We call our oldest child our Miracle Baby because the circumstances of her birth were so beyond the odds. In fact, our entire journey to parenthood was a study in beating the odds and having faith that what was meant to be would happen.

I had lost a few pregnancies prior to hers, including one at 17 weeks to Trisomy 18, a rare genetic disease affecting about 1 in 2,500 pregnancies — which was devastating. She died in utero and during surgery, the doctor discovered I was born with only one fallopian tube — a fact I had never known about myself, and that lessened my chances even further of successfully getting pregnant.

Instead of waiting the 4-6 months to get pregnant again that the doctor suggests if your body is still healing, since I was feeling fine physically soon after we decided to go on living our lives as normal and on New Year’s Eve 2008 conceived again. But by about 6 weeks along, on a President’s Day holiday, I was having pretty severe pains and after speaking to my doctor, went to the hospital for a routine ultrasound to see what was going on. Luckily, because it was a holiday I forced to get the ultrasound in the hospital. In the waiting room, I fainted and was rushed by gurney to surgery. I had an ectopic pregnancy and my tube had ruptured. The doctor said he did see a gestational sac in my uterus on the ultrasound but it was what’s called a “pseudo sac,” meaning my body knew I was pregnant, but there was no embryo. I had to have emergency surgery and afterwards, in talking to the doctor, I had to come to terms with the fact that I had just lost the ruptured tube  — with now no fallopian tubes I would not be able to conceive any more children.

A week later I went to the doctor for surgery followup and he asked me if I felt nauseous. I said Yes, and asked if it was still from the anesthesia, which seemed odd to me. He told me to come with him to the other room and put me on the ultrasound where he found the heartbeat of a viable pregnancy in my uterus! I had been pregnant with twins — one in the tube that ruptured and one in the uterus. It was not a pseudosac after all but a gestational sac with a growing baby in it!

The odds of having one embryo in a tube and one right where it’s supposed to be are 1 in 30,000. Even more miraculous — the doctor decided — at the last minute, without telling me — to do the surgery laparoscopically instead of vaginally on a hunch that maybe, just maybe, that was not a pseudo sac after all, though the odds were extremely against that possibility. Thank God he did and I was indeed pregnant. Hearing that heartbeat brought me to sobbing. It was just so incredible after all I had been through. I carried her almost to term without any issues. I did end up getting pre-eclapsia so induced at 35 weeks. 12 hours later I birthed her naturally, and she only had to spend a few hours in NICU because she was under 5 pounds (4 pounds, 12 ounces, 18” — just a little peanut!)

The loss of our first little baby girl at 17 weeks, the despair I felt wondering if she had suffered when she died inside me, the pain of letting her go, all had a part in forming the me who faced my new pregnancy with joy and without fear. Our loss — that was so heart wrenching, so crushing in the pain of it — brought out something in me I will never regret. It brought me peace. There was nothing I could have done differently. There was nothing I did that caused her to die. It was completely and utterly beyond my control and yet it happened, it happened to us, and we had to face that grief. And then we had to move on.

I knew, without a doubt, that God meant for this new little girl to be ours, that she was our miracle baby, and I knew, without a doubt, that I could trust that certainty. (The same “certainty” came over me when we got the phone calls about each of our adopted children. Despite the insane odds, we had our baby girl!