Words of Wellness with Shelly

Shelly's Shares: Uncertainty to Blessings:The Miracle of Motherhood

• Shelly Jefferis • Season 2 • Episode 84

Share episode

Send us a text

The miracle of motherhood often comes with unexpected challenges that test our faith, resilience, and hope. In this heartfelt episode, Shelly opens up about her deeply personal journey to becoming a mother of three beautiful children—a path filled with medical scares, moments of profound uncertainty, and ultimately, extraordinary blessings.

Her story begins with the revelation that motherhood wasn't always my planned destiny. Unlike many women, she didn't grow up dreaming of future children or mapping out a family timeline. When she and her husband finally decided to start their family, they faced a series of challenges that changed their perspective forever. Shelly shares the emotional rollercoaster of receiving positive AFP test results with their daughter Jessica, the terrifying moment doctors identified a spot on her brain during ultrasound, and the powerful spiritual experience that carried her through that uncertainty. Through tears and raw emotion, she reveals how opening her Bible to Proverbs 3:5  "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding" became her lifeline.

The journey continued with their second child Cody having a similar positive AFP experience along with another potential scare.  Then it was multiple heartbreaking miscarriages before welcoming their youngest son Brayden six years later. This Mother's Day special episode celebrates the profound connection between all mothers—biological, adoptive, and otherwise—who understand that the path to motherhood isn't always straightforward, but the destination is unquestionably worth every trial. Whether you're a parent yourself or simply appreciate the beautiful complexity of family bonds, this intimate glimpse into Shelly's family creation story reminds us all that our greatest blessings often come after our most challenging moments.

How has your journey to parenthood or family shaped who you are today? I'd love to hear your story—share it with me on social media or leave a review with your thoughts about this deeply personal episode.

CONNECT WITH SHELLY:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wellnesswithshellyj
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShellyJefferis

"Purge Your Pantry" Special pricing for WOW listeners:
https://buy.stripe.com/6oEcQQ1WH3xi85qaES

A few of my favorites:
Clean-crafted wine, free from chemicals & pesticides:
https://scoutandcellar.com/?u=healthyhappyhours

Cayla Gray- Non-toxic cologne & perfume: https://caylagray.com/wellnesswithshellyj (10% discount)


Non-toxic candles & air fresheners:
https://goodjujucandles.com/?ref=mrtgnygh
Coupon code for 10% off: ShellyJefferis

High quality, clean nutrition and beauty products: https://shellyjefferis.isagenix


Thank you for listening to the Words of Wellness podcast with Shelly Jefferis. I am honored and so grateful to have you here and it would mean the world to me if you could take a minute to follow, leave a 5-star review and share the podcast with anyone you love and anyone you feel could benefit from the message.

Thank you and God Bless!
And remember to do something for yourself, for your wellness on this day!

In Health,
Shelly Jefferis

Speaker 1:

A huge shout out to all the moms out there, and dads, of course, but this one's for all the moms out there. Our hearts are connected. Being moms and having the motherhood, going through the motherhood journey it's just priceless. And it's such a beautiful, beautiful journey. Do you get confused by all of the information that bombard us every day on ways to improve our overall health and our overall wellness? Do you often feel stuck, unmotivated or struggle to reach your wellness goals? Do you have questions as to what exercises you should be doing, what foods you should or should not be eating, how to improve your overall emotional and mental well-being? Hello everyone, I am so excited to welcome you to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelley Jeffries and I will be your host. My goal is to answer these questions and so much more to share tips, education and inspiration around all of the components of wellness through solo and guest episodes. With 35 plus years as a health and wellness professional, a retired college professor, a speaker and a multi-passionate entrepreneur, I certainly have lots to share. However, my biggest goal and inspiration in doing this podcast is to share the wellness stories of others with you, to bring in guests who can share their journeys so that we can all learn together while making an impact on the health, the wellness and lives of all of you, our listeners. The ultimate hope is that you leave today with even just one nugget that can enhance the quality of your life, and that you will we all will, now and into the future, live our best quality of lives, full of energy, happiness and joy. Now let's dive into our message for today. Hi, my friends, I just wanted to hop in here and say that we will be having a couple episodes that will be related to moms and motherhood in honor of Mother's Day. We are in the month of May and I want to have a couple episodes that are dedicated to moms. So you will notice, in a couple of my solo episodes and a couple of our guest episodes will be centered around moms and motherhood. So I hope you enjoy.

