My Miracles

I lay awake in the dark bedroom, minutes before the alarm was scheduled to ring. Too late to try to go back to sleep, I followed the meandering path of my thoughts, which led me to what is now a fairly distant memory. It was a happy one, so I immersed myself in its warm embrace.

Many years ago, I decided to perform an experiment. To better understand the reasons for my experiment, I have to wander back to an even more distant memory. After struggling for years with infertility and suffering a miscarriage, almost nineteen years ago I successfully brought a beautiful baby boy into the world. Needless to say, that was one of the happiest days of my life. Within minutes of giving birth, it seemed, my husband was talking about having another baby. But I was content. I had my miracle. How could I possibly want for more?

A few years later, I was surprised to find myself experiencing that longing to feel a child growing within me and to hold a newborn in my arms. I blame it on the fact that we were experiencing another rash of pregnancies at work. Whatever the reason, I began to think more and more about having another baby. But given everything we had gone through before our first, did I really want to go through that again?

A funny thing had happened, though, in the years following the birth of my son. My body had finally settled into a rhythm that I thought I could recognize. I was curious to find out if I was right.

Now, we are all adults, so I am confident that I don't need to describe what this experiment entailed. I will say, however, that a few weeks after my experiment, the visitor I was expecting had failed to arrive. I was dumbfounded. There was no way that after all the struggle to get pregnant the first time I had managed to get pregnant on the first try. I actually felt foolish buying a pregnancy test. I'm being stupid, I told myself. There's just no way.

Except there was. The test was positive. I remember walking out of the bathroom completely stunned. My husband happened to be there, unaware of what was going on.

"I think I'm pregnant," I told him. I don't think I have ever seen him so overjoyed.

Nine months later, I cradled in my arms a second precious son, a second little miracle.