Naming Our Angel

Walking With You is asking that we share how we chose the names for our babies and if there is any special meaning behind them.

Since I miscarried at 8 weeks, I have no idea if our angel in Heaven is a little boy or girl. Sometimes I think it's our one and only daughter and other times I feel I have four sons. I just don't know and won't know until I meet our heavenly father.

If our baby is a girl, her name is Claren Jacalyn. This is the name we chose for a little girl during my first pregnancy. My husband's favorite grandfather was named Clarence, hence Claren. My middle name is Jacalyn, so that was an easy pick. (My middle name is after my brother, Jackie, who passed away a year prior to my birth.)

If our baby is a boy, his name is Nolan. We had told our oldest two boys that I was pregnant only a few days before I miscarried. They came up with the name Nolan. We never had a chance to discuss a middle name for him.

I feel badly, however, that when I was pregnant with our youngest son, we still planned to use our little girl name if he had been a girl. I feel as though we should have come up with another name just in case our angel is a girl. After all, we never even considered the name Nolan even after we found out we were having another son.

When we went to the Outerbanks for Thanksgiving in 2009, I wrote Claren and Nolan's names in the sand. I did this alone because I felt the rest of my family would think it was silly.

P.S. I'm having some formatting problems with this post, so if it looks funny, that's why :-/