Kind of regret sharing the name with my parents
I'm 25 weeks pregnant and found out my husband and I were having a little girl a few weeks ago. I have been having some mixed feelings. On the one hand I'm thrilled, I think my husband will be a fantastic girl dad. I had a great relationship with my dad growing up and I can foresee the same kind of relationship for my daughter based on the kind of many my husband is. On the other hand, I'm terrified of having a daughter and having her hate me.
I also would be lying if I didn't say that my changing body and pregnancy belly doesn't impact my mental health at all. It has been a somewhat rough pregnancy with a lot of vomiting, pain in places I didn't anticipate and a general feeling of loss of identity as I lost my job (budget issues, not discrimination) right around the time I found out I was pregnant. There are days I don't even want to be perceived as pregnant but I can't avoid it.
More to the point: my husband and I have had our girl name for years and were planning on keeping it a secret. Even before we got pregnant, people were pressing me for the name and I didn't say. However, we did a little intimate gender reveal to my immediate family and, in the moment, we decided to tell them the name. Originally, we just shared the middle name because it is a family name and I thought my mom really needed to hear that on that particular day, but then they started calling her by her middle name and I didn't like that at all so we decided to reveal the first name as well.
They all love the name, it's a good name. That's not the problem. The problem is that they started using it a ton once they knew. "How's {name} doing?" "I want to get this for {name}!" "That meal looks really nice, I bet {name} liked it." I can't explain why, but it bothers me so much. It's mainly my mother. I get that she's excited, but I think she has said the name more than I have. It used to be this intimate thing between my husband, my baby, and myself and now it isn't. She's adamant that she won't tell people, even though they have been asking, but she also said she wouldn't tell anyone I am pregnant before I was ready and did tell one person. I don't think she'd intentionally let the name slip because her reasoning for telling this one person was because it was her boss and she wanted to make sure she could be able to visit me when the baby comes and I don't think she could find the same logical reason to need to share the name.
I love my mother but she is definitely susceptible to having a victim mentality. She made a comment that, at 22 weeks, my belly was bigger than she was at any point during any of her pregnancies and I calmly told her that it was a really awful thing to say. She then got defensive saying that all her weight went to her butt and thighs and it wasn't meant to be horrible, she was just commenting on the difference. She tried to pout and play victim all evening after I left, but my dad was having none of it and now I've set up a "no talking about my body or eating" rule that she's at least trying not to break.
I shared that I don't love hearing everyone say my daughter's name so much with my sister, along with the fact that I feel irrational for being so bothered by it. She decided to try to fix things by saying to my parents "hey, let's maybe try to go back to referring to the baby as the baby so we don't make a habit of using her name and accidentally leak it." It worked great, at least initially. However, now my mom is back to saying it all the time again.
I was showing someone something on my phone the other day and she sent a WhatsApp message very clearly referring to my daughter by her name (also spelling it wrong but that's a separate issue). I don't know if my friend read it because I snatched the phone away, but if he had, then the name would have been leaked. When I sent her a message about it saying "please don't do that, the name may have been leaked" she said that she understood but didn't apologize and I really feel like I'm at a loss right now.
Then last night while I was having dinner with friends, a friend asked why expectant parents are so secretive with names. He and another friend were just talking about how much they disliked the name some other friends gave to their baby. He dismissed any reasoning I gave why we want to keep our name secret and it made me feel sad. I simply cannot win.