I posted a consultation for Vanessa and her husband two years ago this month, when they were hoping to add to their family via adoption. Vanessa let me know that they were able to bring home a long-hoped-for baby this past summer — a boy! They gave him the saintly, handsome name … Michael Dominic!

Vanessa writes,

“This email is a long time coming…I don’t know where the last few months have gone! On July 6, our sweet Michael Dominic came home to us. We are grateful and overjoyed to have a new baby in the house — thanks be to God! So how did we decide on the name?

We ended up throwing out some of our ‘rules’ as his name seemed to ‘just happen.’ Rule #1 — a name that cannot nickname easily — Michael almost immediately becomes Mike at some point in life to most Michael’s but we’ll just call him Michael within the family and hope we can keep it going. As he gets older, I guess he’ll decide! We loved the link to St. Michael the Archangel and we pray that prayer daily. It turns out St. Michael the Archangel is the patron saint of the sick and we learned that AFTER we decided on his name. This seemed appropriate & affirmed the name to us because Michael was born with a significant kidney issue that will need to be followed and could potentially lead to a kidney transplant. For now, Michael is doing well and we’re grateful for that but any prayers your readers could spare would be greatly appreciated!

Also, Michael was a name that originally we’d only considered as a middle name, if at all. But for some reason for THIS child, Michael was the first name that came into my mind when I got the first call from our social worker. When I told my husband about the call, he immediately said, “Maybe this baby should be Michael David” (his name is David!). After a few days of thinking about that name, he suggested Michael Dominic — since we love the rosary and St. Dominic was entrusted with the rosary by Our Lady… it seemed to just fit. Plus as my husband said, “I think he should have his own name.”

I also thought Michael flowed well with Nicholas, John, Mark and Mary. I especially love that the last three children begin with M! Not sure why, but it fits for me!!

So it stuck. Once we thought about it a few days (and this seems to happen to us with each child), we couldn’t get excited about any other name. And we only had 10 days from that first call until the day he came home! Our other children were absolutely thrilled to have a new baby. We waited to tell them until the night before and they nearly didn’t go to sleep! We all drove together to pick him up and it was a beautiful and memorable day.

On another note, our 4 other children loved the name Dominic and even called him Dominic for the first week or two. It was funny because many of our friends and neighbors were confused about what his name was! When they’d speak to our children, they’d refer to him as Dominic! We didn’t correct the children and we knew they’d eventually get it right — of course they did! I wonder if you or any of your readers have had any situations like that!“

I loved every detail of this story! Doesn’t Vanessa’s joy just flow out of her email? I love the combo Michael Dominic and all the significance it has for Vanessa and her hubs!

I’m interested, too, in Vanessa’s question: whether or not any of you have had the experience of your other children calling the baby by a different name than the intended call name? The only experience we had that was sort of similar is when we intended the baby to be called exclusively by a nickname, but the older boys called him by his first name for a while after birth. I’d love to hear about your experiences with this!

Please also keep Michael in your prayers, in regards to his kidney issue.

Congratulations to Mom and Dad and big siblings Nicholas, John, Mark, and Mary, and happy birthday Baby Michael!!

(Some of these photos are from Michael’s homecoming day! ❤ )

Michael Dominic with his family ❤