Gabriela Hope

We waited until we found out that we were having a girl at nearly 20 weeks pregnant before getting serious about finding the perfect name. We found out May 21 we were having a girl and we were planning a beach vacation three weeks later so we decided to take a baby name book to the beach and look at the names during that time. We did this, and we each went through the girls' names in the book and if one of us liked a name, we wrote it down. (We ate fresh sushi on the beach while we were doing this.) Then, we went through the list and we each got to strike a name we didn't like at all, shortening the list. Still, the list was pretty long. And we couldn't decide on a name during the pregnancy so we just took six or seven that we really liked and decided to wait until we saw our daughter. I picked out her middle name "Hope" because my grandma and husband's brother-in-law died while I was pregnant with her and I'm a strong Christian and just sensed the Holy Spirit leading me that I should call her middle name Hope b/c this is what she was for me. But we still needed a first name! Right after she was born as the nurses were cleaning her, her dad (whose middle name is Gabriel but who said he wouldn't be open to having a child named after him b/c it's egotistical) said, "She looks like a Gabrielle." I said, "Gabriela?" "Gabriela?" he said. "For the first name?" I asked. He said yes, so our daughter's name was Gabriela Hope. We had discussed giving her the middle name of Gabriela but giving it to her as a first name was a big shock> It's my favorite baby name in the world now.