! The intensity of thought and complexity of this name business! It's a full time job!

have heard of bebe confort and i liked there prams but there carseat for newborn were huge and wouldn't fit on the backseat of our car, a micra at the time.

Oh Lippy, I have a list of criteria about 10 items long. By the time you jump through all the hoops to find a name that matches my criteria, there aren't a whole lot left to choose from.

BOys name are particularly difficult because I do not like really common over used names, like James. Nothing wrong with the name itself, it's just that too many other people have it. And those are exactly the names DH likes. So we go through a long charade of him vetoing all of my names and then I veto all of his. We finally settled on Alexander (although he has now decided that it sounds "girly". but I'm continuing to use it until he comes up with another one we both like)

We have a bebe confort car seat and I have no complaints about it.

uwila we have to oposite problems i have loads of boys names but we are struggling with girls names.

boys names include

Reuben, Oliver, Jarred, Jacob, Dylan,

Oh Jacob is nice. DH vetoed that one for me. But, I like Reuben as well.