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Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
Ep 1133 | Birth Control Made Her Blind; IVF Made Her Pro-Life | Guest: Chelsey Painter Davis
00:50:03
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- [00:02]
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- [00:29]
Ali
Chelsea Painter Davis is known as the Blind mom on her podcast and on Instagram. She has an incredible testimony of how she has trusted the Lord through many challenges. She became blinded by hormonal birth control when she was 19 years old. Fast forward a few years when she was pregnant with her son. She was pressured for weeks and weeks by her doctor to have an abortion. She has such a unique look on life, not only because of her blindness and her pregnancy complications, but also because of the circumstances surrounding her conception. She is an IVF baby and describes herself as an IVF survivor. Her look on the sanctity of life and the faithfulness of the Lord is so refreshing and encouraging. You're going to love this conversation with Chelsea. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good ranchers. Go to good ranchers.com code ally that's good ranchers.com code ally foreign Chelsea, thanks so much for taking the time to join me.
- [01:41]
Chelsea Painter Davis
Oh I'm so happy to be here today. Thank you. Ali.
- [01:44]
Ali
Yes, I. We were just talking. Always have people send me your videos and they're so fun, they're so entertaining, but they're also really encouraging. Your podcast is called Blind Mom Life. That's kind of like the moniker that you're known by on Instagram, the Blind Mom. So tell. Tell me a little bit about like why you started your page, why you started your podcast.
- [02:06]
Chelsea Painter Davis
Yes, I have. Oh my goodness. I have always been a huge pro life enthusiast and I just never really felt like I could do much about it. But as I've gone through my life I have racked up quite a challenging testimony and I just really saw opportunity with now that I've healed through a lot of these things, how I could use them to point not just to my pro life ethic that I get from my faith, but also how this really applies to all the decisions that you make in your life. Like don't give up on your life just cause it's difficult. And I really saw an opportunity there to share and it was kind of scary at first. I was like, I don't really know what I'm doing. But the more that we've started making videos and putting things out there, it's just, it's really good to see how people are hungry for just that encouragement. Like, just because you're pregnant, in crisis, like your life is not over, like, we can handle this, you can get through this. Just because you had a horrible accident, now you're disabled for the rest of your life. Like you can do this and people really need to hear that.
- [03:13]
Ali
And all of these things are a part of your story. Can you tell us how long you've been blind?
- [03:20]
Chelsea Painter Davis
I lost my vision when I was 19 years old. I'm 29 now, so I just hit my 10 year anniversary this past Christmas. It was, it was really hard. I, I thought I'd adjusted really well to it and I think, I think I have. But there's only so much you can, there's only so much you can be okay with. When you grew up one way, thought you were going to spend the rest of your life like that, and then you get hit with near total blindness, but it's just, it's every day just, yeah, not quitting.
- [03:49]
Ali
And tell us what happened. How did you become blind when you were 19?
- [03:52]
Chelsea Painter Davis
Yes. So started taking birth control pills because that's what all the little good Protestant girls do. Or so I thought when you're about to get married. I sat down with my primary care physician, discussed what my options were. I had done some research myself because I was very exposed to pro life issues, pro life ethics. Growing up a survivor of ivf, I just, I wasn't afraid of these topics. And so I had noticed online they were saying sometimes birth control pills, you can cause the lining in your uterus to thin and that can accidentally keep the embryo or the zygote from attaching. And that really concerned me. So I wanted to have a real conversation with my primary care physician. When I came in, I was like, I want to choose something that's like safe, something that's effective and something that's ethical. And she was not interested in having that conversation with me. I felt really belittled just by something as simple as facial expressions. When I was talking to her, it really felt like she just wanted me to take the prescription and leave. She didn't want to discuss what that medication would actually do to my reproductive system or the embryo.
- [05:08]
Ali
Because what you're saying, and some people don't know this, we've talked about this on the show too. But birth control, any kind of hormonal birth control, might not actually prevent you from becoming pregnant. It might not prevent the fertilization of an egg. It can. It's supposed to prevent ovulation, but it doesn't always. So what can happen is that fertilized, eg, because you're on birth control, because like you said, the lining of the uterus is being thinned, that that embryo, that fertilized egg, just can't attach to the wall. It's preventing not the fertilization, but the implantation in that case. And if we believe as we do that life starts at conception at that point of fertilization, then that means that hormonal birth control has the potential to be abortifacient, which is where the ethical concerns rightly come in. The Catholic church has always been like, super strong and clear on that. You mentioned, like, being Protestant. I'm Protestant too. There's like, less guidance on that growing up. And so it just seems like you were trying to understand, okay, because you said you're about to get married at that point. You were just trying to understand, like, okay, I want birth control, but I also have these concerns. And the doctor wasn't super helpful.
