PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | Episode 61 – A Motherhood Journey: Miscarriages, Ectopic Pregnancies, Down Syndrome Child

FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

Episode 61: A Motherhood Journey: Miscarriages, Ectopic Pregnancies, Down Syndrome Child

Rocky: Welcome to the podcast, FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.

Nancy: Good morning, precious ladies or good night. Maybe you're listening as you're going off to bed. Anyway, great to be with you again today. Let me start with a poem. I love poems about motherhood. Here's another poem from my book that I do have available in Above Rubies. It's called, Quiet Reflections for Mothers. It has poems I have saved over the years. This one is called, “I love Johnny.”

"I LOVE YOU, JOHNNY!"

I love you, Johnny, said mother one day,
I love you more than I can say,
Then she answered his questions with,
“Don't bother me now!"
And just didn't have time to show him how
To tie his truck to his tractor and plough,
But she washed her windows and scrubbed the floor
And baked and cooked and cleaned some more.

"Bring the boy next door in?" "Well, I should say not,
You'll mess up the floors and I don't want a spot."
"No, we don't have time for a story today,
Mother's too busy cooking, so run out and play,
Maybe tomorrow," she said with a sigh,
And Johnny went out almost ready to cry.

"I love you, Johnny," again she said,
As she washed his face and sent him to bed.
Now how do you think that Johnny guessed
Whether 'twas he or the house that
   she really loved best?   

That's a real challenge to us all, isn't it?

Today, I have a very special guest. This guest is my wonderful niece, Melissa. Melissa is the daughter of my brother. I come from a very small family, sadly. My sister lives not very far from me here in Tennessee. My brother is way over in New Zealand where we all originally came from. In fact, I often think that I was deprived. I only had two siblings and then as we grew up, we hardly saw one another. My sister immigrated to Canada, and my brother joined Youth with A Mission (YWAM) and traveled the world. I didn't see him for years. We really missed one another.

Anyway, now Melissa lives right here, just around the corner and a bit further down the road from us. I always think that Melissa actually looks more like me than my own three daughters. She has always been a bit special to me. Melissa has twelve children, twelve wonderful children. I want to tell you the names because I love names. All of Melissa's children start with J. I love it when people do that. Did you plan to do that, Melissa?

Melissa: We didn't plan to initially but the first two names we liked started with J, so we thought, Oh, I guess we'll just carry it on.

Nancy: Yes. Here I am, asking you a question before I've even said, “Say Hi” to the ladies. Anyway, here's Melissa.

Melissa: Hello.

Nancy: She has Josiah, Joshua, Jahna, then their four boys. I always think of them in a row. Jonathan, James, Jesse, and Joseph. Then she has Joycie and Joanie (Joyce and Joan). Two little princesses with beautiful, blonde curly hair, and I love them. Every time I see them, “Oh, here's my princesses.” That's your nine biological children, but you've got more.

Melissa: That's right.

Nancy: Yes! She has an amazing story. She also has three other children, two adopted from Liberia, Jeremiah and Jemima. Jemima, oh goodness me, she's like a queen. How old is Jemima now?

Melissa: Fifteen.

Nancy: Fifteen, yes, she carries herself like a queen. I think she must have come from some royal stock somewhere because right from the time you got her, she's always had this queenliness about her. They have two adopted from Liberia, then at the very tail end, no more children were coming along, so Melissa and her husband, Cal went to China and adopted a darling little Down syndrome girl from China. We are going to hear about her story.

Anyway, Melissa, your story really starts before you were married, doesn't it? Tell us what you were doing before you were married, in Hong Kong, wasn't it?

Melissa: Yes, well, as a young girl, I think I always wanted to work in an orphanage, so after I finished high school, I did some nanny work for different people, a theater company, and then I still wasn't married so I thought, What am I going to do with my life? My sister had been in Hong Kong, so I heard about a place called Mother's Choice. It's an orphanage, so I worked there for a year and a half.

Nancy: Yes, while you were there, I think you began to love some special little children, didn't you?

Melissa: Yes, I always wanted to adopt children after I married. While in Hong Kong, we had a lot of special needs children and most of those children had Down syndrome. The babies that were “normal” had a waiting list of parents who were waiting for their babies, but our special needs children sort of languished there for several years while people searched for a family for them.

