Singer and Greenleaf actress Deborah Joy Winans has recently announced that she is expecting a baby boy.
In an interview with Essence, the young, soon-to-be mother described the trials and tribulations that went on during her pregnancy.
“As long as I can get to 28, we should be okay,” Winans told the publication, 26 weeks along at the time.
“Once we get to 28 weeks, [my doctor] knows that he’ll be good and healthy if he came that early. So, 28 is the goal.”
Winans and her husband of eight years, Terrence Williams, had a hunch that their baby had the chance of being born before the normally expected time.
They spoke with doctors and decided on taking the necessary steps to get pregnant. During this process, Winans discovered that she had fibroids and that one of them was rather large, about the size of a watermelon.
After being recommended to remove it utilizing a cesarian surgery, she sought out a second opinion.
“I kept telling Terrance, I was like, ‘Baby, something’s wrong.’ And he was like, ‘Well, have you had your period?’”
I said, ‘Well, no, but it’s coming though. And he was like, ‘Yeah…you’re pretty regular.’”
Soon after this, and in the middle of shooting for the film Sisterly Christmas in Canada, she felt off and decided to take several different pregnancy tests.
Despite her immense stress and fibroid issue, Winans discovered she was pregnant.
“When she started to tell me the things that will happen in my body because of the fibroids and the things that the baby might face, I just was like, ‘Okay, this is really, really serious,’” she said.
“I was in so much pain. I didn’t even understand what was happening. I could barely get out of bed,” she continued.
“The pain would hit so hard, and I would have to crawl to the bathroom, literally crawl. I was in tears.”
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She suffered immensely from the complications while she was on set and decided that she needed to fix the issue before it further impacted her and the baby’s health.
Winans underwent an emergency procedure to have her cervix stitched closed.
“He would have come in a few days had we not stitched it up,” she says. “He’s sitting so low as it is, and he
was going to make his way. The more that we are aware of our bodies and what’s going on and what to look for, the more we can hold them accountable for what it is they should be doing and what they need to be doing to make sure we’re okay. I mean, I’m 37 years old, and I should’ve known,” she said.
“I don’t want them to experience that physical pain or just the stress that comes over your mind, your body, your spirit when you’re constantly wondering every day, is your child going to make it?”
Regardless of all the obstacles that Winans has faced before and during this pregnancy, she remains hopeful and has embraced her pregnancy for what it is.
“I’m like, ‘Son, I don’t know who you are, but you’re a miracle,’” she said. “‘I don’t know what you are meant to do or who you’ve been called to be in this world, but you are going to do something great because you are fighting your way through this pregnancy.’”
