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nia long pregnant

After a doctor’s visit left her with little hope of having children with boyfriend Ime Udoka, the actress turned to her faith for answers. “I honestly asked God for this,” Long, 40, says in EBONY‘s November issue. “I remember I was driving home from the doctor, and I called Ime, and I was like, ‘Babe, I’m really kind of sad right now … the doctor actually said if I wanted to have more children, it would be hard.’”

Despite the unsettling news, however, Long — already mom to son Massai, 11 — and Udoka, a professional basketball player, remained hopeful about expanding their family. “The next time [Ime] came to visit, he said, ‘I don’t believe that.’ I said, ‘You don’t?’ He said, ‘No.’ And I said, ‘Good, me neither,’” she recalls. “Then I got pregnant.” “The medical [profession] tries to tell every woman, ‘Have your babies before 40 because you shouldn’t have children after 40,’” she says. “Society tells us, ‘Get married before 30, because no man wants a woman after 30.’”

But according to the expectant mother, the best things in life are worth waiting for. “You are not half the woman you’re gonna be until you turn 30. You’re not even half of that woman yet,” Long explains. “So I think if we’d just take our time as women, and do what comes natural to us and for us, we would make fewer mistakes.”