How she got her name…perfume….Yes, perfume.  Lauren is named from a Ralph Lauren perfume.

Lauren by Ralph Lauren

 She asked me one time, when she was a teenager, how I came up with her name.  So I told her the story.  When Bryan and I were dating, our first Christmas together, he gave me a bottle of Lauren by Ralph Lauren.  The bottle was a beautiful burgundy color glass…one of my favorite colors, it was expensive…back then at least… and I loved how it smelled.  It was the nicest gift any boyfriend had given me… for only dating a couple of months…he impressed me.  We were married for four and a half years…by choice, much to the “grandparent wanna-be’s” displeasure… before I got pregnant.  We quickly came up with the name Lauren Elizabeth for a girl…from the perfume and we loved the name…but we never could settle on a boy’s name.  Back in that day you usually only had one sonogram…which we have on video…but we didn’t discover the sex of the baby then.  As I was having her I remember asking Dr. Huddleston what the baby was…he said “A head…that is all that is out right now…(laughing jovially)”…a few more pushes and we knew…a beautiful, dark-haired, long bodied, rounded manicured nails, precious baby girl.  We named her Lauren Alizabeth Alston.  Notice the change of E to A on Alizabeth?  Well… Dr. Huddleston and his wife stole our baby girl name…lol.  I told him early in my pregnancy that if we had a girl what her name was going to be.  He and his wife had a baby girl a couple of weeks before Lauren and “stole” our name.  When I accused him of it…he swore he didn’t remember me telling him the name…I believe him…because how many baby names did he hear, on a daily basis, in his practice…hahaha.  So I changed the E to an A to be different and because most people pronounce it with an “A” sound anyway.

A tray on my bathroom counter…with Lauren’s picture and perfumes.

But back to the perfume story…I wore it almost daily…at least until I was pregnant with her…then all perfumes made me nauseous and I have rarely worn any since.  But when I do it is Lauren…we had given her some for Christmas after her inquiry about her name.  I wear her… Lauren…in more ways… than just her perfume.