Wanting to add my family name to our baby’s name after reciprocal IVF. Am I being unreasonable?
My partner “Sarah” and I are two moms and recently had our first baby, “Noah,” who is 2 months old, through reciprocal IVF. Sarah is his biological/genetic mom, and I am the gestational mom who carried and gave birth to him. We are not married. We had Noah James Miller picked out long before he was born. James is Sarah’s dad’s name, and Miller is Sarah’s family name. My current last name is from a previous marriage, but I’m changing it back to my maiden/family name, “Parker.” Since having Noah, I’ve realized I deeply regret not including Parker in his name too. I’d like to change it to Noah James Parker Miller, with Parker as a second middle name and Miller remaining his surname. Sarah is currently saying no to adding it. I know we had his name picked out for a year and I agreed to it, but I genuinely didn’t realize until becoming a mom how differently I would feel about my family name and how important it would become for my son to have that connection too.
There is some complicated family history behind why Sarah is saying no. My dad has struggled with accepting that some of his daughters are gay. He comes from a conservative cultural/religious background and did not attend one of my sister’s weddings to another woman. My sisters still have a relationship with him and things have improved, but Sarah understandably has strong feelings about what happened. She associates Parker with my dad and has told me she would only reconsider adding it if my dad apologizes to my sisters. I would love for him to apologize, but I don’t feel like my son having my family name should be conditional on something another adult chooses to do. My dad also loves our son (his first grandchild) and Sarah is very encouraging of his relationship with our son. Plus, Parker doesn’t represent just my dad to me. I actually didn’t like my maiden name much before, which Sarah has pointed out, but now I think of my mom, sisters, other people I love, my family history, and myself. There are also deeper feelings underneath this. Sarah struggled significantly with alcohol throughout my pregnancy and continues to struggle postpartum, so I have unresolved resentment from feeling like I carried much of the pregnancy and postpartum responsibility without the support I needed. That’s a whole separate issue, but I know it contributes to how emotional this feels. I also sometimes feel overlooked by her family because there’s so much emphasis on how much Noah resembles Sarah and their family. I understand their excitement about the genetic connection, but sometimes it leaves me feeling like my role and connection to him aren’t recognized in the same way.
When I look at his name now, James honors Sarah’s dad, Miller represents Sarah’s family, and he also has a biological connection to her family. I don’t want to take away any of those things. I love that those connections are part of who he is. I just wish I had realized before he was born how important it would be for my family to be represented too, especially now that I’m taking Parker back as my own name. I don’t want this to become a competition over who is “more” of his mom because we’re both his moms. I just want there to be room in his full name for both of our families. Am I being unreasonable for wanting to add Parker as a second middle name now? Is it fair for Sarah to say no unless my dad apologizes? And if you were in either of our positions, how would you handle this?