I am so excited and delighted and grateful to introduce you to our daughter. In the coming weeks, I have much more to share with you about our labour, delivery and the first days with our girl. So many things really surprised me about the final stage of bringing our child here. Phil and I both made discoveries about ourselves, including uncovering unknown strengths and finding out the beauty of surrender.
For now, I want to share this with you: in our little bubble of newborn rapture, we have settled on the name for our beloved child. Although we had already prepared a shortlist of names before the birth, we both wanted to wait until we met our daughter to name her. Once she arrived, we wanted to get home from hospital, to allow time and space for the right name to emerge. Her name appeared on day three of life and we knew instantly it was the perfect fit.
Her first name is Natalie, which was on our original shortlist of names. Phil and I both love the connection in the name to birth and birthday, and though neither of us are religious, we love the spiritual significance of the name, referring to the birth of Christ.
Her middle name is Rose. This name came to us as a shortening of Rosemarie, which is a version of my Mum’s middle name. We became more certain this was our daughter’s middle name after her three year old cousin, Isabella, visited us in hospital four hours after her birth. Isabella decided our baby looked like a Rosie. We love Rose for the simplicity and of course the reminder of England’s most beautiful flower, universally linked to the expression of love.
We are truly honoured to meet and name this little human being. Thank you Mother Nature. Thank you science. It feels like nothing short of a miracle to hold Natalie Rose in our arms.
Mum100 