PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 331: Help! I’m Terrified of Needles and Childbirth! Part 1

LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell

EPISODE 331: Help! I’m Terrified of Needles and Childbirth! Part 1

Today we are blessed to have Genevieve de Deugd with us. Genevieve was born in New Zealand, then married and moved to Australia, and is now living in the USA with her husband and 11 children. Genevieve shares that as a young girl she was scared stiff of needles and terrified of one day giving birth to children. She begins her amazing story in this session.

Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to The Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.

Nancy Campbell:Hello, ladies! Always so great to be with you! I have another visitor with me today, which is so exciting. Her name is Genevieve de Deugd, and Genevieve comes all the way from New Zealand, by Australia, to the States, exactly the same way we came. You were born in New Zealand,Genevieve?

Genevieve:Yes, I was.

Nancy:Yes, and I was born in New Zealand. Then you went to Australia when you were married?

Genevieve: Yes.

Nancy:Is that when you went?

Genevieve:Yes.

Nancy: Well, we went to Australia into our marriage, of course, and then we came here. Genevieve has the most exciting story of how they came here to the States. They actually escaped Australia during the plandemic because they were facing many, many trials there. They had a miraculous escape which is an adventure story to tell someday, but we’re going to talk about other things today.

So, Genevieve, it is so great to have you here. I’ve always known about you, and of course, know your family, your parents, because they were so well-known in New Zealand. They spearheaded the homeschooling movement in New Zealand. But we’re now up to date here. We’re in America and Genevieve is the mother of 11 amazing children.

Today she’s actually going to talk about the birthing of her children and how that’s affected her life. First of all, we’ve got to get to know you a bit better, Genevieve. Tell us the names of your wonderful children. I always love hearing the names. That’s why, in Above Rubies, I always have the names of all the children. So many love to tell me how they love looking at the names. Lots of people use names that they see there. You can tell the names of your children.

Genevieve:Thank you, Nancy. Thank you for having me on your podcast. My firstborn, Natalie Elizabeth, is 15 years old. Then I have Caleb Oliver, and he is 14. Then there’s Evangeline Luise.

Nancy:Yes, and we’ve got an Evangeline.

Genevieve:Yes, you do. And she is 13. Then there’s Joshua Craig, after my dad. He is 11. And then Josiah Trey is 10. Then there’s Sophie Dawn, and she’s nine. Adele Paige is seven, and Katrina Sue just turned six. Then there’s Nadine Vera, and she’s four. Laney Elise is three, and Prentiss Shiloh is our youngest. She’s just 16 months.

Nancy:Oh, that is so lovely.

Genevieve:Yes, and we have a Shiloh now as a great-granddaughter.

Nancy:Yes, although I do get mixed up, because after being in Israel, and actually going to the very place in Shiloh where the tabernacle became the permanent dwelling when they went into the land, of course, it is pronounced “Shee-loh” in Israel. So, I keep going to call my little great-granddaughter “Shee-low” But here they call her “Shy-low,” like you do, and like most people do.

In fact, it was interesting. Last night, we were playing a DVD on the big screen downstairs. It was about the land of Israel. It was the most powerful message. But this speaker was talking about this guy, which when I read it in the Bible, I’ve always called him “Abimelech,” but he was calling him “Abby-lemeck.” I realized, “Oh, goodness me, I’ve been saying it wrong all my life.” We pronounce so many of the Israeli words according to how we think they’re to be pronounced. But we don’t say it quite like a Hebrew, do we? But that is so wonderful.

Now, Genevieve, before we get to birthing, I think we need to find out a little bit of your story. So, why don’t you start? Let’s see, where would we start? I think we need to start even, yes, with your parents maybe. Yes, because they were an amazing couple in New Zealand who were very,very influential in the homeschooling movement in New Zealand. So, start there.

Genevieve:I would love to start there. Often, when I tell my story, or if I have a testimony to share, I love to start with my parents’ story, because it always seems to me that’s where my story starts.

Nancy:Well, of course, it does!

Genevieve:My dad grew up in California. Both of my parents were born in 1951, my dad on a ranch in California, and my mom grew up on a sheep station in the South Island of New Zealand, in the Hakataramea Valley.

