My father was a practicing Catholic when he met my mother, who was a devout Jehovah's Witness.

In order for them to be together, religion took a backseat in their lives. I was not baptized and I didn't attend CCD. I grew up knowing that one side of my family did not celebrate birthdays or Christmas, and it didn't much bother me. But as I got older, it got weirder.

Older relatives-- I'm talking grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins-- would mention casually that I wasn't going to heaven because I was never baptized. Or that my parents weren't really married because it wasn't sanctioned by the church. Or that I wasn't going to survive Armageddon and spend eternity in paradise because I hadn't embraced the one and only true religion.

In short, they freaked me out.

So when I was 6 years old and set to be the flower girl in my uncle's wedding, I believed my Catholic relatives when they told me I couldn't participate unless I was baptized. So I asked to be baptized the day of the wedding ceremony, and my parents honored my wishes.

In high school, I attended Pentecostal church services with friends and studied the Bible with Jehovah's Witnesses. Then I had my first communion so I could have a special quinceañera Mass for my 15th birthday-- a time-honored tradition for Catholic Latinas.

In the end, I never bought into organized religion. There were too many contradictions and restrictions. I believe in spirituality and strive to be a good person, but I have no desire to attend church. I respect my parents for letting me figure it out by myself and not foisting any rigid views upon me. But I also wish they had protected me more from my well-meaning relatives who filled my head with guilt and shame and confusion all those years.

Now I find myself worrying about my daughter. She is 3, and she hasn't been baptized. But my Catholic relatives-- who love Maya to bits-- make it a point to ask: When will she be baptized?

I don't think they are trying to be confrontational or judgmental. For Mexican Catholics, baptizing a baby is just automatic. And I don't want to seem argumentative or disrespectful, so I have tended to brush it off with a "We'll see," or "When she is old enough to express interest in being baptized."

Soon she'll understand enough that they just might start asking her directly, and I have no idea how to handle it. Part of me thinks I will freak out on the first person to do it, as the last thing I want is for my daughter to face a lifetime of confusion over the "right" religious path. And god help them if they ever tell her that her parents aren't "really" married. Things could get mighty ugly.

So I was really intrigued by this story about the growing trend of baby blessing ceremonies.   Interfaith and nonreligious couples are increasingly opting for personal ceremonies in order to welcome their babies into the world:

Baby blessings can help fill the need for ritual, says Macomb. "If you’re not religious, or don’t belong to a specific religious community, you still have that need."

Their rise in popularity may be driven in part by some members of the post-baby boomer generation who have bypassed religious institutions and are experimenting in ways that make sense to them spiritually, said Richard Flory, a research associate at the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California.

"It usually comes out of a dissatisfaction of what they were brought up with," he said. "They don’t want to participate in (religious) institutions. But what they do want is to be part of some spiritual activity that meets their understanding, to create some sort of spiritual identity for themselves."

Baby blessings can take many forms. They can be held outdoors. You can light candles, sing songs, read poems, vow to love and protect your child, even baptize them outside of a church.

I must say I like the idea of some form of ritual or formal welcoming. We are hoping to have a second (and final) child. I will definitely consider the possibility of our very own baby blessing. We could include our older daughter and verbalize our devotion to our children, our intent to love them and guide them through life as best we can. It would be a public declaration that we're a family.

Have any of you held baby blessing ceremonies? How did you handle interfaith issues? If you baptized or christened your children, how did you come to that decision? For those of you that don't belong to a church, how have you explained faith and religion to your children?