Ranim Haddad endured 20 miscarriages over 11 years before welcoming her son, and now the Chicago-area mother is celebrating his first birthday with gratitude and hope.
Emmanuel was born on Oct. 1, 2025. One year later, his mother is marking the milestone after more than a decade of loss that would have broken many families.
USA TODAY reported that Haddad, 36, of the Chicago suburbs, suffered 20 miscarriages across 11 years, plus a stillbirth at 18 weeks and a baby boy delivered at 29 weeks who died only hours after birth.
She and her husband began trying for a family when she was 24, shortly after they married. The first miscarriage came at 25. What followed was a long stretch of heartbreak with no clear medical explanation.
Doctors ran exhaustive tests. They still could not name a cause.
Dr. Susan Gerber, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist who treated Haddad at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said the team searched hard for answers and came up empty.
Gerber said in a news release:
"We evaluated Ranim exhaustively to determine the cause of her losses, and were ultimately unable to find one."
During the pregnancy that produced Emmanuel, doctors placed a stitch in Haddad’s cervix. Gerber said that step may have helped prevent another preterm birth, but it likely had nothing to do with the many first-trimester losses that came before.
Gerber put the outcome in plain terms:
"Her success may just be due to her persistence and refusal to give up."
That kind of grit resonates far beyond one hospital ward. Public figures have also fought through medical barriers to build families, including cases like Lena Dunham welcoming a baby girl after major reproductive surgery.
Miscarriage is not rare. The Mayo Clinic notes that between 10% and 20% of known pregnancies end that way, and the real figure is likely higher. Haddad’s count still stands far outside ordinary experience.
Haddad has said she wanted motherhood since childhood and once imagined two girls and two boys. The years of failure left her asking hard questions.
"Why isn't it happening? Why isn't it working?" she recalled.
The toll was not only physical. "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," she said of the periods when she wanted to stop.
She buried the babies she lost and still visits their graves on their birthdays. "We buried them. So I do have a spot to go back to," she said.
Stories of family after deep personal pain surface in other corners of public life too, including Patrick Clancy expecting a child with his new wife after earlier tragedy.
When Emmanuel finally arrived, Haddad described the pregnancy as something that "just kind of happened." Holding him "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."
Of motherhood itself, she put it simply: "(It's) something that I've been waiting for for years." The first year with her son, she said, has been "the best year ever."
She is not done. "I'm not letting that stop (me from) trying again or trying to grow my family," Haddad said.
Other well-known parents have shared first-child milestones in their own way, from Aubrey Plaza welcoming her first child to hard-won health recoveries that protect a woman’s future options, as when Snooki announced she was cancer-free after treatment tied to her reproductive health.
Haddad’s doctor remains struck by the same quality that carried her through the losses.
Gerber said:
"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."
A mother who refused to surrender the chance at life finally got to light a birthday candle. In a culture that too often treats family as optional, her long fight still points to what is worth enduring for.
