What’s in a Name: Olive

Part II
(Part I can be found here)

When we were surprised with our second pregnancy it was just like our first. We did not find out our baby’s gender and I did not have a “gut feeling” as to if we were having a boy or a girl. As I’ve written previously, our pregnancy ended at 9 weeks gestation and I birthed our baby in our bathroom at 10 weeks into our pregnancy.

The following week was full of appointments with care providers and multiple ultrasounds to finally conclude that I did in fact birth our baby and did not just have heavy bleeding, or an ectopic pregnancy. Once we came down from the emotional roller coaster of that week we went back and forth on what we would refer to that baby as. I loved calling all our babies “Thorpling” but calling our second born “Thorpling #2” for the rest of my life just didn’t seem too appealing. My mom suggested naming our baby to help bring closure and healing in some capacity.

Zach and I went on a walk and we talked a lot about gender neutral names, etc. and we decided that since our second born grew to be the size of an olive it would be a suiting name since it could be applicable for either gender - Olive, Oliver, or Olivia. When we got home we looked the names up in The Name Book and I sobbed when I read the following.

OLIVE | OLIVER | OLIVIA

Oliver
Inherent Meaning: Kind and Affectionate
Spiritual Connotation: Bringer of Peace
Scripture: Psalm 23:1 NKJV
”The Lord is my Shepard; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me besides the still waters.”

Olivia / Olive
Inherent Meaning: Peace
Spiritual Connotation: Walks with God
Scripture: Matthew 13:44
”The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. One day a man found the treasure… He was so happy that he went and sold everything he owned to buy that field.”

These meanings were so applicable for the circumstances we were experiencing at the time. Our song throughout the beginning of the unknowing of what was actually going on, all the way through today was “It is Well”. We had this song playing on repeat and our constant prayer was and is peace. Peace that passes all understanding. The fact that we chose this name for our precious second born without knowing the meaning just made it all more special and meaningful.

We love being able to have a name for our baby without just referring to our experience as “miscarriage” or “loss”. There was life and the brief life of our baby deserves to be recognized with a name as beautiful as this.

Happy Due Date to our precious second born, Olive <3