By Rebecca Chaisson Managing Editor
Her dream was to become a stay-at-home mom.
This is something Mallie Smith of Eunice visualized for most of her life, so when she married her husband, Brett, on her 31st birthday, she had already mapped out plans for their family.
“I’ve always wanted five babies,” Mallie said, “because I come from three, and I always thought I wanted more than that, but I didn’t want to have an even number. Four is an even number, so I wanted five.”
It made sense in her mind, at least.
God had other plans though.
“We got married in October of 2016 and immediately started trying to have a baby,” Mallie said.
October just so happens to be Breast Cancer Awareness Month, as well as Pregnancy Loss Awareness Month.
Foreshadowing.
“They couldn’t give me a reason as to why I wasn’t getting pregnant,” Mallie continued. Obviously, it wasn’t him.”
Over the next three years, Mallie saw two different fertility specialists, had three surgeries and two IVF transfers.
“They were not successful,” Mallie said. No one could figure out why.
Even an exploratory surgery to rule out endometriosis resulted in little to no answers.
“Specialists kept saying, ‘You’re going to get pregnant, and I did not,” she recalled.
After their two unsuccessful transfers, the COVID shutdown put a pause on Mallie’s plans.
“I ended up getting pregnant that December,” Mallie whispered. She didn’t get a chance to celebrate the news though.
“I had a miscarriage in January. Part of me, obviously, didn’t want to believe it. We waited this long, and I finally see two pink lines, and for what? I went to my doctor in Lafayette and did a blood test, and they called and said, ‘Yes, you’re pregnant!’ Oh my God, we both freaked out. But then I went back to the doctor the next week and did more bloodwork. They told me my progesterone was really low.”
Then came the news no mother-to-be wants to hear.
“You’re likely going to have a miscarriage.”
“And a couple of days later … ” Mallie said. “I just cried. I felt robbed. I had always told myself that I’ve waited so long for this, there’s no way God is going to give me a pregnancy and then take it away.”
The couple tried again on their own, but Mallie was running out of time.
She didn’t realize what that really meant.
Mallie was only two weeks away from a double embryo transfer when she found out she would need a double mastectomy instead.
“Breast cancer,” Mallie continued. “I just completely felt defeated. Like, how many more prayers? I felt so heartbroken, so defeated. I really thought I was going to have a double embryo transfer and have twins. I am a twin. I thought I was going to be able to tell my mom I was having twins, and I imagined what that would feel like to call and tell her. I had to call and tell her ‘I have breast cancer’ instead.”
Mallie wishes she could say her faith never wavered; it did daily.
“Obviously, I was mad. Like, I’m not even praying anymore because look what you’ve done to me,” she remembered. “Why did God make me a woman if he’s taking everything that makes me a woman away from me?”
The news only got worse from there.
In Mallie’s mind, she would quickly beat the cancer and then transfer the two embryos and then have her happily after.
“But then after meeting with the oncologist, I was told I had an estrogen positive cancer,” said Mallie. “Not only would I have to remove my breasts and go through chemo, but I would always be on an estrogen blocker to prevent the cancer from coming back. Eventually, I had to have a hysterectomy, too.”
In October of 2021, Mallie started chemotherapy. She lost her 26-inch locks of hair; lost everything that made her feel like a woman; and lost any chance she would ever have of giving birth to a child of her own.
The cancer treatments made Mallie sick, but it’s not the disease that almost killed her.
“I always tell people that getting the cancer diagnosis wasn’t nearly as heartbreaking as telling me I couldn’t have babies,” she admitted. In March of 2022, Mallie found out her cancer was gone. In May, she made one last ditch effort to have a child of her own, hopefully with the help of a stranger who could give her the ultimate gift - motherhood.
“The doctor said, ‘Well, you already have your embryo, so just get a surrogate,’ like they’re just on the side of the road or something,” Mallie laughed. “I made a post on Facebook looking for a surrogate hoping that if enough people shared it, somebody would want to help me complete my family.”
Two years of prayers followed, right along with two more years of nobody hearing them.
“I never gave up,” Mallie said. “My heart knew it was in the cards. I just didn’t know when it was going to happen. The background of my phone says, ‘God is in control, and His timing is perfect.’ So, I just figured, I don’t know, I don’t know why His timing wanted me to wait.”
Until she understood it all clearly.
Mallie finally found her surrogate to carry the same embryo she was going to use two weeks before she was diagnosed with cancer.
She would have either lost her or died trying to save her.
Instead, Analine was born via a surrogate on September 28th.
Mallie hasn’t put her kid down since.
“When I was going through fertility treatments and I had negative pregnancy test after negative pregnancy test, I read this article. It was a mom who wrote it. The article was about how the mom always told her baby, ‘Mommy prayed so hard for you.’ When the little girl turned four, she asked her mom, ‘Why did you have to wait so long’ and the mom just said, ‘That’s what Jesus wanted.’ The little girl said, ‘It’s because you had to wait that long for ME.’ When I read the article to my husband, he said, ‘You had to wait a long time for a baby as perfect as you deserve.’”
Mallie looked down at her seven-month-old daughter, who was pulling on her mommy’s long locks that have since grown back.
“You were everything I prayed for,” she told Analine. And in that very moment, Analine only wanted milk in return.
One day, though, she will be old enough to understand her mother’s love.
Today, Mallie gets to celebrate her very first Mother’s Day.
“She was worth the wait.”