They were both non-Christians growing up. They became Christians in the early ‘70’s, in their early 20’s. They met in New Zealand through the Navigators. The way my dad came to New Zealand was that his mom decided to do a trip. She wanted to do an overseas experience for her children.

Nancy: Tell me, wasn’t that after her husband died?

Genevieve: Yes.

Nancy: And she actually took them on many trips around the world, didn’t she?

Genevieve: You’re right. My dad’s dad died when my dad was about 13 years of age. He had an older brother and three little sisters. His youngest sister was only two years old. At the time that his dad died, his parents had been planning a trip to Europe for the family. My grandma, his mum, decided after her husband died, that she would still do that trip.

They rented out their ranch in California and they went to Europe, and they actually turned out that they could spend a year touring around in Europe cheaper than it was to live in California. They spent the winter skiing in the Alps. My dad learned German and little bit of French. His job was to do all the money exchanging for the family.

She ended up organizing a number ofdifferent trips for the family. It was the early ‘70’s when she was tossing up between Australia and New Zealand. She wanted to do another trip overseas. She was going to take her three youngest daughters. My dad and his brother were both at university, but my dad had no vision for university at that point: what he was really wanting to do there.

He said to his mom, “Well, I’m going to come withyou to New Zealand.”  He met her in New Zealand, but first of all, he went around to all these different consulates in the United Statesgetting visas so that he could do the London to Katmandu overland trip. Then he went down through Australia and ended up in New Zealand.

He became a Christian in New Zealand and joined the Navigators and was discipled by the Navigators. Then he learned how to read the Bible, how to study the Bible, how to meditate on Scripture, how to memorize Scripture. Somebody challenged him one time and said, “I challenge you to memorize the book of Romans in two months.”  And he did it! Two chapters a week.

Nancy: That is amazing!

Genevieve: Life-transforming thing.

Nancy: I was so blessed to be involved with Navigators when I was young too. I did their memory program. It was so wonderful. I think that was one of the greatest blessings of my life, to memorize all those Scriptures,especially when I was in my late teens which is when I was involved.

Those Scriptures are still with me today. I still seek to memorize, but somehow it doesn’t last as long. I have tokeep memorizing again. I forget it and keep memorizing again. With those Scriptures I memorized back then, they just stay with me. It’s so incredible.

Genevieve: That’s why I think my story really starts with dad’s story, because all that Scripture he put into his life, all those years he spent being discipled by the Navigators, putting aside his old non-Christian way of thinking, and taking on board a new Christian way of thinking. Some of the things he used to tell me that they used to do in the Navigators were just so exciting.

They would organize parties with the purpose of being able to share the gospel. They would go skiing and they would learn how to take any conversation and bring it to the gospel and be able to share the gospel within three minutes. Because when they’d go skiing, they’d hop on this ski lift with somebody else, a stranger, and they would get that conversation to sharing the gospel before they both hoped off the ski lift.

Nancy: That’s so, so cool.

Genevieve: I love those stories. I feel like that had such a huge impact on dad, which had such a huge impact on me. And Mum, who was in the Navigators too at this stage. She was working for them. This had a huge impact on their thought processes, and becoming Christians, and then how they raised us.

Nancy: Oh, yes, that is so wonderful. But I should start withyour parents, but I remember your telling me even about your . . . oh, no, that starts withyour parents. Because you're going to get on into your childhood, and how that even as a young girl, becauseyour father was rather political, you became quite political about things that were important. Tell us about that.

Genevieve: One of the things that my dad was going along, as a Christian, he used to love to listen to sermons. Any time that he had spare time, he would listen to a sermon. These were all on cassette tapes at the time. He used to get these catalogs from different cassette tape lending libraries.

And he noticed that all the sermons were always organized under three topics. They were personal piety, end times, and evangelism. Then one day, he came across a catalog from a cassette tape lending library, and this one had the sermons organized under topics like politics, law, economics, art, biology, history, education, family, parenting, child discipline.

It was like, it blew him away, because here were people who wereactually thinking about how Christianity applied to every area of life. That really marked him from that point on. That gradual understanding, and this looking to Scripture, to see what it has to say about this topic, or that topic.

