SHE'S GOT A NAME!

This pregnancy meant so much to us because of everything that we went through with Lauren. When you have a child who has a birth defect, for any other babies that may come, the possibility of birth defects changes from a possibility to a reality and fear sneaks in. We had to have such hope in God's promises in order to have a second baby because we weren't strong enough to do it without him.

Neither of us hesitated to choose the name Hope for a middle name. To choose a first name, we looked through name lists that also gave the meanings of the names. Many of the names that we were interested in were disqualified because we didn't like their meaning. And then we came to Elyse. As we read the meaning, "God's oath", we looked at each other and I fell in love with it. God has constantly promised us hope through everything that we went through with Lauren and now he gave us that promise and hope in the form of a second little baby.

While Matt was studying for the CFA exam, the name discussion became something that we couldn't think about. Other names were thrown around and our list of names got messy. We couldn't settle on anything for one reason or another.

It took us a few days after she was born to go back to that name that we first loved and the reason that we chose it. Other names might be pretty, but this is the one for our little girl.