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For years, the silence in our home was shaped by unspoken grief and the echoes of five miscarriages. I remember sitting in the parking lot of the fertility clinic, watching a woman emerge clutching an ultrasound photo, her joy feeling almost like a personal rebuke to my emptiness. Inside, my husband John and I tiptoed around each other, navigating the quiet devastation of another loss. The fifth miscarriage was the cruelest. I was folding a tiny yellow onesie when the familiar, terrible warmth returned. Sitting on the cold bathroom floor, back against the tub, I made a desperate pact with the divine: if I were ever granted the chance to be a mother, I would save a child without a home. It was more than a prayer—it was a vow born of complete surrender.
Ten months later, Stephanie arrived—pink, screaming, fiercely alive. She filled the empty spaces in our hearts with her demanding presence. Even amidst the joys of new motherhood, my bathroom-floor promise lingered quietly.
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