What's In a Name: Felicity Marian

If I had it a little more together, this would have posted yesterday on Saint Felicity's feast day. If I had it more together, I would have done more to celebrate than just repost the Happy Saint's picture on facebook since St. Felicity is special to both myself and our daughter. But, hey, I've got a newborn so this is all I've got in me :). 

I knew my first daughter would be named Felicity before Steven and I were even married. My history with her name goes wayyyy back (unlike our boy name which we picked out early on in the pregnancy). My confirmation saint's name is Felicity. I've probably written before about how I chose it because I liked the name and, more so, because I liked the late 1990's/early 2000's tv show. Yeah, you know, Felicity and Noel and Ben? Yep. I swore up and down at the time that I didn't pick it because of that show but we all know I did. 

Ironic though, when I realized years later that part of her patronage is that she is the patron saint of barren women. Ironic because I was given the diagnosis of polycystic ovarian syndrome, ironic because my body decided to be at a stand still hormonally speaking for months and even years, and ironic because when we got married we knew we would have challenges trying to conceive. So I may have picked Felicity for the tv show, but I'm pretty sure she picked me knowing she could help intercede on my behalf in the future. Once I realized the irony of having picked her, I suddenly began to feel really close to her. And it was around that time, shortly after Steven and I got together, that I decided my first hypothetical daughter had to be named Felicity. I knew I would want to do that whether it was a biological or adopted child.... however God helped me to grow my family, I wanted to honor His saint in that baby's name.

All through pregnancy, we really thought we were having a boy. Technically, neither one of us had a gut feeling but since EVERYone else was convinced it was a boy, we just tended to think of the baby in that way. I kept telling Steven that it didn't really matter to me whether or not the baby was a boy or girl, as long as I get my girl, my Felicity, some day. You can probably imagine my surprise and my joy when he announced that our baby was a girl, and I knew I had her. My Felicity.

The middle name came to us pretty early on in pregnancy. We prayed a particularly beautiful prayer to Mary (which I can't find anywhere now!!!) the cycle that we conceived. That cycle was really special to us in more ways than just getting pregnant. I was supposed to do 4 cycles of Clomid and then have surgery to check for endometriosis because, statistically speaking, if you don't get pregnant after 4 cycles (with other factors accounted for), you are unlikely to get pregnant without further intervention. But since we had a vacation to Alaska last June, I knew there was no way I could turn around and take time off of work and still get my job done. So I asked the doctor for just one more cycle of Clomid, promising to immediately do surgery if it didn't work, and he thankfully agreed. We found the prayer to Mary and prayed it that cycle, and we were pregnant on our 5th, unlikely to conceive, cycle. So fairly early on we knew that, if we had a daughter, we would like to honor Mary with some version of her name as our daughter's Middle name. We didn't want two names ending in "y", and neither of us loved Marie or Maria, so we went with Marian. 

Our beautiful Felicity Marian!