My Christmas Wish

Serenity Hope Bellavance

I was twenty years old and I had just met Stephanie Ann Morales. From the very moment I laid my eyes on her, I was smitten. I had fallen head over heels in love with her from the moment she said hello.

Stephanie and I were married for almost two years when Stephanie told me that she was going to have my baby. I was the happiest I had been in many years. I had finally found a woman who truly loved me. And now, I was going to have a baby with the woman that I love.

Stephanie had an almost perfect pregnancy. Aside from the normal morning sickness, there were no major complications. In fact, Stephanie was very lucky because she had a very healthy nine-month pregnancy.

Serenity was our first born. We never thought that we'd be blessed with a baby of our own. About six months before Stephanie and I met, she had an ectopic pregnancy. After she was informed of the ectopic pregnancy, she found out she had endometriosis. She was told by her gynecologist that it would be almost impossible for her to get pregnant. The year before Stephanie conceived Serenity, we had scheduled a visit with a very reputable fertility specialist. The fertility specialist's name was Rachael McClaren.

While we were at our first visit with Dr. McClaren, Stephanie was informed that, more than likely, she wouldn't ever be able to conceive naturally. While we were in the office with Dr. Claren, Stephanie was placed on a strict regimen of fertility aids. Stephanie took the fertility aids for almost an entire year before she got discouraged and completely stopped taking them.

Stephanie had been best friends with Lindsay Mansford for about five years. Lindsay and Stephanie talked about everything. They even talked about the fact that Stephanie had always wanted to have children and about her fertility problems.

Being that she and Ross had just gotten pregnant, Lindsay wanted to give Stephanie some encouragement to not give up on her dream of being a mother. Stephanie always knew that she'd have children when the timing was right and not before. But she couldn't help but be negative about the situation.

Then one day, right out of the blue, while Lindsay was at the house, she asked Stephanie if she'd ever considered putting a Hawaiian fertility goddess somewhere in the house to promote healthy fertility.

In reply to the question, Stephanie said to her, "No, Lindsay. That thought's honestly never crossed my mind."

Little did Stephanie know, as she sat on the sofa talking to Lindsay, that Lindsay and her husband, Ross, had struggled with infertility problems for years before they were blessed with a child. Then one day, somebody told Lindsay to place a Hawaiian fertility goddess somewhere in her home. That if she did so, she and her husband would eventually be blessed with a baby. Shortly thereafter placing the statue of the fertility goddess in her home, Lindsay became pregnant and had a healthy pregnancy.

Following Lindsay's advice, that night Stephanie went online to Angel's Imporium and ordered the Hawaiian fertility goddess. About a month after the fertility goddess was placed in the house by the front door, Stephanie got pregnant.

When Serenity Hope was born, she was the picture of perfection. She was born on Friday, June 25, 2009. At birth, Serenity weighed 5 pounds and 2 ounces and was 14 inches long. She had crystal blue eyes, a head full of curly strawberry blonde locks and a temper to match my own. She was the apple of my eye, to say the least. I never thought in a million years that her short life would end so quickly.

She was as healthy as any infant could have been. She passed all of her milestones on time. She even started crawling early. But my little Serenity wasn't destined to grow into a toddler. She was just six moths old when she was taken out of our lives.

On Christmas Day of 2009, at eight o'clock in the morning, six months to the day of her birth, Stephanie and I found Serenity in her crib not breathing and unresponsive. Stephanie immediately became hysterical.