One of the most difficult tasks you need to accomplish when you find out you’re pregnant is to come up with a name for the baby. We really all have so many personal reasons in deciding which name our child is going to have to honor the rest of her life. I mean, it’s a daunting task to get it right and make one of the first of many huge decisions on behalf of this other person.

The reason I’m up late thinking about this is because I was reading a discussion started by Mamapedia on the Million Moms Challenge community where she’s asking how and why we all picked our baby’s name. It was fun reading everyone’s responses and realizing that a lot of people still go the conventional route of naming their child after a family member, or even coming up with acronyms using the first couple of letters from the mom’s and grandmother’s names and combining them. Phew! So much into a name!

That all got me thinking that I’ve never shared with you how my husband and I came up with our daughter’s name: Camila. Well, I’ll take credit for “coming up” with it, of course!

The story is that my husband and I knew for a fact that we did not want to borrow any names from family members. Not because we wanted to be unconventional, but because we didn’t want the responsibility of choosing one abuela over the other, etc. Plus, I’m already named after my mother, Ana Lilian, and two is enough! Well, almost three…my mother, in an act of sheer genius (Ahem…) named my little sister Liliana, as in Ana Lilian reversed..get it?

Anyway…

We wanted a different name and the three rules we had  {aside from no familia names} were:

1.  We both must agree on it

2.  It needs to be easy to pronounce in both English and Spanish

3.  It can’t be any name that some wisecrack can figure out how to tangle around to make it funny or whatever

So, it wasn’t that easy.

During my sixth month of pregnancy we went to Mexico City for our last trip as a family of two. One of the first things I do when there is run to the bookstores. I found a novel by Marcela Serrano (I have to thank Roxana for my Marcela Serrano addiction!) titled Antigua Vida Mía. I immediately devoured all the pages in that book and fell in love with the main character, Camila. She was strong, she was passionate, she was adventurous.

There it was. My daughter’s name. I just knew it. It just had to pass the Dad test, and it did. He loved it immediately and since it had been the first name we had both immediately and without hesitation said yes to, we grabbed it.

And, that’s it, our baby name story.

What’s yours? Would really love to know!

If you’re here reading this you’re most likely a mom or a dad and you know that the most important thing to you is the health and wellbeing of your children. As a parent, your empathy expands to a larger scale when you identify with the struggles other moms who are less fortunate than you face just to care for the basic health and needs of their babies, especially those living in developing countries.

That is why we are so excited to let you know that I will be representing SpanglishBaby as one of the six Community Leaders for The Million Moms Challenge, a joint effort between ABC News and the UN Foundation working in conjunction with Baby Center and other world-class partners around the globe.

The Million Moms Challenge is a historic, first-of-its-kind campaign – a call to action to engage a million Americans with millions of moms in the developing world around the issues of pregnancy, childbirth and children’s health. The goal is to create a global community, building on the common dream that every mother shares for her child: a healthy pregnancy and safe birth.

The Challenge is so big that it was announced tonight, Sunday September 18, on ABC News and will officially launch tomorrow morning with an announcement on ABC’s Good Morning America, live from Times Square in NYC, where people will gather to raise their hands in support of the Million Moms Challenge.

The Million Moms Community will live on the official Million Moms Challenge site under the Community tab; that’s where you can join us, other community leaders, partners, visitors and moms from all over to talk and share around those crucial issues that are a priority for all mothers and for which we all need a group to connect with for support and guidance.

I’ve already started a couple of conversations around birth day traditions and raising bilingual kids as early as possible which are sure to get you motivated to join us.   Other recent conversations revolve around breastfeeding, birth plans, natural births, dealing with death in the family, losing control and more.

We really hope you join us reach the goal of the Million Moms Challenge and participate with your voice and expert mom insights.

To be part of this historic movement, just visit the Million Moms Community and sign up.

Let your friends know about this community so this ripple can rapidly become a wave and we make a clear difference. If you tweet, you can send this message:

I’m one in a million for healthy moms and babies around the world. Join the #MillionMomsChallenge with me! @amillionmoms; #amillionmoms

If you’re on Facebook, click here to Like the Million Moms Challenge on Facebook.

Disclosure:  We are being compensated for our time spent as Community Leaders of the Million Moms Challenge. We couldn’t be more honored to have been chosen.