- [06:17]
Chelsea Painter Davis
Exactly. And now as an adult, looking back on it, I think she didn't know she was a nurse practitioner. I think she genuinely didn't understand. And that's where those weird facial expressions were coming from. But in my teenager mind, I felt like I was being judged. I felt like I was being pushed. I felt like she was looking at me like I was stupid. And so I just said, whatever, just give me the pills. Like, at that point, I'm sitting in a doctor's office with puppy stickers on the wall and my mom and a nurse practitioner staring at me, talking to me about sex. I just wanted to be out of that room. I didn't want to do it anymore. I didn't want to have that conversation anymore. And so I just started taking the medication. And I did not really feel okay with that. But I was a virgin at the time. I wasn't having sex. I was like, okay, well, it's not that big of a deal. Like, it's not like I'm causing any problems with the baby right now. Like, it's not even possible for me to be pregnant right now. But next time I see that pcp, I'm gonna ask. I'm gonna push her. I'm gonna switch. I've double checked my research. I know I'm right, and I'm just gonna find something different. But before I could do that, I ended up in the hospital with A pulmonary embolism. I almost died. And later recovering from that.
- [07:32]
Ali
How many. How long had you been taking birth control at that point when you had two weeks. Pulmonary embolism. Really? Only two weeks? And that is also a potential side effect of hormonal birth control that a lot of people don't realize.
- [07:43]
Chelsea Painter Davis
Yes. It was something that got run through very quickly. The possible side effects of the birth control. You know, they give you, like, the little paper and. But you see, like, heart attack, pulmonary embolism, stroke, death. You don't take that seriously, especially when you're only 18, 19 years old.
- [08:00]
Ali
Yeah.
- [08:01]
Chelsea Painter Davis
So I just like, okay, whatever. Like, that's not going to happen to me. Even though I just had a friend die from taking hormonal birth control, you still just don't think that's possible.
- [08:12]
Ali
How did that friend die?
- [08:14]
Chelsea Painter Davis
She also threw a clot. She died before the paramedics could get there.
- [08:19]
Ali
Wow.
- [08:20]
Chelsea Painter Davis
And. But for some reason, you still think, like, oh, that's a fluke. That doesn't mean there's something wrong with birth control. That just means, oh, well, there was something wrong in her body. That would never happen to me. This is a horrible, horrible tragedy. It could never happen again. But I threw a clot, too. I was amazingly lucky. That's why I say I'm lucky. I didn't die like she did. I recovered from my pulmonary embolism. They realized that I had blood clotting disorders, and combined with the birth control pills, that's what threw the clot. But I started getting headaches after, and I went to see that same pcp and I said, hey, my head hurts really bad. Like, I'm trying to take my college classes. I just had my wedding, and Tylenol won't cut it. Like, I cannot get this headache to go away. And the same kind of attitude of like, I really kind of need you to leave this office. She just looked at me and she's like, okay, Chelsea, you need to understand that issue with the blood clots is over. You're not sick anymore. You're just really stressed out. You need to cut a few college classes and go get a massage. Like, you just need to calm down. And I was so embarrassed. And that appointment, I just completely shut down on myself. And I believed her. I really genuinely thought I had just been over dramatizing it. I'd had. I mean, planning a wedding is very stressful. It's very hard to get married at 19 years old because everybody thinks that it's silly and they don't take you Seriously. And it's just hard. And so I just completely thought everything she was saying to me was true. And now looking back, one of the biggest regrets of my life is that my husband knew something was wrong and he begged me to go to the emergency room. When these headaches wouldn't go away, like I was standing up and I would vomit trying to go to class, I, I couldn't take any of that.
- [10:10]
Ali
So it's not just, oh, this is uncomfortable. This was like migraine level severe.
- [10:14]
Chelsea Painter Davis
So severe I couldn't get out of bed. I had to drop out of college. It was so bad. And I just, I just told my husband, I said, I'm not going to go back to the hospital and have someone embarrass me again. She told me it's just stress. I just need to calm down. That's it. And I was so, so, so wrong.
- [10:33]
Ali
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- [11:50]
Chelsea Painter Davis
I had stopped the birth control pills after the pulmonary embolism.
- [11:53]
Ali
Oh, you did? Okay.
- [11:54]
Chelsea Painter Davis
Yes. So once you throw a clot from birth control pills, the immediate standard of care is that you do not take hormonal birth control ever again.
- [12:00]
Ali
Okay.
- [12:01]
Chelsea Painter Davis
And then especially combined with my blood clotting disorders, I'm on anticoagulants for the rest of my life. So the absolute worst thing I could do is add in hormonal birth Control. So this is just side effects from having taken it at all. And I got worse and worse. I didn't realize how bad my vision was deteriorating because I kept making up excuses. I was like, oh, well, we just moved into this new studio apartment. And it's just really, really dim in here. Like, there's not a lot of windows. You know, we're kind of poor. We just got married. It's fall. It's turning into winter. Oh, I just need a new pair of glasses. Like, there's nothing really going on. And it wasn't until my mom came to visit me for Thanksgiving. And we were setting up the Christmas tree. Because I'm that kind of person.