I had the opportunity, over the course of my childhood, to see him standing for things when nobody else was standing for them, and saying, “I believe in this,” or “I think we need to go this way.” Even when no other Christians were doing it; even when some Christians or family or whoever would not stand with him, or not think that was a good way to go. But as he saw it in the Bible, as he saw that this was what God wanted, then he would do it.

An example of that, he began the Home Education Foundation. He began to homeschool us as an outworking of his understanding aboutwhat the Bible had to say about education, he began to homeschool us in the early ‘80’s. In 1987, he organized the conference for homeschoolers in New Zealand.

Nancy:Was that the first conference for homeschoolers in New Zealand? 

Genevieve:Yes, first conference. Four hundred and fifty people came from all over New Zealand, and they all came saying, “We thought we were the only ones doing this in this country.” Then they went back to their hometowns and formed little support groups from the other people that they’d met at the conference. This was the beginning of support groups in New Zealand.

Then my dad networked all those support groups and would keep an eye on what was happening politically, and then disseminate that information to the support groups. So, my dad became a political watchdog in New Zealand. His goal was to keep the climate good for homeschoolers.

As he was watching things politically, one day he came to me, and he said, “Genevieve, look, the government wants to tax the interest on children’s bank accounts. What do you think about that?” I got all up in arms, because I had a bank account, and I had savings, and there was no way, known, that I wanted the government to reach their sticky little fingers in! This was how I was thinking as a little nine-year-old.

So, he encouraged me to write a letter to the Prime Minister, or I said I wanted to, and he facilitated it. I wrote to the Prime Minister, and I wrote to the Minister of Finance, and I wrote to the Opposition Minister of Finance. As I was talking to my dad, and we were discussing the topic, he was telling me about history and things like this. One of the things I said was, “Taxation without representation is tyranny! I am a nine-year-old. No one is representing me in Parliament. I can’t vote.”

The Opposition Minister of Finance thought this was pretty good. She invited me to the Beehive, the Parliament buildings in New Zealand. I was interviewed and it went on television. I was invited to be part of the select committee meeting as they discussed the bill. Not to make any comments, but just as an observer. They passed the bill at a lower interest rate than they were considering.

Nancy: Yes. That was how, even young children. . . actually, it shows you the power of letters. The power of letters, or faxes, or emails. Now today, we can email. That’s a wonderful thing. It’s very easy. Any senator or congressman, we canjust go onto their email and say what we want. But we don’t always do it, do we? In fact, sometimes I’m desperate to do it about something and I get so busy. But we really should. It has such power and impact.

Even if we think we can’t do anything else, we can email or phone our senators and congressmen and tell them how it’s meant to be! Because here we are, in the States, we are so blessed, because our government is meant to be, well, it’s not so much at the moment, but we need to make it to be what it’s meant to be, which is WE THE PEOPLE. But here you were, even a nine-year-old, and you had such an impact. I love that.

Genevieve: Thank you. As a result of my dad’s influence, I was very interested in going into law and studying law. We had a lawyer who was attending our church. Dad said, because I was being homeschooled, he said, “Why don’t you ask him now what you should be studying in preparation for doing a law degree?”

So, I did, and this lawyer was then alerted to the fact that I was interested in law. When he went out into his own practice, he asked me to come onboard as his law clerk. Then he paid for me to do a legal executive course. I worked for him for about five and a half years.

Nancy: Yes, so great. What happened after that?

Genevieve: Well, after that, he sold his practice to go into the ministry. My brother and I did what many Kiwis do. We go overseas and we do the whole overseas experience.

Nancy: That’s a real Kiwi thing, because Kiwis know how to live on the smell of an oily rag. They will go without, and go without food, go without extras to save and travel the world. It’s different here in America. When we came to the States, and we talked to young people, “Oh, we’d love to come to New Zealand. We’d love to go to Australia.” We even started to set up some tours to take back.

But then, we found that actually, although they wanted to go, they couldn’t cough up with the money because young people in the States don’t know how to live on the smell of an oily rag. They live to the limit. They spend everything. They spend it on life instead of saving.

