Five years after I buried my thirteen-year-old daughter, I started dreaming about a baby.
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Not once.
Not occasionally.
Every single night.
The dream was always the same.
I was standing in the hallway of our old house. Everything was dark, except for a faint light coming from Molly’s bedroom.
Then I would hear a baby crying.
I would walk toward the sound, open Molly’s door, and see a wooden crib where her bed used to be.
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Inside was a baby wrapped in a blue blanket.
But before I could see his face, I would hear Molly whisper behind me.
“Mom, you need to find him.”
I would turn around.
Nobody was there.
Then I would wake up.
At first, I blamed grief.
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After Molly died, grief had changed almost everything about me.
She had been thirteen.
Healthy, energetic, endlessly curious.
Then one ordinary afternoon she complained of a terrible headache.
Less than twenty-four hours later, my husband Daniel and I were sitting in a hospital room while a doctor explained that our daughter had an undiagnosed brain tumor.
By the end of that day, our lives had been split into two parts.
Before Molly.
And after Molly.
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For years, I survived rather than lived.
Then the dreams began.
After nearly six months, I finally told Daniel something I had been afraid to say aloud.
“I want another child.”
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He stared at me.
I was fifty-six.
Daniel was sixty-three.
“Evelyn,” he whispered, “do you hear what you’re saying?”
“I do.”
“Is this because of Molly?”
My chest tightened.
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“No child could ever replace her.”
“Then why?”
I looked toward Molly’s empty chair at the kitchen table.
“I don’t know. I just feel like I’m supposed to try.”
Daniel was silent for a long time.
Then he reached across the table and took my hand.
“If we do this, we do it together.”
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Finding a doctor willing to even evaluate me was difficult.
Several clinics rejected us immediately because of my age.
Eventually, we met a specialist who agreed to assess my health before making any decision.
The testing seemed endless.
Heart examinations.
Bloodwork.
Lung function.
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Kidney tests.
Hormones.
Psychological evaluations.
Because I had always exercised and taken care of myself, most of the results were surprisingly good.
Finally, after months of appointments and fertility treatment, I received a phone call that made my knees give out.
I was pregnant.
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I sat down on the kitchen floor and started crying.
Daniel ran in.
“What happened?”
I held up the test.
For several seconds, he simply stared.
Then he dropped beside me and started crying too.
We knew the pregnancy would be considered high risk.
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I was monitored constantly.
Every appointment terrified me.
Every ultrasound felt like I was holding my breath until the technician showed me a heartbeat.
