I have always liked "strange" names. My family was absolutely convinced I would name my first daughter Topanga after the girl on Boy Meets World. (I didn't!)

For some reason I kept coming back to Ali. I had no idea why, I had never really liked the name. Not even sure how it ended up on my list in the first place.

It was too simple, boring for me. But I just kept coming back to it. Trying many variations of it.... AliAnna, AliAnne, Ali Grace, I think I must have come up with hundreds of names.

Nothing clicked or sounded right. It seemed like the impossible task, trying to come up with something that was "different" enough for me but not too weird for everyone else.

Then I remembered a girl I had known named Alisha. I loved the spelling that way. As soon as I wrote out Alisha I knew that was her name. Maybe not real weird or unique... but for some reason I simply knew that was her name.

We had already decided on Heidi to name her after her Paternal Aunt. Her Dad's first word was Heidi and it was important to us to name Ali after her Aunt Heidi. Also ironic, is that Heidi works with kids with special needs as a physical therapist. We obviously didn't know about Ali's DS when we named her, so we didn't know either about the bond she and her Aunt Heidi would have.

We also chose Marie after her Paternal Grandmother. This would be the first Granddaughter she would get to watch grow up. It was important to us to use her name. 

I also wanted to name Ali after my best friend and biggest supporter during the pregnancy. Fortunately for Ali, Erica's middle name was also Marie. So instead of adding Erica to the already long name... Marie covered it for us. Erica is on the list for future kids though since I like the name and Erica has continued to be my best friend through everything.

I ended up compromising on the spelling of Alisha later on. We changed it to Alicia, to be similar to Alice. That way we were also naming her after two of her Great Grandmothers. One of them had passed away shortly before I found out I was pregnant with Ali. We felt from the beginning that she had something to do with this child. The other is now the Great Grandmother that Ali is closest to.

 We had managed to name her after 5 people with just 3 names. We thought we had done pretty good. 

So, Alicia Heidi Marie it was.

We call her Ali.

After she was born with Down syndrome many family members found her name ironic.

Alicia means Sweet.

Heidi means Noble and Kind.

Marie means The Perfect One.

We couldn't have picked a better meaning for her name even if we had waited till after she was born. It was perfect.

Sweet, kind and perfect. Yep, that's my little girl.

ShaeLynn Mercedes

Sadi's name was even more debated than Ali's. I somewhere along the way decided on Mercedes. It was just getting it to fit with anything that I couldn't manage. Plus her Dad wasn't fond of Mercedes so we had to go with a name he liked too. 

After Ali was born I had joined a couple of special needs message boards. There I met a Mom named Jamie. Her relentless search for answers inspired me to do the same when I needed to. We were both young mothers with little girls with special needs, except she didn't have a diagnosis for her little girl.

My daughter had Down syndrome, her daughter Amber Lynn was globally delayed. Amber's birthday was 2 days before mine. She was 4 years old when Ali was born. She had just barely started crawling and sitting up. She couldn't walk, talk or do "typical" 4 year old things. They never could diagnose her. In the end her family decided on Angelman Syndrome although Amber was never officially diagnosed.

Ali was born in February 2003. I found out I was pregnant with Sadi in May 2003.

On July 4, 2003 Amber somehow managed to get herself between the bed and the wall. After knocking a pillow onto the floor she fell there and suffocated. Her Dad and Grandmother did CPR until Paramedics arrived. The next few days were spent with her on life support, undergoing all the Neurological testing to determine that her brain had indeed died. Then 3 days later taking her off life support and donating her organs. (She saved two lives.)

I remember it so well. It was absolutely horrible. I remember my heart sinking and crying when I found out about the accident. Then even moreso when they removed Amber from life support.

I could not imagine what Jamie and her family were going through. I could not imagine how they could go on without their beautiful little girl. Their love for her was absolutely obvious. I found it unfair that I had a little girl and was expecting another one... while they had just lost theirs.

Shortly after that I thought of the name Carrie Lynn Mercedes. (Carrie after another good friend who had been very supportive.) Her Dad suggested ShaeLynn instead. The Lynn part was all I cared about so that was fine with me.

So I decided shortly after Amber's death that my next daughter would be ShaeLynn Mercedes. Her Dad liked ShaeLynn and everyone else liked Mercedes.

We would call her Sadi to go with Ali. She is defintiely a "Sadi".