Those of you who don’t knowNew Zealanders, Kiwis, that’s a typical thing. Save like mad, then you travel the world. Because I think down in New Zealand too, we’re at the bottom of the world, and we always want to go and see the world. But Americans, which I am an American now, I’m an American citizen. We sort of think America is the world, so we don’t have the same thing. Anyway, carry on.

Genevieve:When I got to the States, the Lord began working. You know how sometimes He has to break you before He puts you back up. One of the first things that happened was that I began to realize that a lot of the ways that I had been interacting with my parents, the example I had been setting for my younger siblings, hadn’t really been a good example.  I’d been probably disrespectful.

That shocked me, that realization, because I thought of my parents as my best friends; my family were my best friends. But to really realize, no, I could havebeen doing so much better, and I hadn’t. The Lord really broke me through that.

After that, I began reading some material, and realizing, wow, by this definition, I’m a feminist. My dad always taught me worldviews and I had rejected feminism. I was proud of that. But by this definition, I realized, wow, I really was a feminist. Then I began hearing things about how when a family works together, it really strengthens the family.

And about preparing for marriage. Up until this point, I had actually purposely neglected to prepare for marriage. I didn’t know how to cook a thing! There were so many things I didn’t know. I was really convicted to go back home, learn to cook, prepare for marriage. What an unloving thing to do to a future husband, to actually purposely not learn to cook.

So, I did all that, and realized, hey, my dad has this ministry. It’s something I really believed in, and I should go home and help him with his ministry. His ministry was, at that point, he had the Home Education Foundation, which was helping homeschoolers. Then he had another ministry called Family Integrity, which was fighting other anti-family legislation in New Zealand. That was a blessing, a really wonderful time, the next five and a half years at home, helping my parents.

Nancy: And then you met your husband!

Genevieve: Yes! Or, as we like to say, we didn’t meet!

Nancy: Tell us your story!

Genevieve: Someone asked my brother and I one time, how did we envisage getting to know someone for the purpose of marriage? I remember saying, “I’d love it if they would approach my dad.” And my brother said, “I’d love to marry my best friend.” And that’s how God organized it for both of us. My brother married his best friend and Pete approached my dad.

The way it happened was, well, Pete had a friend, someone he used to go tramping with, which is hiking, but we call it “tramping” in New Zealand and Australia. They used to go hiking. They were talking about girls and things, and marriage. Where would there be someone like-minded?

His tramping buddy said, “Well, I know this girl in New Zealand. You need to go and get to know her.” He said, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll write a letter to her dad, and I’ll introduce you, and I’ll tell him that you’re going to write a follow-up letter.” So, that’s what he did.

Nancy: Not even knowing who you were?

Genevieve: Not yet. He didn’t know our family. He didn’t know us. A work colleague met Pete when he was going to come to New Zealand and visit us. A work colleague said, “Now let me get this right. You’re going to a country you've never been to, to visit a family you've never met, about a girl you've never met?” [laughter] It was so wild. But that’s how it happened.

This friend sent a letter of introduction. He said Pete would write within the next two weeks, and he did, write at the last minute of those two weeks. He introduced himself and sent it to Dad. So, Dad wrote back, and they wrote back and forth for about seven months before Dad said, “You know what? Why don’t you come and visit the family?”

I was aware of the communications between them, and I used to say, “Hey, Dad, ask this, or ask that.” I was encouraged by all this,because I really wanted Dad to vet someone. I wanted, before I entered into a courtship with someone, I really did want to know that my parents were happy, that I was given their blessing, that they knew there would be an equal yoking.

So, Pete came, and we asked lots of questions of one another. Dad had already vetted him. He secretly felt like Pete was the husband for me. All that would be needed was a little bit of chemistry, and that would be a done deal.

Nancy: When does that happen? Did it happen immediately, or not straightaway?

Genevieve: Well, when I first met Pete, when we met him at the airport and brought him home, I was struck with the thought, “Here is a man.” When I say that, I mean you could just tell that this was a man who did not avoid responsibility. He was a man who grabbed hold. You could see it in his demeanor.

Nancy: You don’t see that in a lot of men, so that would have been something cool.

