Selah Cadence Dugger!

Selah Cadence Dugger came into the world on July 19, 2011 at 12:17pm. She was 8 pounds, 14 ounces and was 22 inches long. She is such a gift from God! We loved our doctor (she had graduated from medical school with Jason and it was very special to have her as our doctor), but the hospital experience was not our favorite. But, I'm trying to focus on the good and not the bad... :)

For this pregnancy Jason and I decided not to find out the gender. We knew the gender with Havana and Jonah per my request. Jason always wanted to experience a surprise, but being such a planner I really wanted to know so I could be prepared. However, this time, we had things for either gender and I thought I could resist finding out the gender as a "love gift" to Jason. :) Not finding out the baby's gender caused one problem - we had to come up with two names. Jason and I don't always agree on names... it has been a sore spot for us in the past :). About 5 months into the pregnancy we agreed on a boy's name. It just came to us, I suggested it and Jason quickly jumped on board. He even had come up with a nick name that he would call him. We were excited for the name as it had a lot of meaning and significance behind it. Finding a girl's name, however, was not so easy... in fact, when we delivered Selah and the doctor said, "it's a girl" -- she still had no name!

Several weeks ago I was reading in my Bible and apparently I was reading rather quickly, but I thought I read the name "Cadence" -- I thought about it for a day and then mentioned it to Jason. He liked it because it was musical and he liked it even more because before I told him he didn't know it was in the Bible. I told him how it was in the book of Acts and that sealed the deal for him because his name is also in the book of Acts. We thought, "this is perfect. A Biblical name that is connected to Jason's." We were pretty excited and settled on the name Cadence. That night I had Jason read the passage of Scripture and he turns to me and very lovingly says, "This name is Candace, not Cadence." To say we were disappointed would be an understatement. We went back and forth on if we should still keep that name, but really, it didn't have a significant story or meaning behind it.  Can you follow Havana and Jonah (two names rich with personal meaning for Jason and I) and follow it up with "we just liked the name"? We didn't know. I said I would be okay with the name as long as we could find a significant middle name. Over the weeks nothing came to us. We searched the Bible, we searched our friend's names, we were stalking kids in the nursery at church to read their name tags hoping to stumble across the most perfect name. I even spent a long time praying about it. I felt like our boy name was so perfect and given to us by God ... I prayed that He would let me know what the baby's name should be if it was a girl. Nothing.

Monday night at the hospital... we started talking about names again. Cadence kept coming up, but again, we weren't sold on it. We thought it was very pretty and Jason liked the musical meaning behind it, but outside of that, we weren't sure. As we got ready for bed, Jason was laying on his pull out couch reading some Bible verses on his phone. He looked up at me and said, "What about Selah?" I paused. We had not even thought about that name before. "From Psalms?"  I ask. We began talking about it... it was musical in nature (indicating a pause in the music) so it could possibly go with Cadence - either as a middle name or her first name. Jason is a very musical person and so that connects in his soul. It is Biblical. It is found in the book of Psalms as well as in Habakkuk (one of my personal favorite books) and it thought to mean "a pause for reflection" - similar to the word "Amen." We liked that because in a world that rarely pauses for reflection - what a great reminder to do so. To think about all we have been through with struggling with infertility, losing Elijah and Jonah's twin, experiencing a failed adoption... and now looking at our lives - three children under three, a thriving marriage, etc. In our lives which are so busy with cleaning up toys, reading stories, and changing diapers... we don't want to forget to pause and reflect on God's goodness to us. We are incredibly, incredibly blessed and feel so humbled to be the parents of three lives. On top of all of that, I heard once that it was a city in the Old Testament, although I'm not positive about that fact, and of course Havana is named after a city in Cuba and while Jonah isn't a city - his conversation with God that was so applicable to my life a few years ago was about the city of Nineveh. Anyway, there just seemed to be some meaning behind  the name. The last thing Jason said to me Monday night was, "pray about the name Selah and we'll talk about it tomorrow."

The induction began at 5am and things progressed quickly so we did not have time to talk about it. They broke my water at 9:30am and she was born at 12:17pm. When they laid her on me my very first thought was, "Hi,  Selah." I can't explain the moment fully, but the best way is to say that I really felt like the Lord was introducing me. "Mommy meet Selah, Selah meet your mommy." I wanted to say it out loud, but seeing as Jason and I had not discussed it nothing was finalized and so I didn't want to make the decision for the both of us. It took a few minutes until things were calm enough for us to talk about it. Cadence Selah Dugger or Selah Cadence Dugger or something else all together? We had a friend with us who was there to take photos and she was there for the beginning on the conversation so she heard us bouncing around the two names. She later excused herself and we continued the discussion. We mentioned that Cadence was the "safer" of the two names - it seems more feminine and less likely to get the "huh?" response when we tell people her name. Yet, we were still really drawn to Selah. Jason said it was such a musical name that the only middle name he liked with Selah was Cadence (verses if her first name was Cadence he didn't think the middle name had to be Selah but could be a different name all together). We practiced saying both out loud like we were calling her in for dinner. It was quite comical, actually. Jason's one hesitation about Selah was that we had just come up with it the night before. If you know my husband, you know he never makes a rash decision - he thinks things through very carefully and he kept saying, "we haven't had any time to toss it around." I did mention that perhaps the Lord gave it to us just when He wanted to. By this time it was 1:45pm so we had given birth an hour and half ago and still had not called anyone because we didn't have her name. We both agreed that we wanted to go with Selah Cadence Dugger. Literally at that exact moment Jason's phone received a text... from our friend, Lisa, who had taken the pictures. This is what she wrote,

"My opinion on the name discussion... for whatever it's worth... Selah follows your pattern of the short a sounds at the end of the name... ElijAH, HavanA, JonAH, SelAH... Personally, I love Selah Lisa (her name) Dugger. HAHA.  Selah Dugger is very cute. I'm sure you're used to correcting people with Havana's name... I was just thinking people would think Cadence is either Candice or Caden... But don't listen to my two cents worth."

Her text was perfect! We had just said "let's name her Selah" when the text came through. Jason read the text out loud and we thought it was perfect. She chose the same name we did, but on top of that, it was incredibly special to us that she remembered Elijah in with our children when talking about about the short "a" sounds -- honestly, that was a connection even I had not made! I also laughed when she mentioned people not getting Cadence's name right, because I had originally read Candice as Cadence in the Bible. With smiles on our faces we kissed on Selah's cheeks calling her by her name. We are so grateful for her little life and we look forward to discovering all the plans the Lord has for her! Welcome to the World, Selah Cadence Dugger, We love you!!!