Towards the end of my 12-week scan, the sonographer leaned in and told us he was “70% certain” we were expecting a girl. It was early days but they had ways of knowing, he said. How nice that we already had a girl’s name ready – my grandmother’s, Narayani, or Nara. But at the 20-week scan another sonographer informed us we were actually having another boy. Our hearts sank when we realised we had to go through our previously rejected boys’ names again.
First time round, my boyfriend and I were fighting about our five-week-old son’s name inside the actual register office. “If you can’t think of a better name than Ivan, that’s what we are going with,” he hissed. I couldn’t, and so we did. We thought we’d call him Van, like the singer, but he became Kraken, after the sea monster (he was a bad sleeper), until a therapist suggested he’d “end up on the couch”. Now he’s Ivan.