- [12:44]
Ali
Yeah.
- [12:45]
Chelsea Painter Davis
She asked me to hand her the purple Christmas ornament. And I was holding two of them, and I couldn't tell which one it was. And that's when we knew something was very, very wrong. But that was scary. You go into such a state of denial for that. I just. There's really two phases of denial for blindness. Number one is that there's anything wrong with your vision at all. You don't want to believe that. And then, number two, it's that this is going to be permanent. So I fully went to the doctor thinking that they were going to fix me. They were going to give me some pill or something or. And I was going to be fine. But I ended up having pseudotumor cerebri, which is a buildup of cerebral spinal fluid that squished my optic nerves to death. And because I was so delayed in coming to get a proper diagnosis, there was nothing they could do. The first round of treatment they tried, which is a diuretic, did nothing. And secondly, they put a drain in my spine to get rid of that extra fluid. And all that did was keep me alive. I am almost totally blind. I lost all this vision within a matter of few months. And the whole time I was in the doctor, they were blaming me. They're saying, like, well, this just happens to women in their 20s who are overweight. Like, we don't know why, but it's just women, like, you get this. Like, we. We have no idea, but that's just how it is. And maybe if you hadn't eaten so many cupcakes, this wouldn't happen to you. And once again, like, why would I not believe my doctor? Like, my doctor is supposed to be on my side. My doctor's supposed to be telling me the truth. But as soon as I went home and they washed their hands of me medically, I started seeing all these lawsuits on the television, listening to it, and they were like, have you been blinded by pseudotumor cerebri? And the more I looked into it, birth control companies found out in their clinical trials that their medication was causing pseudotumor cerebri, and they just decided not to put it on the bottle.
- [14:38]
Ali
Are you able to say what the brand was?
- [14:41]
Chelsea Painter Davis
I. I'm not sure.
- [14:42]
Ali
If you're not, that's okay. You don't. You don't have to. I know that, you know, I was taking a birth control pill. Again, like, it was not for. Not even to prevent pregnancy. It was like, all of my friends were told we had, like, pcos or if our, like, period was just, like, a little bit delayed. When we were 17, everyone was put on birth control.
- [15:01]
Chelsea Painter Davis
So many.
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Ali
Even if we weren't sexually active, which we were not. But I was put on yaz because that's what everyone was. And now I see those commercials, like, if you took.
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Chelsea Painter Davis
Yes.
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Ali
And then you got, like, a breast cancer diagnosis or something, and it's like, I don't even remember hearing any potential side effects of those. And I wasn't on it for very long because I just realized I don't need this, and it doesn't make me feel good. But, I mean, there are women who are on those for years and years and years and never know that the reason that they're feeling bad is because their hormones are jacked up or whatever else is in the birth control.
- [15:36]
Chelsea Painter Davis
And I feel like the doctors are so invested in. In protecting birth control just as a whole industry that they're not really sitting there and being honest with you. It took about a year after my symptoms started for me to sit down with my hematologist, my new hematologist. And he said, do you realize when he was taking my patient history, he's like, you realize that you didn't have any problems until you started taking those birth control pills. And once you started taking them, you were hospitalized four times in one year. Your body went. It was wrecked as soon as you started taking those. And I was. By that point, I was like, yeah, I started to figure that out. But when I was going through the process with the neuro ophthalmologist, with the primary care physician who'd prescribed me the birth controls in the first place, they're not bringing it up. And in a way, like, I almost kind of understand, because the birth control companies did lie, and they refused to put it on the warning labels. But at the same time, how many doctors actually read those warning Labels. Do they really know what they're prescribing to you? And unfortunately for me, it had lasting, permanent side effects. I'll never see again. There's nothing they can do for me.
- [16:43]
Ali
So is it confirmed that the blindness was caused by the birth control? There's no other possibility for the cause?
- [16:49]
Chelsea Painter Davis
There is a possibility that I just got it.
- [16:52]
Ali
That's just random.
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Chelsea Painter Davis
That it's just random. That's what the first doctors were trying to tell me. But there is a lot of information online about how it is connected to birth control pills or hormonal. Hormonal contraceptive. And it makes so much sense because when he's telling me, like, you just. It just happens to women in their 20s. And I was like, you mean people who are on birth control?
- [17:15]
Ali
Yeah.
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Chelsea Painter Davis
Like, that's a very interesting correlation you're suggesting there. But I even watched because it is in my mind. I'm still questioning. I'm like, maybe I just got it. Maybe. Maybe this is really what happened. But I'm never going to know for sure because I can't go back and try my life a different way. But I did watch a whole seminar for medical school by a neuro ophthalmologist. He was teaching the other. The students, and he literally went through with them, like, pseudotumor cerebri, some causes. I know it says in your textbook that hormonal birth control causes pseudotumor cerebri. You need to understand that a lot of times it just happens to women. Even though that's not what your textbook says. Listen to what I say. Except if there's a venous sinus thrombosis involved, then it's definitely the birth control pills. I did have a venous sinus thrombosis involved.
