I went to post this question on another sub and realize you all probably will have some insight into this that could be helpful.

Here’s the situation:

My partner and I are having a baby. I’m fourteen weeks pregnant right now. But we aren’t married, so we have to make some decisions about our child’s last name.

Additionally, we live in a polyamorous household: I live and coparent with both my partner and my meta and two children that are biologically theirs. We have reached a place where I am also parenting these two children regardless of biological ties, and I view that as as much of a commitment as if I had birthed them myself: I am the adult and they are the children and so it is my responsibility to continue to be available to them as a parent for life once that relationship has been established.

For the sake of clarity, I’m going to propose that our last names are Swann and Turner (don’t ask me why that’s what came to mind, but it’s convenient.) I love my last name. I’m also very excited to be having my first pregnancy. I would love to give my child my last name. HOWEVER…

On the other hand, I have two other children (by choice, not blood) that are biologically my partner’s, so they both use the last name Turner. I very much want to foster a cohesive family - both Turner children are as much my children as this new baby will be - and I worry that not naming my child Turner would instantly other them and their siblings from each other. I really don’t want that, but ignoring Swann feels like denying my biological involvement here and I am very excited and proud of that. And I also don’t want a different last name to signal to my extant children that they mean less to me - it isn’t an issue of importance for me; I just really wanted to ALSO have this as an aspect to my parenting journey.

The it’s-just-parental-history explanation feels weird, too, because the Turner kids’ bio mom, dad, and I all coparent the Turner kids together and will all coparent my baby together as well - we are a three parent household. So there isn’t a difference in the family structure; it’s just a different body that hosted the fetus.

I feel like the simple answer is to just use the name Turner, but that’s the problem - the simple solution for everything is to just default to what bio mom did before I came along, and if that’s the reason we make the choices we make, then the REAL simple answer is for me to never have gotten involved, and I am not okay with that.

ANYWAY.

The options I’ve come up with:

• Use the name Swann. Then we have to actively make sure to combat any divides that threaten to arise by grandparent bias, people at school assuming they’re separate families, all the other ways that people use last names to validate relations between people.

• Use the name Turner. I have to just suck it up - again - that being the last adult on the scene means I don’t get equal representation in my family.

• Hyphenate. Swann-Turner means that everyone’s name ends in Turner, while Turner-Swann keeps the kids together when adults default to alphabetizing.

I know there have to be other conventions that I am not aware of. Please help me identify all of my options!