It’s vacation time here at Maryland Family, but luckily we have plenty of friends willing to step in and blog for us. Today’s guest blogger is Maryland Family’s calendar editor, Laura Barnhardt Cech, whose second child is due Sept. 10.

I almost had a son named Berkeley.

I don’t even like California, though my husband grew up there and graduated from the fine university in Berkeley.

We knew going into what turned out to be 23 hours of labor that we wanted a name starting with B, because my husband had been calling our baby BBC, as in Baby Boy Cech. The initials had stuck.

We agreed to use my father’s middle name “Bennett.” But the first name was unresolved. We had a few contenders, but nothing firm.

Thus, in those first joyous — delirious– moments, we pronounced our firstborn “Berkeley.”

Fortunately, the young aide who comes around with the paperwork for the birth certificate didn’t immediately visit our room. Upon closer inspection, and after some much needed sleep, we realized our baby didn’t look like a Berkeley at all.

He looked too preppy. And so, we decided Bentley best suited our baby boy. (It still does.)

Now a month away from our due date, I’m a little hesitant about answering the inevitable question: “Do you have a name?” We like Delaney and have liked that name for the whole nine (ten) months, but what if that doesn’t seem to fit it after we meet her?

It’s so close to the deadline, I’ve been worried about jinxing our favorite name. Whether or not I answer, I often hear people’s opinions anyway– what names they like, what they wanted to name a child and what names they don’t like. My mom has been tossing out ideas for months. Never mind that I told her I wasn’t soliciting suggestions.

How did you handle the name question?