How Ivy Got Her Name

It was a labor of love deciding Ivy's name.

I'll start from the beginning.

Ivy was on our list of names when I was pregnant with Phoebe. It was never one really considered but it made the list because we both agreed on it.

Fast forward to me being about 20 weeks pregnant with Ivy and we were about to find out what gender she was going to be.

We already have our boy name picked out, so in case she was a girl, we were talking about girl names a lot. Ivy came up again and I was on the fence about it. I liked it, but wasn't sold on it becoming a name I would really pull for.

Shortly after finding out that she was a girl I had a pretty cool experience.

The same day we had our 20 week ultrasound I was later driving down the road when all of a sudden the thought "Ivy Patience" came to my mind so clearly.

I think I even pulled over and text AJ right away. I'm pretty sure I text him to tell him that I really wanted our baby's middle name to be Patience.

 That thought sealed the deal and he also agreed.

We love our kid's middle names to be after a relative.

 Lyla's middle name (Delcie) is after my grandma, and Phoebe's middle name (Anne) is after my middle name and  my mom- so we knew we wanted to name this baby after someone we loved as well.

Patience is AJ's grandma's first name and it felt so perfect for our little miracle that we waited 7 years for.

A quote I've loved from Dieter F. Uchtdorf also has to do with patience. I have it printed out and displayed on our fridge.

“Patience is not passive resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can - working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!

Throughout the rest of the pregnancy I had a couple dreams where we named the baby Ivy Patience. I knew it didn't mean that we would for sure name her that, but I kind of think it had some meaning!

We also threw around a few other names that we all liked:

Hattie or Nellie

We also liked the names Penelope, Pearl, Francie but didn't really like having two kids with "P" names or the same sound as "Ph". I know, not a big deal to everyone, but we are apparently really picky about our names!

We liked the names Nora and Violet but they've both gotten a little too popular over the years so we quickly passed them over (both were top names for me when naming Lyla and Phoebe).

After she was born we took about two days to name her. 

I was still pretty set on Ivy but was open to Hattie or Nellie. The girls pretty much liked all three of our top names.

It came down to me telling AJ to just decide because he was the one who wasn't totally sure and was putting the most thought into it. But we all had fun writing names on the board.

We even looked through a baby book name a nurse brought in and AJ started looking up names from his family tree.

At one point he wrote Ivy on the board in my room as her name, but then he erased it because he wasn't ready to commit.

But, when it came down to it, we decided Ivy Patience sounded the best and we both wanted it for our baby girl.

Once we decided it felt right and we knew it was the name for her.

Last minute contenders at the hospital:

Birdie, Bertie, Fancy, Evelyn

Vetoed names: 

Isabeau,  Lizzy, Agnus