My Story

In 2022, my husband Ian and I decided to stop preventing pregnancy and let the Lord lead us on when to start our family, but little did we know it would take over 2.5 years.

I've always wanted to be a mom and figured we would get pregnant quickly. So when 2024 came, and we still were without children, I started to lose hope. We celebrated and rejoiced for those around us who were starting families, all while mourning every negative pregnancy and ovulation test we received. We decided to make sure there weren't any serious complications or blockages going on, so we reached out to many infertility specialists. However, the earliest appointment we could get was in December of 2024.

I cried out to God so many times and kept saying, "Lord, I trust your timing, and I know you have our best interests in mind, but PLEASE help me get pregnant." I felt so lost and defeated, like there was something wrong with me or something I had done in the past that made me unworthy of being a mother. We had our first appointment with the specialist, and he told us to come back at the end of January to run further tests and discuss the next steps, whether that would be IVF, medicines, surgeries if needed, etc.

Two weeks before our appointment, we were sitting in church, and I felt the Spirit telling me to go up to the altar where our good friends, the Browns, were standing, and we were to release this burden and receive prayer for our womb. I swallowed my pride and spilled my heart out to this couple, and the most amazing thing happened. Joel and Cassidy said,

"Instead of praying that God would answer your desires, how about you praise Him for the baby He will give you in your future at the perfect time. You will be a mother. Have faith that this will happen to you, and thank God for being a good, loving Father during this season. God is calling you to give up anything standing in the way of your faith and leave ALL of this to Him."

So I did. I started to listen to the Holy Spirit and noticed how many things I did to mask the hurt instead of dealing with it head-on. I pulled out of NYFW, canceled modeling trips I had planned, and removed any event I had booked to conceal or take away from the hurt of not being pregnant. The following week, as our appointment started to approach, I began to feel a little nauseous and had heart palpitations, and I knew at that moment our prayers had been answered. The evening before our big infertility appointment, we had a positive pregnancy test NATURALLY. I believed God's timing was perfect, and I've learned that having crazy faith and trusting Him to provide is the only way to discover perfect peace and true deliverance from any circumstance you may be facing.

On Monday, March 25, I was 12 weeks into my first pregnancy. I woke up at 1 o’clock in the morning with terrible contractions and abdominal pain, and then I felt my water break. After a substantial amount of blood loss, we arrived at the hospital and they told us my baby had a faint heartbeat left, but there was blood in the uterus. Within the next few minutes I had given birth to our baby, and the doctor performed a procedure to remove the rest of the placenta and help clear my womb and cervix of the remainder of my pregnancy. I was awake, unmedicated, and felt every second of this process. At 12 weeks, James Bennett Stewart was born on March 25 at 2 o’clock in the morning and immediately was taken into heaven.

My baby, the day before in our appointment at the OBGYN, had a great check up. He had a heart rate of 150, all low risk genetic testing results, my cervix was closed, my HCG levels were rising, and we got to see his arm move, almost like he was waving at us during the ultrasound. Even though the ultrasound picture wasn’t printed off for us, it’s an image I’ll never forget. There was nothing wrong with our baby and the miscarriage happened with no prior warning or reason. We most likely will never know the exact cause and I think that’s one of the hardest things to process. I immediately wanted to blame my body for the reason we lost the baby.

My mom said, “The body doesn’t cause a broken arm, it just happens. The body doesn’t cause breast cancer, it just happens. The body doesn’t just lose a child, it just happens. But the body does work really really hard to heal these things that happen to it - I believe this to be true.”

This page is dedicated to my journey through infertility, pregnancy, miscarriage and chasing my dream of starting a family, all while holding on to the goodness of God.

Welcome to The Little Lime.