- [18:04]
Ali
Okay, tell us what that is.
- [18:05]
Chelsea Painter Davis
Okay, so that is a clot that you have that they noticed on the MRI for me, and there was so much going on in those three. The three times I was hospitalized, it was within a month of each other. I couldn't even keep track of everything that was going wrong in my body at the time. But when he was going through that in medical school, I'm like, I'm recognizing these terms, and I know they're on my chart. And he was confirming. He's like, if you see this, then it was the birth control medication that caused that pseudo. Pseudotumor cerebri. So I'm just very. I don't want to be, like, ridiculous in my analogies, but I'm very in the dark on this. And it's just always that lingering thing of like, this was found in these clinical trials. This is written about in a textbook. I've had another doctor say, your body went to trash after you took those birth control pills. Like, how can I not sit here and say that's what happened to me?
- [18:56]
Ali
Yeah. And I want to zone in on something that you said that doesn't directly have to do with birth control, but it has to do with just the reproductive world in general. You called yourself an IVF survivor.
- [19:08]
Chelsea Painter Davis
Yes.
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Ali
Can you expound upon that?
- [19:10]
Chelsea Painter Davis
Yeah. So I was conceived in a petri dish in 1994 in a IVF clinic in central Florida. And I have siblings who died in that process. I have siblings who were intentionally killed in that process. And I refer to myself as a survivor because 80% of the embryos that are created in IVF laboratory do not get to leave the IVF laboratory. They either die in the freezing process, they are left there indefinitely. They're intentionally killed by being sprayed with toxic solution when they're no longer wanted. They're weeded out for eugenics purposes. So I feel very chosen to have been allowed to live at all. And it's a very. IVF is a very brutal, brutal, horrible process. I don't even know how many siblings I have that were killed in an IVF laboratory. And I will never know.
- [20:10]
Ali
How many living siblings do you have?
- [20:11]
Chelsea Painter Davis
I have two other siblings who survived to birth from the IVF process. I'm very grateful for them. They're two years younger than me, a brother and a sister. But those are not the only siblings that I have, and the others are just gone. And I feel like I have to address my relationship with IVF as a survivor because I cannot pretend like those siblings were not real.
- [20:36]
Ali
When did you start looking into the IVF process? Because as you know, my position on IVF is in general like a unique one. Even a lot of Christians that listen to this podcast, they do not like when I talk negatively about ivf. So at some point you must have really researched the process and the risks. Tell us about that.
- [20:59]
Chelsea Painter Davis
Yes. So I am, I am so grateful for my parents honesty about IVF and as I got older, about their IVF experience because it really gave me permission as a young child, we're talking like 12 years old, to get online and start researching healthy sexual reproduction. What's happening in our body. Like, I found that interesting, like eggs, sperm, fusion. Like, I found it fascinating. And so at a very young age, I was researching it on a level that most children don't or are even aware of. And so, of course, as I start looking into what is the IVF process, like, how do you. How do you make a baby in a petri dish? Like, that was fascinating to me. I saw very quickly the abuse and the brutality of what is happening in that industry. I think it's very branded as we just want to help infertile couples have babies. I think that's a beautiful thing to want to help an infertile couple have a baby. I think that infertility is one of the most tragic, horrible things that happens in our world. It's awful. And that's why that PR is so beautiful. It sounds so nice. But as soon as you pull back the veil on the science of, like, okay, well, what's actually happening? Because you can't just, like, roll some dice and shake your Magic 8 ball around, and then you have a baby in a petri dish, you have to go collect sperm, you have to go collect an egg. Those are complicated, challenging, concerning processes in themselves. And then you have a baby in a dish that needs its mother, that needs to be attached to the uterus for survival. But for most babies, like I said, they don't do that with them. They try to decide, oh, is this baby good enough? Is this the one that we want to use? Because it's not about one baby at a time and making sure that they're safe, protected, and cared for. It's about how many babies can we do as quickly as possible to save as much money as possible to inflate, to honestly, like, disingenuously inflate the success rate of IVF that we project in our priority? So couples will feel very comfortable with what we're doing, even though what we're doing is killing or permanently freezing 80% of these babies, how can we pretend that they're not babies? Even though it is a human life unique, with its own DNA that is growing? What else can we call it? What can we do differently? And I just was always raised with this very kind of black and white perception of morality. And sometimes that can be hard because it can make empathy difficult for you in some situations. But sometimes it can be so freeing because you can just look at something and say, I don't care what size that baby is. You don't get to kill it just because it's in a dish. And you're right, that makes me a very controversial person sometimes because I think a lot of people expect me to just hug IVF with open arms and say, oh, it's wonderful. It's amazing. No, I'm going to call out the abuse when I see it, especially because it happened to my own family members and especially because it's continuing to happen. And every time that Christians or pro lifers try to justify the brutality in in vitro fertilization, they are minimizing the humanity of human beings. And I take that very offensively just on a personal level because I was in a dish at one point and I deserve just as much respect then as I do now. And when they deny the humanity of those babies in a dish, it hurts me. It makes me feel very angry because then they're denying my humanity as well and I get very upset. Very quickly.
