I remember when they told me it would never happen, they said there was no hope for me, and they kept trying to thrust it through my head that I couldn’t have children. I sometimes think that their right and I will never get to have the experience of having a baby, but God tells me different. I believe that a miracle will happen, I pray for it everyday. I hope God hears this prayer. To know that I will soon have a baby inside me, wiggling and kicking in my own stomach, gives me butterflies. God please hear my prayer.

It was the middle of the summer, around June, and I was finally able to call myself a bride, I was looking at myself in the mirror, “It was finally my day to shine.” I told myself, I could be happy for myself for once. I kept looking myself over in the mirror, making sure every little detail was perfect. My hair was down and curled, sparkles covering me from head to toe. My dress was knee-length and white as snow, it sparkled and glistened all over. They told me it was time, and a smile was drawn upon my face. I stepped onto the beach and looked at my fiancé positioned at the other end, waiting for me to come forward. He looked so dedicated and charming, his dark eyes were polished and mysterious and his tan skin sort of had luminosity to it in the sunset. I started to walk toward him, with my father at my side, the music started to play. I took a few steps and I felt a tear roll down my make up covered cheek. This day meant the world to me.

Ethan was helping me move my stuff into the house we had bought in Atlanta, Georgia. Our house was small and stood very poised. It looked sturdy and beautiful from the inside and the outside. It was a brick house with two bedrooms, a small living room and kitchen, and one bathroom. The inside had been painted and well done up with decoration to make our home comfortable to live in. When I walked into my new home my heart would beat faster as the aroma of candles filled my body, it made me feel blissful but also sad at the same time. Our neighbors were well-mannered and nice and we made many friends to help us be more comfortable with our movement. The outside of the house was well groomed. It had little flowers blossoming in lines and an immense oak tree in the back yard. It seemed like the perfect home to raise a family in, so this is where our story began.

It was two years after we were married and moved in that we decided we wanted a baby to complete the family, a dog just wasn’t enough. We tried for a long while and I began to feel sick one evening so I thought I was pregnant. A few weeks went on and I had taken some medicine to see if it was just a stomach bug and it finally went away. We tried for a year and nothing seemed to be working, I felt so shortened without a baby, it put me in a depression to where I felt loneliness. I prayed for something to happen, for God to bless me with a little one. We needed one more person to complete this family. I thought that I would by no means get pregnant.

After trying for two years I started feeling sick and I thought I could be pregnant but I didn’t want to get my hopes up this time so I went into the doctors office when I got there I saw many families and mothers with babies and women who were pregnant. I had a hunger for the feeling of that warmth and love a baby brings. I went into the room and he tested me. We waited in the bitter empty room and when he came back in he told me I wasn’t pregnant and that I was not capable of conceiving children. It seemed so unfair how many other women could have children but nature was stopping me from being the mother I had always wanted to be.

Depressed and disheartened, I cried for days after that. I didn’t want to feel this emptiness for the rest of my life. I kept praying about it for quite sometime and God kept giving me the feeling I would get pregnant. I dreamt about it five nights and I kept seeing this baby that I was holding. I would wake up crying. Three years later we still had no luck, I had been to every doctor in Atlanta and they all told me I couldn’t have kids, we finally gave up hope. I was sick of trying and being let down, giving up hope in that God would bless me with a baby sounds so appalling but I just couldn’t take the pain of disappointment anymore. I just wish this one prayer could be answered.

Ethan came up with a very intricate and expensive idea, but I knew he was strong and could handle anything that came his way. He was the type of person to trust his gut feeling and to go with his first notion. I try to keep up sometimes but he always seems to be tougher than me. He told me we should try adopting a baby, we got in touch with an orphanage in China that would allow us to adopt a baby girl and even though it was expensive, I seemed to not care about the money. Month after month we waited and finally got the paperwork. We were getting excited and I tried to control it because I knew that there was a possibility that this could be denied, but I kept my excitement anyways. We started embellishing her room, we got everything in pink, and we got bedding, quilts, outfits, toys, and so many accessories.

We got a phone call a couple weeks later and they told us that our child was on the way to the airport and we could come pick her up right then or they could find a place to stay and we’d wait a few days, of course we chose to go ahead and go to the airport. On the way to the airport I was filled with eagerness and anxiousness. Ethan seemed so serene and sturdy; seeming like this is a normal daily basis thing. We pulled into the airport and I got a thought that she wasn’t really my baby and I felt like this wouldn’t cure my loneliness, but Ethan explained to me that even though she didn’t grow inside me and thrive on my nutrients that she was ours and we would already love her like she was our own.

As we walked across the airport we saw many children there. The description of Ming was very simple, she had elongated black hair, light gray eyes, and she was about knee height, very petite for her age. She was only a year and a half so I looked for a tiny girl and as soon as my eye came across her she caught my eye and all I could do was smile. I walked across the airport to her and the woman with her, she handed me her things, and she smiled and left. She ran straight up to Ethan like she had known him and when Ethan put her down for her to locate me, she wrapped her arms around my leg and looked up at me and smiled. That smile was worth a million dollars.

On our way home Ming wouldn’t stop babbling, she would chant to the radio and all I could do was giggle and look back at her and tell her I love her. She would smile every time she heard me say it. A few weeks later Ming had settled right in, she was already calling me mum-mum and she was calling Ethan dada. I was sitting on the couch watching cartoons with Ming when my stomach started feeling eerie; I had to go to the bathroom because I knew I was getting ready to get sick. I didn’t know if it was something I ate or if I was getting a virus so I called the family doctor and made an appointment, he told me to come right over and he would check it out.

When we got there he took a few tests and he came back in the room. After he asked a few questions about Ming and how we had gotten her he stared at his paper in his hand, his eyes moved across the paper in a line. He said that the news could be good or bad, depending on what we thought. He looked up at me and Ethan and muttered, “Nadia, you’re pregnant”. I sat there and all I could feel was this strange and uncontainable feeling, Ethan looked at me and he started to tear up. I had always wanted a baby of my own and I am finally having one! I felt pure contentment and nothing else could run through my mind. Ethan was just as much as excited as I was. We thanked the doctor and left his office, we got into the car and I looked down at my belly, I whispered, “Thank you God”.

We had decided a few days later that if it was a girl that it was share a room with Ming, but if it was a boy we would divide the room into two sections, put up a wall, and make a door leading into the other room. Month after month we kept waiting and preparing for the baby. I kept getting bigger and Ming was saying more words by the minute. Ethan got promoted in his job and he was making plenty of money for the three of us. Once the baby was here I would get a part time job and work the hours that Ethan could stay home.

A few months later I was sent to the hospital in the middle of the night, the baby I had waited for my entire life was about to be brought into this world. All that ran through my mind was hoping he or she would be ok. They took me into the dimply lighted room and I started to feel the pain. All the family was in the waiting room both excited and tired. An hour later they heard a baby cry out with deep breaths, that was the sound of God’s miracle taking his first breath of life. I finally got to hold my little one in my arms, and I was never letting go.

God, you have helped me and made me whole. That feeling of emptiness will never rest inside my heart anymore; I have a beautiful life filled with beautiful people. Ethan is the strongest person I have ever met, I tried to keep the hope I needed, Ming is full of happiness, and Theodore was God’s gift. I will always keep in mind to maintain my hope and never give up. On occasion you get more than what you ask for, in my situation it is an amazing thing.