Speaker 1:

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Words of Wellness. I am your host, shelley Jeffries, and thank you for tuning in. For those of you who have been listening and supporting me along this journey, I thank you so, so, very much. And for any of you who are listening for the first time, I want to welcome you and I always want to encourage you to reach out to me, contact me. My information is in the show notes. If there is any topic that you would like to know more about or hear more about, please let me know and I'll be sure and share it on here. In addition to that, if you or someone you know has an area of expertise in wellness, or maybe you have a wellness story or journey you'd like to share, let me know that too. I would love love to have you on.

Speaker 1:

So today I want to talk a little bit about being a mama, and I think that, for all the moms out there, I just want to give you all a big shout out, and the job that we have is not easy, but it's a beautiful one and it's definitely one that I have just really loved from the minute I found out I was pregnant with our daughter. It's just been such a huge blessing and you know, I know that for some who are out there and they're not able to have children for one reason or another and my heart goes out to you and I know there are many of you who have been blessed with children who maybe you didn't have biologically, but they are still your own and you are still mama to them for sure, and you know, we have families and combinations of families in different ways that make us who we are, and it's all just a huge, huge blessing. And I wanted to hop on today because I had such a really very special message from someone and I want to share it with you. And she said I love all your posts. I love seeing your children doing so well. God has richly blessed you. I wanted to take a moment to share that because I feel that I feel that every day and I share a lot about my kids and I share it in a way of truly feeling blessed and having so much gratitude for the different experiences that we share and being now an empty nester mom and being able to kind of from from a different perspective, just to see what they're doing in their lives and as they get older and and they're adults and having lives of their own, it's just, it's really a special place to be. And you know, I was just reading this message that I received and it really touched my heart and I I totally agree, we, we are completely blessed.

Speaker 1:

And you know, I sometimes think about the journey of being a mom and and it's, it's always been something that I have really taken to heart and it's interesting. You know, I think back. I wasn't one of those as a young girl where I knew when I was going to get married and how many kids I was going to have. That never really crossed my mind, to be honest, and even after my husband and I got married, it was not even a conversation that we had. And I think that I think back to that and I think, wow, that's so interesting, like I think somehow I just knew it was something that was going to happen at some point in time, but it was never. It was never really planned. We never really had a, a, a planned timeline, so to speak. And I'll never forget at one point, as we were starting to get a little older, we're thinking like, oh, we probably better think about having kids before we get older, and that was really just kind of how it started.

Speaker 1:

And I think what I want to share is it was not an easy journey, and that's, I think. The other thing I want to share is that that's probably another reason why I take it so to heart and I appreciate every aspect of being a mom is it was not an easy journey to get here when we were trying to get pregnant. Initially it took some time. It took some time, which you know, as a young person you don't always think that, you know, you don't always think it's gonna be a challenge, but it was a challenge and when we were finally able to get pregnant it was just such a it's such a beautiful blessing and just so much joy surrounding it. And you know I'll go into more detail on another episode.

Speaker 1:

But back in those days and I don't know if they do it still there were tests that were done and blood tests that were done that looked at the level of protein in your blood, and I can't remember the specifics at this point in time, and I should, and I know there was a specific name to this test that was done. We had all the tests done and we received that phone call one day that the test came back positive, day that the test came back positive. And if it was positive, that meant there was a possibility for some issues with the pregnancy. And we were taken by surprise completely. We had been in so much joy of just knowing that we were finally pregnant and so the possibility of something being wrong was not even on our radar whatsoever. And so to receive this call, I'll never forget it. It was just really, really rough.

Speaker 1:

And what ended up happening is we went through a series of tests and we went to UCLA and had some tests done and at that point they had done an ultrasound and they saw what they thought was a spot on our daughter's brain, on our daughter's brain. And so couple that with our positive AFP test it just came to my brain AFP test. It increased the chances of something being wrong with her. Now, at this point in time, we didn't know it was a her, we didn't do any, we didn't find out what the sex was with any of our babies. But I'll never forget, you know, getting this news and my husband and I, you know, talking over just the possibility of this this happening. I mean, they thought there was a cyst on my daughter's brain, and when you get that kind of news, it shakes you for sure, and we immediately just started talking about okay, how are we going to handle it? How are we going to handle having this baby? That potentially would have some issues, some health issues. You know, potentially would have some some issues, some health issues. And, um, you know, this was.

