The story behind Braxton's Name

Braxton Michael Church

Everyone likes to share the story of their children's name. If you are someone who doesn't like to hear the monotony of something glorious, you can kindly stop reading right now! :) For all others who are interested in knowing, please... continue. 

You know that feeling that women get when they feel like "something isn't right?" Or maybe, in this case, everything was right and everything else was wrong... Who knows. The facts are that around December 16, 2011, my boyfriend, Chad, and I found out that we were soon to be expecting the best gift that life was going to deliver. 

Knowing that "it" was soon to happen without the proper use of contraception, Chad and I were still a little baffled. I took a total of 5 pregnancy tests before I was convinced. The first two were cheap Wal-Mart brand and I felt like it was giving my a false positive. The other 3 tests were "First Response" (if the clear reading on those weren't good enough I don't think any other test would have been!). After taking everything in and sitting awkwardly silent in our room, I called my mom and told her that I had missed my (*whisper*) period. She told me to inevitably call the doctor and set up an appointment. I was saddened to find out that the doctor wouldn't be able to "take me in" for another 3 weeks! 

(......3 weeks later....)

Chad took me to the doctors and this is what we found out...

   There he was... in the flesh. Well, kind of, but not really. 

Stoked on life, literally, Chad and I started brainstorming names for our little alien. Chad had picked Bentley Michael and I had picked Alanna Lynn, which was later changed to Bailey. 

The only people that knew about our pregnancy right away were my parents and my brother. Further along the way, we told Chad's family and then we announced it on Facebook to make it official. Although some people might think that, that was rude of us, we felt like it was appropriate. We wanted to wait until we were out of our first trimester, which is when most miscarriages take place. :( 

 Then we got to see "the baby" again. 

We were eager to find out the gender of our baby! I know some people say "it shouldn't matter" and no, it didn't... But we still wanted to know! It's easier to plan for pinks and blues than it is to plan for yellows and greens. We were told that the next appointment would be our opportunity to see if we had a "dinker" or a "v." Little did we know that we would have one of the most stubborn children that God has ever created. We tried and we tried and we tried to see the gender. Eventually, we had said to ourselves that maybe we weren't supposed to know. Maybe it wasn't meant to be and God wanted us to be surprised when birth-time came. 

That wasn't good enough for me. 

I wanted to know. 

Finally, on July 18, 2012, Mr. Man showed us his goods!

The ultrasound tech had previously predicted that "he" would be a "she." Silly tech, that ultrasound definitely shows a dinker. 

After finding out that Baby was a boy, I started thinking about what his name was going to be for sure. Even though Chad really loved the name Bentley and had chosen it from the get-go, I was not sold. I started to look through the baby name book and not only realized that some of the names were just stupid, but that some of them were so boring! I decided to look under the BR- section because my dads name is Bruce. I stumbled upon the name Braxton and instantaneously fell in love. 

At the time, Chad was working out of state. I drew his name on a piece of paper all cute like and sent a picture of it to him. His response was, "What is that?" I replied with, "The name of our baby." 

Ever since that conversation took place, we knew what we were going to name our little guy. When people asked us, "Do you have any names picked out," we had absolutely no hesitation to respond with, "Braxton Michael." 

(Michael is Chad's middle name). 

"Braxton Michael." 

It felt right.