- [24:43]
Ali
How do your parents feel about this now?
- [24:45]
Chelsea Painter Davis
It is really hard for my parents. It is not easy for me to talk about this publicly on my parents. I have a lot of sympathy for women who went through IVF in the 90s because they didn't have an iPhone in their pocket to fact check the things that their doctors told them they didn't have really anywhere else to go for their information. So when your doctor tells you, oh, I know you have more babies in the freezer, but I don't know that you should really be having any more babies yourself. And I, it's like it's not really like a baby anyway. Like, it's just, it's just a potential baby. Yeah, exactly. Like, what were my parents supposed to do? What were they supposed to think? Who were they supposed to believe? I have an amazing privilege growing up after 1995, being able to even look up IVF and see what it was. And my parents didn't have that. So there is a lot of regret from my parents for the embryos that they just, they agreed to be destroyed. But I think my mom sums it up the best when she said she didn't know she was killing her babies. And that's just. Doctors are supposed to be there to support you, tell you the truth, help you make a decision. They're not supposed to be there to lie to you about your babies. And that's what happened to my parents.
- [26:01]
Ali
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- [27:39]
Chelsea Painter Davis
It really is. After the blindness, I really started to believe in this subtle, very dangerous lie that, okay, God loves me, and God, you know, he wants me to serve him, but God doesn't find me special is what I started to believe about him. Because I was praying to be healed. So many people prayed for me to be healed. The doctors told me I was gonna get my. Told me I was gonna get my vision back. And they were wrong. And it just seemed like turn after turn, things were going not the way they were supposed to. And I kept crying out to God, like, why would you let me go blind at 19 years old? I just got married. I've only been married three months. This is not okay. And so I just started to believe in almost this kind of deism about God where it's like, yeah, he's. I know he's there. I know he's like, think has an order to this world that he has planned. But, you know, I'm not special to him. He doesn't pay much notice to me. And I really stayed in that place for years until I got pregnant with my son. He's my second baby. And we really got put on a path to. For me to stand up on all of the pro life issues, all the pro life ethics that the IVF and birth control situation had really opened my eyes to. And then I realized, wow, everything that God has put in my life, even the fact that I was Manufactured in a laboratory. Even the fact that I was, what, felt cruelly blinded at 19 years old, he has been paving my path so I could be ready to give the fight of my life to save my son.
- [29:37]
Ali
So tell me about that. You said that this is your second child and you had to fight to save him. What do you mean by that?
- [29:46]
Chelsea Painter Davis
When I was 12 weeks pregnant with my son, he had an abnormal ultrasound. And I'm not talking like, oh, there was like a little glitch in the ultrasound machine or something that they thought might go away. The ultrasound image was so bad that the ultrasound tech had to leave the room, show it to the maternal fetal medicine specialist, which is a extremely high risk OB GYN who was on call at the hospital that day, go back in to take more pictures, and then send him into my room for an impromptu meeting to talk about abortion. There was a mass in my son's abdomen that was a third of his body.
- [30:30]
Ali
Wow.
