Choosing Names for the Chunks!

One was easy. When I was pregnant with Jackson, we had his middle name picked out before his first. And then we got pregnant again.

Photo by Carey Stevens Photography

In May 2012 I found out I was pregnant with Jackson. I will write a blog post about our journey of trying to get pregnant another time, but it was not easy. More than a year we had tried to conceive, which involved me staying at a STRESSFUL job just waiting for that positive pregnancy test. Finally after way too many negative ones my Hubs and I agreed that it was time to quit the stressful job and try to find something new while we wait for our baby, both knowing that the stress probably was not helping anything.  I quit on a Friday without having another job lined up and ended up at what came to be my all-time favourite job on Monday! As you can probably guess, my first day at the new job I found out I was finally pregnant. Go figure. 

For some reason, we were able to come to an agreement quite quickly that we wanted the middle name to be Cole, but we wanted something different for the first name. After finding out that the Gammel family was to expect YET ANOTHER boy, a few weeks later we agreed on the name Jackson. Now if you know me in real life, I have never been a "norm" kind of person... I like to be a little odd and different. Its just more fun ok? I had decided that I wanted to spell it like Jaxson, not the traditional Jackson. Well, this was a very strange thing to Hubs (insert eye rolling emoji) and for the life of us, we could not come to an agreement. Finally, after months of debating and stating our sides, we finally had a discussion that helped us come to a decision. I remember it like it was yesterday - we were driving in Vancouver discussing Santa and how I was raised to believe he was real as a child, and Hubs was not and thought this was a dumb thing to do. I see both sides, I really do.... but this is something I really wanted for my kids since I had so much fun with it was a child! Finally, Hubs looks at me and says "You can have Santa if I can have Jackson with no X".  Well, a few weeks later Jackson Cole arrived... all 8.5lbs, off the charts head size, and 26 hours of labor later(and guess what, he now loves Santa)!

Roughly a year and a half later we got pregnant again, and to no surprise, yet another Gammel boy (there are 10 boys in a row so far). I had said in the Summer after having Jackson that I wanted the next boy to be named Maddox. My brother immediately said ew, as did a few others. I didn't care, I laughed and said too bad, you'll have to love him anyway! As you can probably guess, Hubs was not a fan of the name either, but I thought for sure I could win him over. MONTHS. Months and months we battled this out. We finally agreed on a different name, Austin, but as much as I liked the name it never sat well with me. I knew the baby growing inside of me was Maddox and I couldn't shake that mom feeling as much as I tried. About a month before he was due to arrive, Hubs and I took a drive to the mountains. On the way home, it was not such a great time. There were tears involved and a very overtired emotional pregnant woman in the front seat trying to still come up with a name that could even compare to Maddox. Finally, Hubs says "There would never be a president named Maddox." After a bit of a heated discussion, I finally won my name... after giving up the rights to the middle name of course. Hubs has grown to love Maddox's name just as much as I do, and anyone who knows him knows no other name would suit that little ball of entertainment. After only 2 hours of labor, Maddox Holden had arrived and our lives were changed forever.

Jackson Cole - February 9, 2013

Maddox Holden - July 8, 2015

Comment below how you decided the names of your children!