I became very attached to a little girl who had Down syndrome, and I took her everywhere with me on my time off, and that's when I looked into her eyes and said, “If you're still here when I get married, I'm going to adopt you.” That's where God changed my heart to adopt a child specifically with Down syndrome

Nancy: Yes, and then when you got married, did you ever find out about that little girl again?

Melissa: She did get adopted.

Nancy: She did?

Melissa: Yes

Nancy: How wonderful. Anyway, you started off, you got married to your wonderful, handsome prince, Cal. Well, his name is actually Dean, but he's always called Cal, short for Calhoon, their last name. That didn't start too well either. You weren't conceiving. Tell us about that.

Melissa: Yes, well, we both wanted to have a large family, and we were both open to adoption too, but we thought we would have biological children first. I got pregnant without any problem, and I continued to get pregnant without any problem, but I couldn't keep the babies. I miscarried the first three and then I had an ectopic pregnancy.

Nancy: Yes, tell us what happened with that.

Melissa: That was a desperately hard time because my husband was actually away in Japan.

Nancy: He's in the Marines.

Melissa: Yes, he was in the Marine corps, so he was away, and the doctors weren't sure if it was a miscarriage or an ectopic. I was reluctant to do a D&C in case it was going to be a miracle and the baby would be fine. Finally, they saw the embryo in my fallopian tube, so I had to have emergency surgery. They ended up removing that tube because they couldn't stop the bleeding. I remember sitting in the hospital. I was fine. I was all composed. I was going to accept it.

Nancy: You're all by yourself, without your husband?

Melissa: Yes, that's when I lost it. They said, “Do you have anyone to call?” I couldn't stop crying after that because I thought, “I have no one to call.” We were newly married in Hawaii, and I didn't really know anybody yet.

Nancy: Your parents were in another country and your husband in another country.

Melissa: Yes. Thankfully, some ladies from the church we were going to came, and looked after me and took me home.

Nancy: Here you are, desperate for children and now you've had a fallopian tube taken. Wow. Now, what happens next?

Melissa: Well, I got pregnant again and because of my history with the ectopic pregnancy, I needed to go right away and make sure this one wasn't going be ectopic and unfortunately, it was. Then they realized that that tube also had a problem, so they referred us to the IVF clinic. That's when Cal and I thought, “Well, that's why God gave us a heart to adopt. It must be what He wants us to do.”

Nancy: Then you started the adoption procedures.

Melissa: Yes, we started the proceedings, and I should have known I would get pregnant again and at that time I was so demoralized, and I thought, “This is going to be the same result.” I did my duty and made the appointment to go and have an ultrasound to make sure it wasn't in my tube again because that can be life threatening.

 My husband asked me if I wanted him to come to the appointment. I said, “No, don't even bother. I know what's going to happen. Stay home.” When I went, they did the ultrasound, I was six weeks along, and they saw Josiah in my womb, and they saw his heart beating, and I remember the doctor saying, “Once we see a heartbeat, you're almost guaranteed you'll have a baby in nine months. I started crying so much, and the nurse started patting my arm asking, “Is this a good thing for you, dear?” I was like, “Yes! I just can’t believe it.”

Nancy: How wonderful.

Melissa: When I came home, it was like an hour drive, I came home and I had that little picture of the ultrasound, and Cal met me at the door and I was like, “Look at this!” We broke down and dropped to our knees and thanked God.

Nancy: How wonderful. Now, Josiah has his own baby, and you're a grandmother. Isn't that incredible? Isn't he the most adorable little child?

Melissa: I know. I saw him on the way here walking around. So cute.

Nancy: Yes. Dear precious mothers, there could be some of you listening today and you're struggling to get pregnant. Maybe you're having miscarriage after miscarriage. Maybe you've even had an ectopic pregnancy but don't ever despair. God is good. Keep trusting Him. You never know what God can do, and you always keep trusting Him. I believe that that is our responsibility. We are to trust God, walk in faith, and then let God do what He will do. Amen?

Then God blessed you with nine precious babies from your womb, with one fallopian tube.

Melissa: Yes! The first few times I went and made sure the baby wasn't in my tube, but after that, I thought, No. I think God has a special journey and relationship with each of us, and He wants to teach us things. Before I was pregnant with Josiah, I remember walking one day, angry with God. This is not fair. This is all I ever wanted, to have children. Women who abuse their bodies are able to carry a baby and what's wrong with me? Why can't I? I remember God saying, “Melissa, can you have joy if you never have children? Am I enough for you?”