- [30:31]
Chelsea Painter Davis
They had no idea what it was. They told me it could be bowel entanglement. Best case scenario, more likely down syndrome, more likely something that we would never identify because I'd miscarry him so quickly. We were terrified, me and my husband, we didn't know what to do. And they just immediately broke. Brought up abortion. As soon as I said, well, what's the plan? What are we going to do for my son? They said, well, that depends on whether you're going to continue with the pregnancy or terminate. I was just shocked because I thought that when you're pregnant and you go to the doctor to help you keep your baby healthy, they would understand that the last thing I would want to do is kill my baby. But they seem to think that would be the first thing I wanted to do. They were telling me about likely disability, permanent for the rest of his life. They were telling me about significant cognitive delays and just really pushing me on trying to make an abortion decision quickly before I approached the state's legal cutoff in a way that they were just implying that my son is going to be so messed up. My son was going to be so disabled, there's no way that I could ever want him. And that's hard enough to hear as a mama who loves her baby, who wanted her baby, whose baby was completely planned. But it hurts so much more being a disabled woman and the lack of awareness on my doctor saying essentially to me, there's no way you could love this disabled, messed up thing. I just couldn't even believe that he could say those words to me, knowing that I'm sitting across from him with permanent blindness. And I realized that everything God had taught me opened my eyes to through IVF and birth control, even allowing me to stay blind when all the doctors said that I wouldn't. He moved all of that textbook knowledge, all of that head knowledge to a heart knowledge. And I was ready to fight. I couldn't be lied to by my doctor. I knew that my life wasn't at risk. I knew that my son had value, even if he was going to be stillborn, like they told me was very possible. Even if he was going to be cognitively delayed, even if he was going to have bags and tubes and wires and scanners and all these things that a normal, able body mom doesn't feel like she could handle now I had to handle with blindness. It didn't matter. He was my baby and I was going to take care of him. And it was, it was a long, long time until they had a diagnosis for me. And the shocking part is that as soon as I hit that state legal cutoff, then what will you do when it was. It was 20 weeks at the time. This was before the Dobbs decision. Yeah, it was actually. Dobbs was actually being brought to the courts at the same time I was going through this. So I had no relief from this subject. It was in the news, everybody was talking about it. I was being harassed about having an abortion that I didn't want. My doctor even called me at home to talk to me about abortion. He just wouldn't let it go. But then as soon as the hospital couldn't make money off selling an abortion anymore, they dropped it. They completely dropped the discussion. And they had a diagnosis for me that was non serious liver calcifications. And they went away on their own. And my son is completely, perfectly healthy and fine.
- [34:11]
Ali
So when it was no longer legal for you to have an abortion anymore, they told you that the diagnosis was actually fine and something that could resolve itself?
- [34:20]
Chelsea Painter Davis
Yes.
- [34:21]
Ali
Wow. And it did.
- [34:23]
Chelsea Painter Davis
By his first birthday, his liver calcifications were completely gone. They didn't have to do surgery, he didn't even have to take a pill. They went away on their own. They completely dissolved, which in that first appointment we asked the doctor, is there any way your ultrasound machine is wrong? He said, absolutely not. I said, is there any way this abnormality can go away on its own? He said, absolutely not. And that's exactly what happened. And I was able to push back on him, to shut out all that just evil, honestly evil for a doctor to come in A room and tell a disabled woman that she doesn't want her disabled baby and she needs to kill him was because of everything God had put me through. Through knowing I grew up ivf, through being blind from birth control pills, all this preparation he had given me. I realized in that one moment that was all to save my son. And now I just look back on that time. It was such a dark place. I was so scared. I didn't know what was going to happen to my baby. I didn't know if I could take care of. I didn't know what to do. And now I realize that that pain was so much worse, so much worse than my blindness. Even though my blindness is forever. If I had to go blind to know how to save my son's life, I can't think of a better reason.
- [35:41]
Ali
Wow. And think about how many moms would listen to their doctor because they felt like, well, this is the responsible thing to do. I don't want my child in the womb. They might justify it like this. I don't want my child in the womb. Suffer. The doctor knows best. If I do it in the first trimester, it doesn't matter. They go through all of these justifications, and it kind of makes me wonder because a lot of the stories that we hear post Dobbs are, you know, I had to abort my child because of this diagnosis. I wonder how many of those women, and maybe we all would in this position, are almost convincing themselves and even like, exaggerating what the doctor told them and believing the worst case scenario of what the doctor said was possible in order to make themselves feel better about the decision that they made. When in reality, in many instances, it was maybe like yours, where it was a possibility that it was serious, but it ended up being something that could have been resolved. And I'm just sad thinking about how many toddlers and teenagers and adults we could have in this country had more women pushed back against their doctors and said, no, I'm gonna save. I'm gonna fight for my baby.
- [36:56]
Chelsea Painter Davis
Yeah. And even a lot of these women don't understand the science behind pregnancy. They don't understand the science behind fetal development. And so that's why I feel like God gave me such a gift, such a gift by having the weirdest hobby in School at 12 years old, that I would go up, I would get off the bus and I would go up, and instead of, like, playing video games or something with my brother and sister, I would get on pro life websites and read all about the baby and everything that was going on. That's such a gift from God. Because even I felt the pressure from the doctor when they were talking about my son. Even I was wondering, can I do this? Even I was asking this silly question like, is this going to put my health in danger if he's handicapped? And I really had to just sit in my room by myself and calm down and say, what do I know? What have I learned? And as soon as I started doing that, I realized that everything they told me, everything they were telling me was a lie. Everything was manipulation, everything was pressure. And I realized that because I was on Medicaid at the time with that pregnancy, they probably would make more money if I chose abortion than if I went through a very difficult, labor intensive, expensive birth for the hospital. And it just really, like, showed me exactly what was going on. And it gave me the strength to make my decision. And I found some support from my local pregnancy resource center of how I needed to navigate those complaints with the doctor because I had already told the hospital, hey, I told him no abortion. And he won't stop talking to me about it. Didn't matter. He came in and did it again.
- [38:34]
Ali
Wow.
