An expecting mum is agonising over the name of her first baby, after making a promise to her husband that she no longer wants to keep.

The woman and her husband are expecting their first baby, after seven years together. And they’ve just found out they’re having a baby girl. The mum-to-be says while they’ve settled on the ‘perfect’ first name, the middle name is still up in the air.

“We haven’t discussed a middle name and I am certain my husband will want to name her after his mother, who passed away a few years before I met him,” she explained.

“My reason for thinking this is, way back when we first started dating we got all carried away and discussed baby names in the small hours, during which he said he’d like to give his first daughter his mums name as a middle name. I agreed at the time, high on new love and knew he was still grieving for her. Despite it being a bit nonsensical at the time, it felt like the right thing to agree.”

The issue is, the expecting mum has changed her mind, after discovering more about her husband’s mother over the years.

“My dilemma is, I don’t want my daughter named after his mum. Since that first conversation I have come to learn that she was fully complicit in allowing my husband’s stepfather to mercilessly bully him his whole life from the age of four. She stayed with him until she died, and was complicit in making my husband homeless when he was 19 and he was left to fend for himself. This has affected him tremendously and he has over the past three years had counselling to come to terms with his childhood. He is now 34.

“Whilst deep down I know he blames his mum (he has opened up on this a few times), he still loves her deeply and calls her a “brilliant mum”. Inwardly I couldn’t disagree more and I feel my daughter deserves better than to be named after this awful woman. I also know she will one day know what my husband went through, and I feel if his mum is her namesake it sends a bad message about how we should allow people to treat us.”

The mum has now taken to an internet forum to try and figure out what to do before the issue is raised by her husband … and before their baby girl is born.

“Is it worth potentially really upsetting my husband by putting my foot down? Whilst he knows how I feel about his mum, I’m always very respectful and on the rare occasion I’ve not been able to bite my tongue he has calmly told me how it makes him feel so I make an effort to support him and have adopted a “if you can’t say anything nice, say nothing” policy when it comes to the subject.

“I’m also aware that pregnancy hormones could be playing a role in how I feel here. Is it really a big deal to just let him honour her?”