‘Don’t kill the child’ A ‘voice from heaven’ saved her baby

The knife was within reach, her newborn son was fighting for breath, and Alicia Cunningham was at the end of her rope.

Moments earlier, she had been convinced that the baby was dead after she had tried to suffocate him with a pillow.

“I use the pillow and suffocate him for a while and him stop move, and I thought this was it,” she told THE WEEKEND STAR.

Her son was three months old. He was hungry and crying, but she had no food to give him and was not producing breast milk. Overwhelmed by desperation she decided to end it all.

“I was hungry the baby was hungry and there was no milk in my breast and him just a cry. I had nothing else to give him there was no sugar or nothing in the house and mi a tell him stop the noise and him naah understand either. Mi a cry and seh nobody nuh want us and mi just decide I was going to kim him.”

She began heading to the police station. Then she heard him crying.

“I said I thought you died, and I put the pillow again and I see him turn blue, and I said this it now.” But with the baby still struggling to breathe, she reached for a knife in the kitchen. But before she could harm him, she said she heard a voice telling her, “don’t kill the child, I will provide for him.”

That voice, she believes, changed the course of both their lives and became the beginning of a journey from unimaginable despair to redemption.

According to Cunningham, that same evening her father returned home with diapers, wipes, cereal and baby formula.

For her, it was the first of many moments she would later interpret as divine intervention.

“Even though He (God) promised to provide, the journey was still rough, but He did provide.”

But that was only a part of a difficult road that Cunningham has travelled. She has endured years of rejection, poverty, violence and despair in her early years. Now, decades later, Cunningham has rewritten the story of her life.

At 40, she is celebrating three CSEC passes — human and social biology, English and social studies — from the Caribbean Examinations Council’s May–June 2026 examinations. Cunningham says the achievement carries special meaning because of the journey she has endured. Her joy, she said, is difficult to put into words.

Cunningham’s success story began with an experience that could have permanently derailed her life. At 16, while a Grade 10 student at Kingston Technical High School, she said she was raped after attending a party with friends in Manchester.

Weeks later, Cunningham began feeling sick. She told a friend about her symptoms and was given money to purchase pregnancy tests. Both came back positive.

The discovery plunged the teenager into confusion and uncertainty.

“My friend investigated and found out the name of the gentleman in the country. He did not want the child, and he sent $5,000 with his sister two days after. I took the money, but I didn’t do the abortion. I bought milk and bun and cheese and that was it.”

That decision, however, meant leaving behind the education she had been pursuing and entering a period of homelessness.

“It was rough,” she said.

At 17, Cunningham had limited education, no marketable skills and struggled to find work.

“I worked three four bars at the time I was 18, I did multiple jobs and different things too to survive.”

Her life later took another dark turn.