I get different looks everytime I tell people Mac's name. Some think it is cute and some think it is interesting (to put it nicely). Because his name is unique, as a first name, I get asked alot how we came up with the name "Mac".
(post edit: this may not make much sense now since I have removed our real names and if you don't know his real name)
So here is the story...
Hubs and I have never been able to agree on boy names, ever! Hubs likes more traditional names and I like non-traditional names (probably due to me having a unique name). I also do not want our kids to have to go by their first name and last initial all the way through grade school.
Since we had turned in our paperwork for adoption I had known that we would have a baby boy first. (I was so sure of this that I was buying baby boy clothes when ever I saw any on clearance.) But I still could never come up with a name that Hubs liked. Once we found out that Mac was going to be a boy, we went and got a baby naming book. And we started going through them.
I still wanted something a little untradtional, but ended up trying to figure out some more traditional names that I was ok with. Even then I was still being a little nontraditional because I liked all the shorter versions of all the traditional names (like Ben, or Nate, or Drew). Through all of this Hubs would call the baby "baby Mac". And every once in awhile he would throw out the idea of maybe naming our baby Mac. And I would give him the same answer everytime. "We cannot NAME him Mac, but you can call him that as a nickname.
About a month before Mac was born, we had his birthmother over for dinner. And she asked us if we had picked out a name for him. She just wanted to know if there was something to call him besides "Peanut" (her nickname for him). We told her our name ideas, but told her we didn't have anything for sure.
We also knew that we wanted to see him before we started calling him by any name. For some reason I just can not give a baby a name before it is born, it just seems weird to me (my own opinion).
About two weeks before Mac was born, Hubs was looking at the "Mc" names in the baby name book to see if there were any that we liked, in case we wanted to call him "Mac". Finally he asked me about the name Mac, and at first I was not totally sold on it. It took me about a week to really like it and even consider it to add to our list. But a week before Mac was born, we were both almost positive that Mac would be our baby's name. We didn't tell anybody, because we didn't want to pin a name on him yet in case of him not looking like a Mac when he was born, or that his birthfamily did not like it.
When we got to the hospital, Mac's birthmother had just gotten her epidural and wanted us to come and visit with her and her parents (whom we had not met yet). When we walked into the room, C's parents welcomed us with hugs and were just excited to meet us. We sat down and talked and they asked us if we had come up with a name yet. They said that if we still didn't have a name for him that they would put "Peanut Butter" or some other silly name on his birth certificate. We told them "Mac C". And they loved it instantly. I told them that Hubs had wanted to name him Mac, and I wouldn't allow that, but we could name him a name that we could shorten to Mac. And we had come up with Mac. Instantly Mac's birthgrandmother said that they had the EXACT same situation with their oldest. (I even have a picture of their oldest son in overalls that say "Mack" on the front.) We all knew from that moment that we were to name this baby boy Mac.
The rest of her labor, everyone was calling him Mac. I loved watching C's mother talk to her tummy saying "Mac we want you to come out soon so we can see you." It was a wonderful reassurance that we were all brought together by our Heavenly Father's hand, and that it was no coincidence that C was to bring our baby into this world.
Well we never have called Mac "Mac". We have tried, it just doesn't sound right...yet. The name Mac just seems to fit him perfectly and that cute red hair. Maybe when he is older he will want to be called Mac.