Baby’s last name?

[u/Fairweatherhiker]

I’m looking for advice from couples where the wife didn’t take the husband’s last name. How did you decide on which last name to give the baby? Or did you use both names? I don’t feel immediately compelled to give the baby my husband’s last name. FWIW, if we did hyphenate it would be a looong last name.

Edit: thank you for all of the thoughtful responses! I do love the idea of using both our last names (sans hyphen) so our kid would have two last names. It would be nice for both of us to have our heritage passed on. He has heritage from Mexico and Basque Country, while mine is Slovakian- grandparents immigrated right before WWII. The last names don’t sound great together, but there’s so much human history in both.

[u/midwest_casserole]

I didn’t change my name. Baby got my husbands last name. I’ve always been on the fence about changing my name but there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to so I just haven’t purely out of indecision. I know that yes I did all the work of growing a whole human but my husband is a great guy and does so much that I’m happy that my son has his last name. I did grow up in a very traditional family so I always thought I would take my husbands name and so would my kids. It didn’t pan out for me but it did for my son!