Genevieve: Yes. And then a few days later, he shared his vision. I remember thinking, “Boy, I could really follow a man with a vision like that.” As we spoke together and asked another questions . . . I’d gotten from someone 40 pages of questions that courting couple might like to ask one another. They were questions like, “What do you think about debt?” And “How would you want to take care of your elderly parents? Is it a nursing home, or are you going to take care of them?” “How would you raise your children?” These sorts of questions. Not just what your favorite flavor toothpaste is like.

Nancy: Are you listening to all this, girls? I have my three lovely Above Rubies helpers recording this podcast. Are you getting all this? [laughter]

Genevieve: He was with us for ten days. By the end of those ten days, I think we both felt like, wow, we had such a unity of thought. We spoke together so easily. It was very clear that the next step would be courtship. He went home to get his parents’ blessing.

My mom and dad and I went to visit him in his natural environment, because we hadn’t really known him for very long. It was so great doing that because we went to church with him. I met some of his relatives. I met his neighbors. I met his customers.

He was born and raised in the same place, so people around him had a long history with him. Everybody came up to me and said, because here I am, a young lady, I think people could put two and two together. They said, “This fellow is gold.”

Nancy: Oh, what a wonderful story! I just love it. But when did you get the spark?

Genevieve: The spark. Well, I think chemistry was clearly not going to be a problem from the word go. But what we wanted was the Lord’s will. We wanted all the way along to be sure that this was the Lord’s will as we kept going.

Nancy: Yes. Why I said that . . . this last weekend, I was taking an Above Rubies retreat up in Idaho. At the end, I was talking withsome of the young people. They had read my 20 points about what to look for in a man, for a husband. They’re all pretty good points and it’s not always easy to find all of them.

A young lady said, “Well, even if I find all those, and the guy is interested, but I’m not really feeling . . .” I said, “Well, you do have to get the spark. A guy canhave all the good points, but there’s a littlesomething that ought to draw youtogether.” Because God is in it, isn’t He? A beautiful thing. But that’s a glorious story. I just love it.

So, we were going to start on birthing, but we started by talking aboutall of these things. I think they are soimportant. What happened then? How did you get married? Where did you live, and all that?

Genevieve: We got engaged, I think two months after we met, two months after we started courting. Then we got married five months later and moved to Australia.

Nancy: So, you moved where your husband was. I’m a great believer in that.

Genevieve: Yes. He ran a timber mill and wood processing business there. But later on, we grew, and we bought a showroom,and we developed our own line of timber furniture that we designed and sold in our showroom. I came and helped him with that. I came onboard, took over his accounting and QuickBooks, and did all the bookkeeping.

Nancy: Oh, you'rejust the one for that!

Genevieve: Then, shortly after we got married, I became pregnant with our first.

Nancy: Yes! I think that must have been quite something because right back, even when you were little,you were scared of childbirth, and scared of needles, and scared of all that stuff! How did this all work out?

Genevieve: Yes, yes. I was. I don’t know where the fear came from, but I remember at 12 years of age just saying, “The thought of childbirth, and the thought of needles . . .”

Nancy: It’s interesting that I put needles with childbirth! [laughter]

Genevieve: I don’t know why they were connected, but they certainly were in my mind! I guess I’d heard that you got stuck with all sorts of needles.

Nancy: Old wives’ stories!

Genevieve: Yes, and I used to say, there’s no way I’m ever going to have children. If I got married, I’d just adopt them all, because I wasn’t going to go through childbirth! There was no way. But at the age of 14, the Lord . . . You know, I’m glad He doesn’t leave you to certain places. At the age of 14, I’d been reading certain Scriptures and really became convinced that God does open and close the womb, like He says.

This really seemed to be His jurisdiction and something that would need to be left in His realm. But I was still really resistant to the idea of childbirth. As we went along, I remember at 16 years of age really thinking that God is good, and if I really believed He was good, and that the way He created the world was good, then this also must be good.

Nancy: The way He created you was good!

Genevieve: Yes! Womanhood and womanliness, and able to have children. I knew theoretically that I needed to accept this, and I did, but it was with this little complaint of, “Eww, but why does it have to be this way? The mess, and the inconvenience, the pain, and the needles!”

