The Name

I had the hardest time trying to pick a name for our little girl.  I liked a lot of names. Nora, Penny, Robyn, Ellen, & Maylene.  

Maylene came from a band Clay & I used to listen to back in high school, Maylene and the Sons of Disaster. (Back in the hardcore days...) They're a southern hardcore band, sometimes I think the guys from Duck Dynasty should be listening to them haha. We always thought it would be cool to name our daughter that.  We would talk about little May all the time & what our family would be like. Clay even wrote me letters on his mission mentioning Maylene and our future life together. Jo is my mother-in-law, Rhonda's middle name & we just love that name and the two put together.

But the name kinda got put on the back burner. I LOVED the name Nora. I heard it right after Clay left on his mission and fell in love. I just knew that was going to be my first little girl's name. Then later Clay & I (after he came home from the mission & we got married) got super obsessed with the show Lost. One of the character's name was Penny and I loved that name. So from then on it seemed to be a toss up. I also liked the other above mentioned names. Maylene still just didn't seem like a front runner. 

At my 20 week appointment I went in to find out the sex of our baby. My mom and Kacie drove in from SV and Clay was there of course. Clay had said from the beginning that it was a girl, so sure enough when the ultrasound tech announced it was a little gal, it didn't feel like much of a surprise. The ultrasound was pretty long and everything seemed fine. I was just picturing life with a new little baby girl.  But after a little while our tech said she needed to get the doctor to look at something, that she wasn't getting a good enough picture while doing measurements.  At this point I wasn't worried, it seemed like she just needed help from a pro. So we waited patiently for the doctor to come in. He went over just about everything that the tech did but didn't really say much, I wasn't sure exactly what he was doing. Finally he stopped and asked my mom and Kacie to leave. That's when my heart started pounding.  He then proceeded to tell us that there was extra fluid in our baby's brain and that it could be a sign of a severe mental retardation called Trisomy 18.  If the baby did have this, then I would likely miscarry, or she would probably live no longer than a couple weeks. He did explain to me that this was worst case scenario, and that there were no other signs on the body of any handicaps.  He said with my age and health that it would most likely go away within a few weeks, but that they would recommend more testing to be sure. 

This was hard information to hear. Of course the chances of this happening to us were slim, but hearing that any of this was a possibility was very scary.  I tried to stay happy the rest of the day and be positive, but in the back of my mind I was heartbroken.  I had to wait 3 weeks until the test results would come in of whether she was healthy or not.  

While waiting I really wanted to pick a name for her. I wanted to call her something. So we went back and forth but finally decided that Maylene was what we had to name her. It was what was the most meaningful to us. The other names were just ones we thought up, or from a TV show, but Maylene was a part from our little love story.

Finally the tests came back that she was perfectly healthy and we were so relieved. I later heard from a few people I know that this had happened to them as well, and that it was very common and almost ALWAYS goes away.  I was a little upset that my doctor scared me with this so much, but in the end, I guess it's what gave our baby girl her name.

So yes, it may be pretty cheesy that our daughter is named after a band full of giant bearded men, but hey- we like it. Here's to having 2 boys next so we really have Maylene and the sons of disaster in our family. :)