Nancy: Wow. That's a challenge, isn't it?

Melissa: Yes. I couldn't answer immediately. I really had to think, and I realized, yes, I can have joy even if God never blesses me with children. He is enough. God is enough for me.

Nancy: Yes and I had a little thought. You mentioned how that when you were pregnant with Josiah, yes the baby was in your womb, not in the fallopian tube and the doctor said, “When we can see a heartbeat, we know that you're going to have a baby in nine months.” That's a powerful statement because when they see that heartbeat, they know, right then, that it is alive. Josiah was Josiah right then, not when he was born!

Melissa: That's right.

Nancy: I was talking to a lady the other day who came and visited us last weekend, and she was raised a feminist. She was raised to believe that the baby in the womb was a bit of nothing. She had no idea. She was totally brainwashed that a baby in the womb was a bit of tissue and didn't have any value at all.

She also had a miracle. Her three children she does have are all miracles. When her first baby was born, and she held this baby in her arms, she said, “The first thing that came out of my mouth was, “This baby is alive, alive?” The nurses said, “Well, of course she's alive.”

She said, “You don't realize what I'm saying. This baby came out alive. It was alive in me all that time?” That was the first revelation she knew of being raised a feminist that this baby in her womb had been alive all that time, from the moment of conception. It was a huge revelation to her. From that moment, she knew that abortion is murder and that the baby in the womb is alive. That baby is that person, that same person when they are ninety years old than when they were first conceived!

Melissa: That's right.

Nancy: It's amazing. Anyway, your journey is quite incredible. You had Josiah and Joshua. That's another interesting thing. I look at Josiah and I look at Joshy, and I can't believe it.

Melissa: They are opposite people.

Nancy: Yes, you couldn't believe they are brothers. Here's Josiah, the real hardworking cowboy. He's got his cowboy hat on, looks so handsome in it. Joshy with all his curly hair everywhere, and he's a computer nerd. I mean, it's where his brilliance is. They are so opposite, aren't they?

Melissa: They are so opposite.

Nancy: You can't believe it. It is amazing, dear mothers with little ones, to see what God will do with your children. We have to say, I guess you feel like this too, Melissa, I know I do. I'm further down the line with grandchildren and now great grandchildren coming on. You look at what God is doing in their lives, you look at the gifts God has given them, and you realize, it's God. I couldn't have made my child like that or I couldn't have given them that gift. No, God makes everyone unique.

Melissa: That's right. If we were to make them, we would probably make them all the same way.

Nancy: Yes, the way we wanted. Our children are so different to us, aren't they? I mean, could you be a computer nerd like Joshy?

Melissa: Absolutely not.

Nancy: No, I couldn't do one quarter of the things my children are doing. It's unbelievable, isn't it? Anyway, your next baby was Jahna, a little girl. What happened then?

Melissa: Yes, she was our first and only hospital birth. That happened because we had moved to Hawaii again, and there was no birthing center like we had had our two boys in, and my husband wasn't comfortable with a home birth. We went to the hospital. We had Jahna . . .  the birth, we waited outside, went in, had her in ten minutes.

Nancy: You had all your babies so quickly, didn't you? Just like your mom. Must be in the genes. I think, in your genes. Didn't come through mine, it came through your side. Your mom had her babies quick, even big ten pounders. She popped them out.

Melissa: Yes and she said she didn't feel any pain at all. I didn't inherit that part. I felt it. She was born very quickly and fine and she nursed right away. I thought there was no problem, but the midwife came over and told me that they had called the pediatricians to come and check on her. She was sort of skirting the issue, looked very uncomfortable.

I don't why I even said it, but I said, “Do you think she has Down syndrome?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “Ok.” The pediatricians came ad looked at her, and they fussed around looking for the signs of creases in her hand and things like that, but she was very healthy. The pediatrician said nothing to us. I think that the fact that she had Down syndrome sort of became overlooked because I wanted to go home.