Nancy: Of course, knowing that you went into marriage, knowing that, “Yes, if I’m getting married, I’ve got to be open to childbirth.” You knew you would have to face that.

Genevieve: Yes. It’s an interesting thing to be where I am now with 11 children, because I think a lot of people looking at me now, sometimes I get the impression they think I’m here because this has all been easy for me. In fact, I have nearly lost my lost my life more than once in childbirth. I’m only here now because of what God’s done in my life and how He’s helped me overcome my fear. He’s helped me to trust Him.

Nancy: And so, you've had to overcome fears in the face of incredible things. Let’s hear your stories. Of course, we’re not going to fit them all in in this podcast. We’ll just start with one maybe, and we’ll do another podcast to hear more.

Genevieve: Okay. That sounds great! So, I was pregnant with Natalie shortly after we got married. I remember this tiny little moment where I felt a little panic. Like, “Oh no! I’m pregnant! And I’ve been afraid of childbirth! This is what I’ve been afraid of all this time!” Pregnancy is a one-way journey to childbirth.

Nancy: Yes! You don’t get out of it!

Genevieve: I remember thinking, “Well, there’s no other option but to give this fear to God.” That’s what I did. When we first got married, even on our honeymoon, Pete pulled out a verse: 2 Corinthians 10:5. He said, “Let’s start, even right now, start memorizing Scriptures together.” So, this was our first verse.

Nancy: That’s a wonderful thing to do at the beginning of your marriage!

Genevieve: Can you imagine? It was wonderful!

Nancy: I know you think, “Thank You, Lord, that I’m married to a man like this!” Amen. Yes, of course, we know God’s highest purpose is for marriage. I also think one of them is the fact that He brings two together to pray together. “If two of you on earth should agree as touching anything, it shall be done to them as My Father, which is in heaven.”

What a glorious promise for marriage! If two of you! I went into marriage claiming that promise. We have always been a praying couple. That is one of the reasons I married my husband. He was a man of prayer. I have loved that. A man of prayer and a man of the Word. You can’t beat it, can you?

Genevieve: No, that’s right.

Nancy: I love that, how you started memorizing together.

Genevieve: The verse he said we should start with was:“Casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” Here I was, so early in our pregnancy, needing to put this verse into practice. I had this moment of fear. I said, “OK, I’m just not going to think about this. This is going to be in the Lord’s hands and we’re just going to trust Him.”

One of the things I did through my pregnancy was to do a lot of study into natural childbirth. I tell you what, that’s a really wonderful thing, when you are afraid, because so much of it is the fear of the unknown. When you study and you read, you don’t dispel all the unknown withyour first, but it gives you a lot of confidence. Then the confidence decreases your fear, which is a wonderful thing.

But throughout the pregnancy, at various points, I was dragged down by this internal dialog I had inside me, which was, “Why does it have to be this way with childbirth and women being made this way? God was God, and couldn’t He have organized things some other way?” Sadly, I did not succeed in taking those thoughts captive. I tried, but every now and then, they would just pop right into my mind.

Throughout my pregnancy, I was interested in home birth. But my husband, Pete said, “We live too far from the hospital. Let’s just deliver in the hospital.” We only lived 25 minutes from the hospital, but I submitted to him in that.

I do believe that when the Bible says we should submit our husbands in all things, that this certainly fit within that category of “all things.” I also believe that the Lord really protects us through the leadership of our husbands. That was a really good call that Pete made. We didn’t know it at the time, but I nearly died with Natalie. It wasa good thing that I went with his plan on this topic.

Two really significant things happened during Natalie’s pregnancy. The first was that I overheard two ladies at my church talking about a book that one or the other had read. It was a book on Christian childbirth.I think the book was abou tdifferent verses that you could read at different parts of your labor and delivery. Different prayers maybe; I’m not really sure. I haven’t read the book.

But I remember overhearing them and they were mocking about this. “Why would you do this?” I had this moment of clarity. I realized that, that was in fact exactly what I want my labors and deliveries to look like. I all of a sudden had this vision for what I wanted them to look like.

Nancy: Well, finish this story for Natalie, OK?

