Halle Berry says she was meant to be a mother - but the 41-year-old Oscar-winner and expectant mom has had a tough time getting there.

"I'm sort of superstitious, so I saved all of the negative [pregnancy] tests in a drawer," Berry reveals on the Oprah Winfrey Show Tuesday, talking about her struggle to get pregnant. "Don't ask! I don't know why, but I did. ... After about 35 tests, we finally got a positive test."

Of the lengthy process, she says, "while I was trying to get pregnant, we tried really hard, so it was a lot of staying home and just doing what you do."

In addition to her own mothering instincts, she says her boyfriend, Canadian model Gabriel Aubry, 31, will be a great dad.

"He's always his authentic self, never worried about being judged," she tells Winfrey, according to excerpts from the interview that appear on the show's Web site. "To walk with that kind of confidence ... and with integrity, I know he has ability to love me, love our children, and he will do that."

Asked about the use of the word children, Berry says, "Well, there's just one right now. But we're hoping right after this one to do it again."

And when it comes to gender of the current impending arrival, Berry and Aubry don't know yet. "We're going to wait," she says, "because we have a whole life[time] to know what it is."

Finding Mr. Right

Before meeting Aubry during a fashion shoot for a Versace ad ("There were, like, just pheromones flying off the walls."), Berry says she was done with romance. "I had resigned myself to, 'I'm going to be single until I'm 50, at least, and I'll have a child on my own,' " she says. "I was really okay with that."

Aubry and Berry Photo

As for her vow to never marry again, the twice-divorced actress is sticking by her word. "What Gabriel and I have decided is we will just redefine marriage for ourselves. You know, that paper isn't worth anything to me anymore," she says. "I don't want to do that again ... I feel more married in a way than I ever have in two marriages before."

For her, their commitment is the most important part of their relationship. "We view life the same way," says Berry. "He really understands the spiritual connection is so much more important than the paper and the pomp and the circumstance and the ceremony. And that feels important to us."

Movies and Motherhood

Berry, winner of the Best Actress Oscar for 2001's Monster's Ball, says her latest movie role, as a mother in Things We Lost in the Fire, helped her prepare for motherhood.

"I think it validated that I was meant to be a mother, because every day I dealt with the character as a mother and thinking as a mother," she says.

She adds: "I haven't really played a mother, a loving, caring mother like this woman was. So it let me know that I must be a mother. It also reminded me that no matter what hardship we go through in life, we always will come out on the other side."