Cal and I had birthing center births where we could leave after a few hours. We wanted to go home, and they didn't want to let us. Being in the military, in a military hospital, there's the rank situation, so my husband felt like he couldn't really demand of the officers that we were leaving. It became a big thing. It took several hours of them lecturing us and telling us off basically while we sat  there continually saying, “We want to go home. We are fine. We want to go home.” But they never once said, “We think she has Down syndrome. Can you stay and we will do the karyotype blood test?”

Nancy: Really?

Melissa: Never did it. Finally, we had to sign against medical advice papers, and it was Sunday, so they had to call in the doctor to sign the paper, and she was very upset with us. Jahna was wrapped in the hospital blanket, and I said, “Do you want me to take that off and put on my own blanket?” They said, “No, just go. Take the blanket and leave.” They were so angry with us.

We came home and I do remember saying to my friend who was watching the boys, “Do you think she has Down syndrome?” She said, “No, she doesn't.”

We had to take Jahna to the pediatrician the next day per our arrangement of leaving the hospital early. I asked that doctor, “Do you think she has Down syndrome?” It's interesting. In the military, you have a lot of doctors who don't speak English very well. This lady didn't. She kind of clucked around and then said, “No.” We just carried on life like normal.

Nancy: Yes, which was a good thing.

Melissa: Yes! I would think it sometimes. I had worked for a year and a half with babies with Down syndrome, you would think I would recognize it. When I look back in pictures, I absolutely recognize it. Nobody said anything to us. Jahna was feeding well and doing well and meeting milestones pretty normally.

When she was about five, almost six months old, we had a work picnic, and the commanding officer had a sibling with Down syndrome. He looked at us from afar and said to himself, “Their daughter has Down syndrome I think, and they don't seem to know.” He didn't say anything because even he wasn't sure. Then, a month later, there was another picnic and then he was like, “That little girl definitely has Down syndrome, and they don't know it.” On Monday morning, he called Cal to his office and said, “Do you realize your daughter has Down syndrome?” Cal called me and as soon as he said that, I knew. Absolutely she does. We did the karyotype blood testing and of course, she did. I think God blessed us with that beautiful time of just enjoying her and being normal.

Nancy: I think that's wonderful because then you continued to treat her normally, didn't you? You treated her like one of the other children and for many of those years, she grew up very normally, didn't she? She was the perfect Down syndrome child with all this love oozing out of her. I can remember every time she would come to the door . . . so lovely to love a Down syndrome child and get all the love that they have. It was amazing. You had quite a long honeymoon time with Jahna, didn't you?

Melissa: Yes. She's very high functioning, and she never had any health issues which really helps.

Nancy: You had a honeymoon for how many years?

Melissa: Twelve, almost thirteen.

Nancy: Yes, about twelve or thirteen years, until she reached puberty.

Melissa: Yes, we still don't know what caused the change in her. Someone described it to me, and they said it's like a perfect storm. It could be puberty, could be the fact that we moved a lot of times. It could be something in the environment. It could be anything, and we still don't know what caused the change in her. Now I know it’s depression, but she started to not want to get out of bed, and flop around everywhere. She would laugh or cry hysterically in the middle of the night. We were living in a very small house, but we slept sort of away from everyone because she would wake everyone up, just loud screaming laughter or screaming crying.

Then she started getting a lot of different ticks and walking in circles and leaping up and running out the door. We were living on fifteen acres that backed to a forest. She would run off into the forest, and once, I couldn't find her for hours. I finally called Cal to come home from work thinking we are going to have to call the police. What are we going to do? Thankfully, he was able to find her. She had just been wandering around in the woods.

Nancy: This was an amazing, difficult, challenging thing for you to face because she had been so normal and perfect for all those years, hadn't she? Even for me. Suddenly, what's happened to my Jahna? This gorgeous darling, lovable girl and suddenly, she's not relating to you.

Melissa: No, she was absolutely in her own world.  She would stare off into the corner, up to the ceiling and have angry conversations at nobody. You'd ask her who she was talking to, and she would say “Nobody” and go back to her crazy talking. Things were always changing. Something would get better and something would get worse. The worst was when we moved her, and you guys saw her like that, where she would throw screaming tantrums for absolutely no reason. She did a lot of repetitive scribbling on papers until the whole paper would be covered in ink, the  pens run out. She could be doing that and then leap up from the chair, screaming at the top of her lungs in a massive tantrum and kicking and thrashing. You never knew when that would happen. She would do that several times a day.

