Updated October 1, 2026, 8 a.m. ET
Ranim Haddad, 36, wanted to be a mother since she was little. She always imagined having two girls and two boys. “I don’t know why,” she said.
She and her husband attempted to start a family shortly after their marriage, when she was 24. Haddad, who lives in the Chicago suburbs, suffered her first miscarriage at age 25.
She didn’t know it at the time, but it marked the start of a decade-long journey of miscarriages and child losses that sometimes left her wondering if she was destined for motherhood after all.
“Why isn’t this happening? Why isn’t it working?” Haddad remembers thinking. She told USA TODAY that she went through periods where she wanted to give up. “It’s not just the physical aspect. It’s also the emotional aspect, it’s the mental aspect. I can’t continue to do this to my body and to myself.”
In total, Haddad suffered 20 miscarriages over 11 years, before giving birth to her son Emmanuel on October 1, 2025. Before Emmanuel’s birth, she also had a stillbirth at 18 weeks and gave birth to a baby boy at 29 weeks who died hours after birth. She thinks all the time about the babies she lost, she said, and visits their graves on their birthdays.
“We buried them. So I have somewhere to go back to,” she said.
Miscarriages are common, with between 10% and 20% of known pregnancies ending in miscarriage, according to the Mayo Clinic, “but the true number is likely higher.” Dr. Susan Gerber, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist who worked with Haddad at Northwest Memorial Hospitalsaid decisions to start a family are incredibly personal and each patient she works with has different priorities when it comes to pregnancy.
“One of the things that has always amazed and impressed me about Ranim is her resilience and her willingness to keep trying in the face of loss after loss after loss, that for many – if not most – women would eventually stop trying, because it’s so emotionally difficult to go through that as many times as she did,” Gerber said.
She Never Had Any Answers, But Now She’s Ready to Tell Her Story
Haddad didn’t want to publicly share her miscarriage journey for many years while she was going through it, she said. She felt isolated and ashamed as a woman whose “body is supposed to be able to do this.” But now she wants to share what she experienced, she said, to encourage other women who have suffered miscarriages to keep trying.
Haddad said she never got an answer as to why she had so many miscarriages and didn’t know why her pregnancy with Emmanuel was different. “It just happened,” she said.
“We evaluated Ranim exhaustively to determine the cause of his losses, and ultimately were unable to find one,” Gerber said in a press release. “We placed a stitch in her cervix during her last pregnancy, which may have prevented a premature birth, but that probably had nothing to do with all of her first trimester losses. Her success could simply be due to her perseverance and refusal to give up.”
“Best year ever”
On October 1, Haddad celebrates her son’s first birthday. Looking back on her birth, she said: “It was like a dream.”
“It’s so surreal,” she said. “I remember that feeling and I could never forget it. And I wish I could relive it.”
Haddad said motherhood has been harder and more tiring than she expected. But it has also been a rewarding and exciting time with “lots of firsts”.
“(It’s) something I’ve been waiting for for years,” she said. “It’s been the best year ever.”
She doesn’t know if she will realize her childhood dream of having two girls and two boys. But she said she wants to try for more children and hopes she doesn’t have to suffer another loss along the way.
“I don’t let this stop me from trying again or trying to expand my family,” she said.
Madeline Mitchell’s role covering women and the care economy at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Contact Madeline at memitchell@usatoday.com And @maddiemitch_ on X.
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