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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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Why We Kept Selah’s Name a Secret

Apr 17 Leave a Comment

I sat across from my husband, Dan, noisily adjusting my 20-weeks-pregnant body on the vinyl cushion of the booth as the waiter disappeared with our order. We always ordered the same thing at this restaurant: pulled pork nachos topped with housemade barbecue sauce, heaps of cheese, and plenty of fresh-sliced jalapenos. (I clearly was not suffering from pregnancy-related heartburn.)

As soon as the waiter walked away, my eyes lit up, and I asked, “Can we open it now?” We had our 20-week anatomy scan earlier that day, and the technician sent us off with a sealed envelope containing the sex of our baby. Before Dan could finish saying “yes”, I tore open the envelope, lifted the corner of the card and began to squeal with delight at the first sight of pink.

“We’re having a girl!” I exclaimed. And then the realization washed over me: our sweet girl already had a name. I looked at Dan, lowered my voice and whispered, “We’re having a Selah.”

We had chosen Selah’s name long before I got pregnant. We would talk about possible baby names just for fun, until it stopped being fun because we couldn’t agree. I prefer more classic names and my husband likes . . . well, I’m still not sure what he likes. But I remember when I brought up Selah as a possibility for a little girl, he gave his enthusiastic approval right away, and the deal was done.

We had also decided in advance to keep our baby’s name a secret. This was partially for the classic reason: we didn’t want to invite criticism. We were certain about our name choice, and we didn’t want to see anyone’s nose wrinkle at this out-of-the-ordinary moniker and cause us to second guess ourselves.

But the other big reason we wanted to keep her name to ourselves was because we wanted to preserve some of the sacredness of this pregnancy just for us.

So much about pregnancy felt public: Everyone could see my growing belly, which invited commentary (not always in a bad way) from family and friends and strangers in the checkout line at Target. We also chose to do a pregnancy announcement on social media to hundreds of online friends. And of course, there were the constant doctor’s appointments. They weren’t exactly public, but they were—ahem—intimate.

In many ways, our very personal event was made public as we chose to invite other people into the story. But by keeping Selah’s name private until she was born, we were able to hold on to a small piece of joy that was only for us to savor. It was a hidden treasure that kept us connected, a shared secret we could whisper about and feel tethered by as we anticipated how our whole world was about to change.

When I was five months pregnant, my husband and I traveled to Colorado to meet up with my college friends and their families for a long weekend of hiking, exploring and cooking meals together in a rented cabin. On our second morning there, I woke up to a surprise baby shower: pink streamers were strung across the antler chandelier, gifts lined the kitchen table, and each place was set with pink plates and baby bottles filled with juice.

As we celebrated together, raising our bottles and toasting to the baby girl I was carrying, I desperately wanted to tell my friends her name. It’s not that I felt I owed them, but more that I wanted to speak her name aloud to the people I cared about, to ground our celebration in this baby who was real and growing and had a name.

I asked my husband what he thought about sharing, and he said that he would prefer not to. He loved having our little secret just between us and said that it was something special for him to enjoy as a dad.

Much of the pregnancy felt real and concrete to me—I was the one growing our baby within my body, feeling the kicks and attending the appointments. Calling our little girl by name was one of the concrete ways he was able to connect to and feel included in the pregnancy, and he was hesitant to give that same sort of access to other people. But he also told me that he would respect whatever I decided to do—to tell or not to tell.

I knew he meant it sincerely when he said I could choose, and ultimately, I did not tell my friends that day. (Instead, one friend’s 4-year-old lovingly named her “Baby Elsa”—this was clearly during the Frozen craze—which was amusingly not far off from our choice. Among these friends, we called Selah “Baby Elsa” until she was born.)

I don’t think the way my husband and I chose to handle the baby name–sharing question is the only way or even the best way. Just as there are a million ways to be a good parent, there are a million ways to experience and share joy in pregnancy.

But in our case, I wonder if there was some virtue I needed to recover in holding back. I literally write about my life on the internet, and to some extent, keeping certain things sacred feels a bit like a lost art.

There was plenty of time for the rest of the world to use her name in all kinds of ways: in frustration, in joy, in disappointment. But for these precious few months, her name was whispered only by her dad and me, only in love.

As we waited on the birth of our little girl, the anticipation built into a crescendo that finally ended with her in my arms as Dan and I breathed out, just for her to hear: Selah.

This post first appeared on Motherly.

 

Whether to share your baby's name is a very personal choice. These are the reasons why my husband and I decided to keep our baby's name a — and it's not just because we didn't want to hear criticism!

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Filed Under: Motherhood Tagged With: family, love, marriage, motherhood, pregnancy

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
We’re in the thick of a collective physical, spi We’re in the thick of a collective physical, spiritual, and emotional season of waiting. A nonexhaustive list: Waiting for a vaccine. Waiting for the pandemic to relent. Waiting for test results. Waiting to hug and kiss and hold the hands of our loved ones. Waiting for children. Waiting with children. Waiting on children. Waiting for rescue. Waiting for rest. Waiting for the birth of Christ. Waiting for the birth of a child. Waiting for a new revelation. Waiting for 2021. Waiting for January 20. Waiting for justice. Waiting for movement. Waiting for stillness. Waiting to be seen. Waiting to fade away. Waiting with hope. Waiting with heartache. Waiting with anticipation.

Whatever you are waiting on today, may this prayer be a companion and encouragement to stay the course. You are not alone. We wait with you. 🌈
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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