Nancy: You kind of put up with it for a while and tried things?

Melissa: We were always trying special diets. We have a more alternative approach to medicine so putting her on any kind of drug, we had thought about it but then you think about the side effects. We tried this diet and that diet. Finally, we got her in to see a child psychologist. That appointment took about a year to wait for. She was wonderful, and she gave her a diagnosis of autism and depression. She had a lot of autistic behaviors, a lot.

Nancy: Yes, it had never appeared until that time.

Melissa: No, never. None at all. I don't like labels, but they do open doors. By her being labeled autistic, she was able to get ABA therapy. She has a therapist come to the home twice a week now which is wonderful. Even the therapist agrees now that she doesn't really need her. It's just someone to come and visit. At that time, she was also labeled that she was suffering with depression.

Nancy: These were all apart from the Down syndrome, weren't they?

Melissa: Yes, she had a dual diagnosis. We said, “Look, this is terrible. It can't get worse. We might as well try medication,” so we put her on an antidepressant. Within a month or two, we suddenly started thinking, she's not screaming any more or she actually gets out of bed. She comes out and says, “I'm here! Good morning.” Now, it's been such a blessing. There's a lot of stigma with antidepressants, but I think there's definitely a place for them. It brought Jahna back.

Nancy: Of course, it wasn't what you ever planned.

Melissa: No, but it brought her back to who she is.

Nancy: Yes but that is so great. Another interesting thing too, when we are talking about Down syndrome is you had Jahna when you were young. Then you never had any more Down syndrome children, even as you were getting older having babies. A lot of people think, “Well, I can't really have another baby now. I'm getting into my late thirties, maybe forties. What if I have a Down syndrome baby?” You know, you had Jahna when you were young.

I have another niece in Australia. She had a Down syndrome baby, I think it was their first baby right when she was young. It's not really determined on age. In fact, this is what gets me. How do they say that? Apart from those who have learned to know God's truth, that we are in our childbearing years until we reach menopause or until God doesn't give us anymore, out there in the secular world and in the Christian world, most women are not having children in their forties. They have stopped having children much earlier than that so how do they have any statistics anyway?

I know hundreds and hundreds of mothers who have babies in their forties, and they have perfect children. Of course, every now and then, someone has a Down syndrome baby. You've talked about the challenges you faced with Jahna, what about blessings? There's always challenges in everything. Tell me how you feel about the challenges at this moment.

Melissa: The challenges now? Well, it's wonderful now because we don't have any challenges. But during that time, we did face that, and Cal and I would often think, “What if this is how she's going to be for the rest of her life?” There were still blessings, even though she was totally out in La La Land, there were still moments. As Cal said once, there were enough moments where she would be affectionate or show some spark of joy in something, even that was enough to carry us through.

Nancy: Yes, well God has brought you right through. Well, our time is up again so can you stay on for the next session because we haven't even gotten to talk about Jewel yet?

Melissa: Yes, I can stay

Nancy: We will close this session, and I know it’s been a blessing to you because not everybody's journey is perfect, and I know that many of you face different issues in your lives and with your children. Not all of you have “perfect children.” We put that in quotation marks because why is it that we think our children have to be perfect children and how we want them. Children are eternal souls. They might not all be perfect on the outside and may not be doing everything correctly. A lot of children have autism today, and they have this or that, either mentally or physically, but even in having a child that is like this, God comes through.

I think it's in the challenging and difficult times that we really find God more than when everything is wonderful and perfect. Wouldn't you agree? You are going through a difficult, challenging time. You have a child who is a challenge because of their disabilities, either mentally or physically, know that God is with you. Know that this child has as much worth as any other child in your family, and this child is an eternal soul, and this child is going to one day live forever. That is the amazing thing, isn't it? You are preparing this child for eternity. I think we have to often be reminded that this is the real world. I've got a wonderful Scripture to talk to you about. We will do it in the next session.

Let's pray, shall we?

“Lord, we thank You so much that we can hear another story today from Melissa of the ways You deal with each family individually. We thank You that in whatever we face, You are with us. You are bigger than every challenge we face, every circumstance we are in. We thank You and we praise You with all our hearts. We give You thanks for whatever circumstances we are in now, whatever we are facing, we give You praise. We worship You, our Lord, in the name of Jesus.” Amen.