- [38:35]
Chelsea Painter Davis
And I just didn't know how to break through with them. So getting the support from the local PRC of like, okay, Chelsea, you need to say it like this, because these are all. This is a pro abortion space that you're going into. And you can't just come in and say, I'm pro life and cry and then take you seriously. You need to know how to navigate, like, don't say I'm filing complaints, say I'm asking for a second opinion. Like, little tricks like that to get the medical staff to take you more seriously. So you're not just labeled the hysterical woman in exam room 12.
- [39:04]
Ali
Yeah. Wow.
- [39:05]
Chelsea Painter Davis
It was so helpful. And it's exactly what I needed. I knew what I had to do, but I needed my community and other pro life resources to just give me the strength to do it.
- [39:16]
Ali
And now you have how many children?
- [39:18]
Chelsea Painter Davis
I have two who run around. I am also 29 weeks pregnant.
- [39:23]
Ali
Oh, congratulations.
- [39:26]
Chelsea Painter Davis
So we. I have got a busy. I've got a busy, messy, very crazy house right now. But it's just, I just sometimes, like, really, on my son's first birthday, we were singing him Happy Birthday and I just sobbed. Yeah. I just couldn't stop crying because I was told that that was not going to happen.
- [39:44]
Ali
Yeah.
- [39:45]
Chelsea Painter Davis
And it just. It breaks my heart knowing that one day I'm going to have to tell him what happened. And that the doctor who was supposed to fight to save him thought it would be totally fine if he died.
- [39:58]
Ali
Yeah.
- [39:59]
Chelsea Painter Davis
And I just. I know that that will probably push my son in a good direction for how he views the world, for how he has compassion on other people, on especially people with disabilities. But it's just no mom should ever have to hear that about their baby.
- [40:18]
Ali
No, absolutely not. And I just am thankful for your courage. And I know that your son, even if he doesn't understand, is also thankful. Thankful and will be thankful for that fight. Last sponsor is Jace Medical. If you are in an emergency situation, you don't want to be without the medication that you need. Whether that's an antibiotic for a life threatening infection or whether you need an emergency round of ivermectin. You might need an EpiPen or Tamiflu. You need to get an emergency medical kit from Jace. Jace Medical offers you this stash of antibiotics and other items that you might need in an emergency situation. If you cannot get to this kind of medication through the traditional means, they also have something called a Jace daily case, and that is a year long supply of the prescriptions that you and your family rely on. We talk about making sure that we're prepared in a variety of ways, your food supply, etc. But you can also make sure that you are taking care of your family by preparing them medically. You can do that confidentially through the telemedicine process at Jace Medical. Go to Jace.com, use code ALI10 at checkout. You'll get a discount. Jace.com code ALI10. Can you tell us a little bit more about what it's like being a blind mom? Like, I love the just, just the sweetness and the sincerity and the fight and your story and going through all of these challenges. But you also have an awesome sense of humor and you kind of make light. You might have, like, make light of a lot of the challenges that you have, which, I mean, you kind of have to, because we're still called to, like, live a joyful life. So talk to us just about kind of like some of the practical parts of being a blind mom.
- [42:08]
Chelsea Painter Davis
Yeah, well, humor has always been my coping mechanism. Yeah, that's definitely gotten through a lot. I remember, like, when I first went blind and it had been a little bit of enough time for me to start making jokes. I told my dad, I was like, hey, dad, you know how you spent all that money on IVF and like, you're supposed to get a healthy baby from that? Maybe you could get A refund now, since my dad did not think it was funny.
- [42:30]
Ali
Yeah, he probably did it.
- [42:32]
Chelsea Painter Davis
I thought it was hilarious. And that is definitely how I get through a lot of these days, because I deal with all of the same challenges that every mom deals with. I just have to do it with a blindfold on. So, for example, my most popular reel on Instagram is me slipping in a puddle of pee from my son.
- [42:52]
Ali
Oh, yes. I think that's the first one that I saw from you too. Tell us what happened about you slipping in pee.
- [42:59]
Chelsea Painter Davis
Okay, so, of course, when you're setting up camera for Instagram, like, I'm a real mom with a real life. Like, I'm not running around filming myself all of the time. So me and my husband were thinking, like, what is, like, genuine to, like, what happens in my actual life? And during. While I was pregnant with my son, that is when my daughter, at, like, 20 months old, decided she was going to potty train. And she was. Her way of potty training was just stripping off all of her clothes and pooping wherever she wanted in the house.
- [43:27]
Ali
Oh, no.