Genevieve:All rightie! I realized I really wanted God to be my helping guide through this pregnancy, through pregnancy and birth, particularly through the labor and delivery. I really wanted to walk closely with Him through the whole labor and delivery. So, I did. I went home after that and gathered together a lot of verses that I thought I might like to meditate on to encourage me during various parts of the labor and delivery, which have been an encouragement though all these eleven deliveries.

The second important thing that happened during Natalie’s birth was that a friend suggested that I set up a prayer team. I did. The best thing, in fact, that I did to prepare for labor and delivery was to set up a prayer team. I did it for Natalie’s delivery and I did it for all the rest. What does it look like . . . it has looked a little different through all the eleven deliveries, depending on the technology available to us.

But back then, we organized a prayer team, friends and family who were willing to pray for me while I was in labor, then we would have a coordinator. During labor and delivery, Pete would message the coordinator, and then the coordinator would send the messages out to the team so we could keep them up to date with what was happening—what point of the labor we were at, and if there were any difficulties we could alert the team to please pray for this specific thing.

In December 2008, I went into labor with Natalie. I nearly died. She was a big baby. She was 10 lbs. 1 oz. I was pushing for way too long. Her placenta was about the same size as she was, so I had an over-distended uterus. I was just enormous. I had uterine atony and retained products. All of that led to a post-partum hemorrhage.

About three hours after she was born, she was healthy and well. She was doing great. But I was bleeding, and I was taken to the operating room. We call it the “theater” in Australia and New Zealand, but here it’s the “operating room.” So, I was taken to the operating room for a D&C. I was given a very large transfusion. I’d lost nearly three liters of blood in all. The transfusion saved my life, and they stabilized me.

But when they give you a transfusion, they don’t give you enough to bring you back to fully functioning energy. They just give you enough to stabilize you, so afterwards the doctor said to me, “Please don’t even think about exercising for the next three or four months. You’re going to have to do a lot of resting and build up your energy, build up your blood.”

They really wanted me to spend a lot of time just lying flat on my back, especially the next four weeks. Just lying flat on my back to rest, which I did. There was a little bit of loneliness there, flat on my back in my room with my lovely newborn.

But during that time, I used to get these flashbacks to when the doctor had done the D&C. She came into my hospital room and sort of debriefed me and told me all that had happened to me in the operating room. She said really gruffly, almost accusationally, accusing me. She said, “It took an hour to stabilize you in there.”

And those words, and those gruff tones would flash back at me, and I would just have to take every thought captive and push that out of my mind, because it was a very unpleasant flashback to have.

Through all that, that childhood fear of childbirth came back again. But I did force myself to take every thought captive and to just trust the Lord. I remember saying, “Lord, You know I’m terrified to go through childbirth again. But I’m going to obey You by continuing to be open to future pregnancies in Your time frame. You’re going to have to deal with my fear and take it away. So, I’ll just trust You to do it.” I basically took the whole issue and passed it over to Him and didn’t think about it again.

Nancy: That wasn’t easy. You did that by faith.

Genevieve: No, not easy. Four months later, pregnant with Caleb.

Nancy: Wow! Well, I think we’re going to have to hear what happened next time! Wow. We’ve kind of left you on a pretty traumatic thing, but the amazing thing about childbirth is that a traumatic situation doesn’t have to happen the second time. Every birth is different, isn’t it?

Next week, tune in. We’re going to see what happens next time. The next podcast, Genevieve is going to share about more of her birth experiences. Thank you so much for being with us, Genevieve.

Genevieve: Thank you.

Nancy:

“Lord God, we thank You again for Your wonderful goodness to us. Thank You, Lord, that You are a faithful God. We thank You that You are faithful, even in childbirth. You are the One who brings the baby safely from the mother’s womb.

“Lord, here we are, sitting with Genevieve today, the mother of 11 children. You have been so faithful to her. We thank You, Lord. We pray that mothers now who are listening who are pregnant, that You will encourage them, that You will strengthen their faith, and that You will bless them, and You will bring, Lord, their babies forth safely into this world. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.”

Genevieve: Amen.

Nancy: Amen!

Blessings from Nancy Campbell

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Transcribed by Darlene Norris

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