Ashlyn and Jay's Birth Story....Part 2

I'm sure most readers know-but for anyone that didn't-we waited to name the twins until we saw them. We did the same with Gracie (partly because we waited to find out gender) and after seeing her I was so glad we waited-the name I would have chosen wouldn't have fit her at all. So the twins were nameless coming into the world. 

Visitors came the evening they were born.....our parents along with Jeff, Hally and Lauren. We didn't get to start talking names as we didn't have time alone. 

Here was our baby girl.......

 And our baby boy.......

We were moved over to recovery and luckily I didn't have a room mate so Matt was able to sleep there with us. There were nurses in and out the whole night......to check vitals, offer up pain medication and so on. In addition the bed was constantly moving and making noise. St. Agnes has new beds that move slightly on their own every so often for patients that are bedridden, I assume to help with circulation. There is no way to stop the moving unless you completely unplug the bed......it's crazy. 

Every nurse that would come in would say......"I see that you had a vaginal delivery-that's amazing!" Followed by, "And you're still in tact! Wow-you're Superwoman, made to have babies!" It was a wonderful compliment but I was exhausted, could hardly walk from the pain in my hips, and certainly didn't FEEL "super" anything. 

The next morning was more of the same except in addition to nurses we had the birth certificate lady that we had to put off because we still didn't have names, the lactation consultant, the picture people, and more visitors. Still no time to name the babies. Every one that came in would ask their names......I kept thinking, "If you people would stop coming in we could figure it out!!"

Gage and Gracie both came to the hospital to see the babies. Gracie ran to one bassinet, pointed and said, "Baby!", then she ran over to the other bassinet, "Baby!" A nurse came in to take one of the babies for the hearing test and Gracie grabbed a hold of the other bassinet and started wheeling it out behind her. Gage was anxious to learn their names but he had to wait. He asked to hold them and he did. He was excited that they were finally here but after getting a chance to see them, and make sure I was okay, he was even more anxious to visit the piglets at the farm. 

Late in the day we finally had time alone to work on their names. Our boy name list was about twenty names deep and needed some serious work toward reduction. We had already decided his first name would be William (after Matt's dad) and that he would go by whatever middle name we chose. The girl list was already narrowed to three (but no middle name chosen) so we started by narrowing the boys. We decided to take the list, mark eleven names each that we were willing to get rid of and any that we both marked would be removed. There were several rounds of reducing the list as often we only had one or two names that we both marked. If you ever go through this-the key is to must mark enough that you'll be forced to have at least one that you've both marked. When we got down to three names for the boy we decided to look up what each name meant and go from there. Of our final boy names one had no meaning, one meant "strength of the spear" and Jay meant "happy and/or rejoice". Based on that-the name Jay was chosen. Jay is a family name on my side-my grandpa Don's middle name (see this post). 

Once Jay had been named it was time to name our little girl. We both liked all three names so any of them would have been fine. Our final names were Evelyn (Evi), Ashlyn, and Westyn-none of which had any significant meanings.....except Evelyn meant "desired" which I wasn't really wild about. I thought she looked like a Westyn, Matt thought she looked like Evelyn......and that's basically how she was named Ashlyn. Matt thought she should share a middle name with Gracie (the same one I share with my sister, mother, and grandmother). So William "Jay" Creighton and Ashlyn Laurae Creighton were finally named. 

Our many prayers (and YOURS) were fulfilled and we were able to quickly take home two beautiful, perfectly healthy babies. 

Love