- [43:28]
Chelsea Painter Davis
And because my husband worked all the time, like, I wouldn't know she'd pooped until I stepped in it. And then I'd have to be on my hands and knees at 36 weeks pregnant, cleaning up poop, hoping I got it all. So I have to FaceTime my mom and say, like, do you see any more poop in this living room? And she's like, well, hold the camera steady. I'm like, I'm on my hands and knees at 36 weeks pregnant. Like, I don't know what you want from me right now. I'm just trying to clean up all of this poop before my company comes over. And so we're like, how can we turn that into a real. And so we staged the reel and set it up, like, just what would normally happen. My son rips off his diaper. He pees on the floor. He runs away. I find it an hour later. But the trouble with the video is when we went to pretend to fall down in the pee, I actually fell down in the pee.
- [44:15]
Ali
Oh, my God.
- [44:16]
Chelsea Painter Davis
I stepped on the diaper. I slipped. I hit the ground so hard, I literally just called my husband. I'm like, I hope you got that take, because I don't want to do it again. Yeah, that was a real fall. Oh, my goodness. But luckily, my. My booty absorbed the whole thing, the whole fall.
- [44:32]
Ali
How do you. Like, how do you cook and all of that?
- [44:36]
Chelsea Painter Davis
Yeah. So believe it. Or not. Some things as a blind person are a lot easier than you think they are. And some things are, like, way harder. Cooking is one of the easiest things I do. Doing dishes, unfortunately, is one of the easiest things that I do. So I can't get out of it. Yeah. Transportation is the hardest thing that I have to figure out because I can't drive. I have two kids with car seats. I'm about to have a third kid in a car seat. I have to phone a friend because there's only so much you can take on the bus. There's only so much you feel safe taking on the bus. As a blind mom with now about to be three kids you're taking care of. So when my kid is homesick and they need to go to the doctor, that's really hard for me to figure out because I have to call someone to babysit the healthy kid. Then I have to call someone else who can fit me and the sick kid and the car seat in their car to take us all the way across town to go to the doctor. Like, it's a lot. There's so much that surprises you about being a disabled parent. You're like, this is really hard. But there's also a lot of community if you reach out and you just ask for help. Like, my church has stepped up so much to be there for me. I have a friend who takes me and my son to mom's group in the mornings while my daughter is at school. Just these amazing blessings that show up also with the disability. Because I think that so many times people look at an issue, like if they're pregnant in a crisis, or if they're disabled, or if they're having financial burdens, they're just like, oh, I have to do this by myself and I can never. I could never get that done. But like, what God says in Second Corinthians 12, verse 9, he says, My power is made perfect in weakness. Like, the point of our lives is not to be Superman. The point of our lives is to be weak and to be fulfilled by him and the blessings and the mercies that he gives us. So there are so many times where I'm like, oh, I could never. I'm never gonna be able to handle this. Like, what am I doing? Like. Like, who am I right now? Like, I'm a full time stay at home mom, and yet somehow I've become a pro life speaker and influencer. I'm like flying across the country telling my stories. I'm just. That should not be possible with a 4 year old, a 2 year old and a 29 week old in my belly, slowing me down and making me nauseous. But God has just shown up in so many ways. And that's what I really try to communicate to people on my platform. I'll get like devastating messages from people saying, well, I'm disabled and if I ever got pregnant, I would have to have an abortion because I could just never do it. That's so not true. That's not true. And it's heartbreaking because not only is that very possible, like there's no reason a disabled woman can't get pregnant. We have lives too. We have husbands, we have dreams for ourselves. What's devastating, beyond the fact that she would consent to an abortion, is that she doesn't believe in herself. She thinks that she is that inferior that she cannot endure, she cannot thrive in, throughout these weaknesses. And like I said, accept the blessings of God and really make it through. And so I really try to push out to people like, life is hard no matter who you are. You don't have to be blind for your life to be hard, but you can be sustained. You can keep going. Our lives are not about ourselves anyway. They're not about, about how happy we were on Tuesday, about how easy it was to get the dishes done. Our lives are for other people. Our lives are for God and we just have to not quit. We have to keep going. Because there are amazing blessings that show up unexpectedly, like my son. I love my daughter and I love my little girl who's coming. But my son's life is. There's just something about it because of what happened and this blessing that we have now because we, me and my husband, we chose like, no, we don't kill babies. That's just the mantra. We don't kill babies. And we trusted God. I said, I don't know how I'm gonna. I don't know how I'm gonna take care of tubes, wires, bags on this little boy. But I'm gonna do it because God gave me this baby. I'm gonna fight for him.
- [48:44]
Ali
Yeah. Wow. I love seeing God's just hand of redemption and your story and what Satan meant for evil and could have used for evil as you described. All of those moments of being ignored, of being persuaded in a way that, I mean, it really silenced you and really hurt you physically and emotionally. How God used that for not only your good and his glory, but also to save the life of your child and how he's continuing to use that, as you said, to give glory to himself. And that's one theme we see throughout Scripture. That God will stop at nothing to give himself glory, even if that means things happening to us or in our lives that we do not understand. And you are just a really beautiful example of that. So thank you. Thank you for your courage, and thank you so much for taking the time to come here and share your story. It's going to help a lot of people.