After doctors warned that another pregnancy could kill me, my husband James and I accepted that our three boys would be our only children.<\/p>\n
We had always dreamed of a daughter.<\/p>\n
Years later, James called me from a hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a baby here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When I arrived, a newborn girl was waiting under a pink blanket.<\/p>\n
For one terrifying moment, I thought she was his.<\/p>\n
She wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Her mother was Anna, James\u2019s first love from years before we met. They hadn\u2019t spoken in 11 years.<\/p>\n
Anna had been abandoned while pregnant and went into labor alone. After giving birth, she suffered severe complications and died.<\/p>\n
Before losing consciousness, nurses asked if there was anyone they could call.<\/p>\n
She kept saying one name.<\/p>\n
James.<\/p>\n
Her baby had no family willing to take her, and the biological father had already refused custody.<\/p>\n
Then James looked at me and asked the question that changed our lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want us to apply to take her home.\u201d<\/p>\n
I held the tiny girl against my chest and thought about the daughter we had once dreamed of.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe we were just waiting for the wrong miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nine months of home studies, interviews, court dates, and uncertainty followed.<\/p>\n
Eventually, we adopted her.<\/p>\n
Her birth name was already Clara\u2014the exact name I had loved since I was 19.<\/p>\n
We added Anna as her middle name.<\/p>\n
Clara Anna.<\/p>\n
Her mother\u2019s final act of love had led her all the way home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After doctors warned that another pregnancy could kill me, my husband James and I accepted that our three boys would be our only children. We had always dreamed of a daughter. Years later, James called me from a hospital. \u201cThere\u2019s a baby here,\u201d he said. When I arrived, a newborn girl was waiting under a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10136,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10134\/revisions\/10136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}