She had 20 miscarriages while trying for a baby. Now she's celebrating her son's first birthday - USA Today

Ranim Haddad, 36, wanted to be a mother since she was a little girl. She always imagined having two girls and two boys. "I don't know why," she said.

She and her husband tried to start a family shortly after they were married, when she was 24. Haddad, who lives in the Chicago suburbs, had her first miscarriage at 25.

She didn't know it at the time, but that marked the start of a decade-long journey of miscarriages and infant loss that at times made her question if she was meant for motherhood after all.

"Why isn't it happening? Why isn't it working?" Haddad remembers thinking. She told USA TODAY that she went through periods of wanting to give up. "It's not only the physical aspect of it. It's the emotional, it's the mental. I can't keep doing this to my body and to myself."

In total, Haddad had 20 miscarriages over the course of 11 years, before giving birth to her son Emmanuel on Oct. 1, 2025. Before Emmanuel was born, she also had a stillbirth at 18 weeks and birthed a baby boy at 29 weeks who died a few hours after birth. She thinks about the babies she lost all of the time, she said, and goes to their graves on their birthdays.

"We buried them. So I do have a spot to go back to," she said.

Pregnancy loss is common, with between 10% and 20% of known pregnancies ending in miscarriage, according to Mayo Clinic, "but the actual number is likely higher." Dr. Susan Gerber, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist who worked with Haddad at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said family building decisions 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 me and impressed me about Ranim is her resilience and her willingness to continue to try in the face of loss after loss after loss, that for many − if not most − women would ultimately lead them to stop trying, because it's just so emotionally difficult to go through this as many times as she did," Gerber said.

Haddad didn't want to share her miscarriage journey publicly for many years while she was going through it, she said. She felt isolated and ashamed as a woman whose "body's supposed to be able to do this." But now she wants to share what she's been through, she said, to encourage other women suffering miscarriages to keep trying.

Haddad said she never got an answer as to why she experienced so many miscarriages, and she doesn't know why her pregnancy with Emmanuel was different. "It just kind of happened," she said.

"We evaluated Ranim exhaustively to determine the cause of her losses, and were ultimately unable to find one," Gerber said in a news release. "We placed a stitch in her cervix during her last pregnancy which may have prevented preterm birth, but that likely has nothing to do with all her first trimester losses. Her success may just be due to her persistence and refusal to give up."

On Oct. 1, Haddad is celebrating her son's first birthday. Reflecting back on his birth, she said, "it felt like a dream."

"It's just so, so unreal," she said. "I remember the 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 thought it would be. But it's also been a rewarding, exciting time with "a lot of firsts."

"(It's) something that I've been waiting for for years," she said. "It's just been the best year ever."

She doesn't know if she'll realize her childhood dream of having two girls and two boys. But she said she does want to try for more children, and hopes she doesn't have to experience another loss along the way.

"I'm not letting that stop (me from) trying again or trying to grow my family," she said.

Madeline Mitchell's role covering women and the caregiving economy at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.

Reach Madeline at memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch_ on X.