To Name Or Not To Name?

The last few days I've thought about this. Most of the parents whose blogs I've read named their child before birth. Even some of the parents who terminated their pregnancies decided to name the child after termination. They felt that by naming it, they were recognizing that it was their child, not just some "being" that was taken out of the mother's body. I'm not sure where I stand on this. Weeks ago Keith and I had talked about how we would probably narrow down our list of names to 2 or 3 that we really liked, and then would wait until we saw the baby to determine what we would name him (we've felt all along that this baby was a boy). What's kind of ironic, perhaps eerie, is that last Sunday night I had a dream about our baby. This was one day before everything began to unravel. I dreamt that he was born and was healthy and beautiful. Earlier that day we had discussed a few of the names we liked, and Ethan had come up. In my dream we named the baby Ethan Robert Hoff, since Robert is Keith's middle name. I've read about other parents who had bad dreams or premonitions shortly before learning terrible news about their child. I thought,then, that this dream was a surefire sign that everything was going to be great with ours. Now I'm not sure how to interpret the dream or the name that was in it. Is this a sign that we should name this baby Ethan Robert? Or was this God's way of telling me that someday down the line we will have a healthy baby boy and he will be Ethan? I'm really going to have to think about this. I wasn't ready to commit to a name, but now this dream and the news we've received has started to make me reconsider. As soon as we make a decision on that, I will be sure to post it for all of you.

Thanks again for all of the calls and emails of support and prayers.

Love,
Ashley