Dexter

My wife and I spent a lot of time thinking about our son's name. I specialize in working with trans and nonbinary youth, so I wanted to be mindful that our child might change his name in the future and we didn't want to get too attached to a gendered notion of a name (or a name in general!). I loved the name Miles, she loved the name Dexter. I was concerned that people would think we were naming our child after a fictional serial killer, so we scrapped Dexter and thought that Dax would be a good second choice.

When I was 31 weeks pregnant, I was diagnosed with severe preeclampsia that led to me being in the ICU and resulted in our child being born 8 weeks early. While in the hospital, I was telling the nurses about his possible name prior to his birth and my fears of him being associated with the show Dexter. After getting a lot of reassurance from the nurses and other hospital staff, the name grew on me (and really, when you are in a life threatening situation, fictional serial killers seem to matter much less). Therefore, Dexter went to the top of the list and is his current first name!

-Stephanie, Madison, WI