Some people find choosing a baby’s name incredibly easy and others, like Andy and I, leave it until the eleventh hour. It seems as though there are so many things to consider for example, do we name the child after a parent or grandparent, does it have to be traditional and what would the child’s initials be if we name them Vanessa (in our case… VD!)?

Typically for us, when we were pregnant with Annabelle, we agreed 100 per cent on a boy’s name, Noah. It was perfect. We both loved it. It wasn’t popular at the time, Andy didn’t teach anyone with that name and we had no friends or acquaintances called Noah. We didn’t know the gender of the baby so our only dilemma was to think of a girl’s name. This is where we had endless discussions and the word ‘Veto’ was thrown around A LOT!

I loved the name Sophia. I had my heart absolutely set on it but Andy just didn’t like it. He preferred Sophie and no matter how much we discussed it, we couldn’t work out a compromise. Even when my cousin called the bump, ‘Sophia’ and the baby moved for her, it didn’t make enough of a difference for him. Oh and by the way, the baby would only ever move for Andy.

We spent eight months looking at books of baby names, Top 100 lists and talking to friends and family until finally, a few weeks before my due date, we fell in love with two names, Annabelle and Holly. By this point, we decided to keep the names a secret. Mentioning names to others had ruined a lot of our choices. Now whenever I see the name Imogen, for example all I think is ‘Im-og-gen’ (thanks Jon!).

It was tough to narrow it down to two choices. I think there was a lot of compromise along the way. We also both thought that our final choice would depend on what the baby looked like. This might sound daft to some people but if a name has meaning then sometimes a child’s appearance can influence the choice. Annabelle means ‘Grace’ and ‘Beauty’ and not only was she our delicate, perfect and beautiful little bundle when she arrived but I still think she regularly encapsulates the name now.

With Heath, we also decided upon his name very late in the pregnancy. We still loved the name Noah but since 2011, it had gained incredible popularity. We wanted something different with out being too trendy or unique.

As a joke, I started listing all the male characters from Home and Away (as I am obsessed with that TV show) and when I mentioned ‘Heath’, Andy paused. He really liked it and it stuck. Our little man had a name that ranked 930 in the popularity stakes and almost for that reason alone, we were sold!

I really love the names we have chosen for our children. It took a lot of time, discussion and compromise but it was worth it. The most important thing is that we were both happy with the choice. There was no man vs woman or dad vs mum arguments! I know our families have thought they were unusual choices and it has taken them a while to like our decision but they have grown to like it. How did you chose or have you chosen your baby names yet? Let me know. Bx