Speaker 1:

This was 26, 27 years ago and it just I can remember it like it was yesterday, and I had an amniocentesis performed at that point in time because that was going to be ultimately how we would find out if there was something wrong, and we were prepared to prepare for things. If there was something wrong, and we we were, there was not any question and we were going to keep our baby. We just didn't know what we were looking at, what did the future look like for us? And lo and behold, thanks to God, we received our news later on that everything was fine. And I'll never forget that day and that phone call, that phone call that we received. We had been sitting on pins and needles, as you can imagine, and my husband and I were both by the phone and when we received the news that everything was okay, I mean we literally both cried and hugged each other and cried and that's that's. That was our journey with our daughter. And I want to back up for a minute journey with our daughter, and I want to back up for a minute and for any of you who, you know, believe in God or you believe in a higher power, whatever your faith is, I'll never forget.

Speaker 1:

When we came home from UCLA on that day and this, the doctors gave us the statistics and the statistics were high that something could be wrong when you have the combination of a potential cyst on your brain and this high AFP test. The statistics were not in our favor and I'll never forget going okay, these are statistics, this is just what the doctors know at this point in time, but ultimately, god is the one that knows. And that came over me so strongly and I just leaned into that. I leaned into that and I and I came home that day and literally opened up my Bible and opened up to the verse lean, not on your own understanding. I opened my Bible to that verse, literally Trust in the Lord. And that's what I did. And we had a beautiful. I could cry right now. We had a beautiful baby girl, or Jessica Beautiful.

Speaker 1:

A few months later after Jessica was born, all of a sudden I was pregnant with our Cody and it happened so surprisingly quick and it was amazing and the timing couldn't have been more perfect. I it was around my husband's birthday been more perfect. I, uh, it was around my husband's birthday. So I was actually able to wrap up the pregnancy test and give it to him for his birthday surprise. Oh, it was amazing. And again, guess what? Afp test came back positive and said oh well, here we go again now with our Cody. The ultrasound showed something on his heart, a very, very small spot on his heart. And you know, again, thanks, thank, thank you God for our. My aunt I was able to talk with her about it because she had been a technician and had seen so many ultrasounds and she said you know, the technology has improved so much nowadays that we see everything, and everything is not always something and thank God in this case it wasn't anything with our Cody.

Speaker 1:

But we did go through the same kind of the same routine where I got an amnio and, thank God, everything was okay. And so you know, he was born a healthy, healthy baby and in having the two of them so close together, I felt that I wanted to have another one close together and I knew in my heart I wasn't done and I'll never forget sharing that with my husband one day and just telling I have such this desire in my heart to have another baby and he, thankfully, was open to it. He was happy with our two, but he was open for having another and it didn't go as smoothly. I did get pregnant soon but had a miscarriage and went through that gosh three times, three times, three or four times and then I wasn't getting pregnant at all. So we did decide to seek help. We did have medical help to find out what was going on and to to help us have our, our beautiful Brayden.

Speaker 1:

And you know, six years later, here he came and again, just such a beautiful blessing and I can look at just the journey that that we went through, my husband and I, and what we shared to have our family. And family has always been like number one for us and I know that's the same for many of you and our children are just such huge blessings and I just I didn't know exactly where I was going to go with this episode today, but I wanted to just share my heart about being a mom and how I don't take it lightly and I am so, so grateful to God for gifting me with and gifting my husband and I with these beautiful children. And when I read this message from my girlfriend, I just I wanted to share that because we have been richly blessed and I don't take it lightly and I just wanted to share that, and in sharing that, it led me to giving you a little bit of a journey of what we went through to have our babies, and so I wanted to share that with all of you and I hope that it touches your heart in some way, shape or form. And you know, again, a huge shout out to all the moms out there and dads, of course, but this one's for all the moms out there Our hearts are, our hearts are connected. Uh, being moms and and and having the motherhood, going through the motherhood journey, it's just priceless and it's such a beautiful, beautiful journey, and so I just kind of wanted to share a little bit of mine and I hope it's touched your heart in some way today.

Speaker 1:

And again, thank you for listening and thank you for being a part of my journey with my podcast.

Speaker 1:

I am enjoying it so very much and I thank you for tuning in and I just hope you do something for yourself and your wellness on this day and, as always, have a beautiful, blessed rest of the day and a beautiful blessed rest of your week and I'll see you all real soon.

Speaker 1:

Rest of your week and I'll see you all real soon. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I hope you gained value and enjoyed our time together as much as I did, and if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode, I would love and appreciate it if you could share with a friend or rate and review words of wellness so that more can hear this message. I love and appreciate you all. Thank you for listening and if you have any questions or topics you would like me to share in future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out to me through my contact information that is shared in the show notes below. Again, thank you for tuning in to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly Jeffries and I encourage you to do something for you, for your wellness, on this day. Until next time, I hope you all have a healthy, happy and blessed week. Thank you you.