My Wife's Long "Pregnancy" with Triplets

I was speaking to my older sister last night about this and how my marriage failed. My wife when I met her was a beautiful girl, and I was Amish, going to a non-Amish church service at my cousin Fannie's house. She was my cousin Simon's girlfriend. But it was not till I left that I really interacted with her.

When I left the Amish after my 18th birthday in 1998, I moved into a trailer with my brother and this cousin. Every so often he was having bible studies with her and then sometimes she would call and he would not be available so I would talk to her. After a while, he broke off their relationship and told my brother and me that we can have her.

On Valentine's day 1999, I printed out a heart on my word processor that I had bought to type up my poetry. On it was the words Be Mine. A few days later she called me to have another bible study, and as she opened the bible, the heart fell out and she asked if it was me. Being that I was the only one that had a word processor at the time, it could have only been me, unless I did it for someone else, but I told her it was from me.

I would spend a lot of time with her that summer and then in the fall I left the state and was gone most of the next 6 months working in a chemical factory. After I returned, we ended up getting married in September of 2000.

Our first kids were a set of twins. After a few years, she was pregnant again, and it was again twins, but a few weeks later it was said that the one had reabsorbed the twin. She was born a twinless twin. Later my son was born. She did not want to check it as early as she did not want to know if there was a twin this time and be devastated by the news that she had lost a baby again.

Having 4 kids I worked full time, but my wife had genetic testing done on the children, as some had some delays in school and learning, and found that she and 2 of the girls had a chromosomal abnormality.

The abnormality was also found in my son, but in a different chromosome than the one that my wife and daughter had. His was in the 2nd chromosome, and my wife and daughters it was found in the 8th chromosome. The way I was told is that each person has 24 chromosomes, and in Downs syndrome kids, there is an extra chromosome. In my family, there was a partial deletion of the 2nd and 8th chromosome.

This affected my daughters more than my son, and we ended up getting a disability check from Social Security for them, and later also for my wife. Now a few years later my children were taken away from me, and I will write an article about that at some point, but for now, let's fast forward a few years, we never got my two youngest children back from my aunt who still has temporary custody of those two. The twins however were returned before the end of the year.

Ten years after my son is born, my wife started telling everyone that would listen that God had untied her tubes and got her pregnant. And it was not just a singleton, she would talk about it being triplets. At one point she started believing that the one twin that was living with us could speak to the angels. That was all that she needed to "confirm" her delusions.

She started having me take her to the ER at 2-3 in the morning to tell them that she had miscarried one of the babies, but there were still 2 in there. She had her period blood with her to show to the nurses, saying it was a miscarriage. They said they did not want to see it, and that she was not pregnant. She also would have this twin sit on the porch outside waiting on my aunt to come to drop off the other children, even though we had not spoken to my aunt in years, and she lives about 500 miles away.

In many ways, I think this is child abuse, even though she herself was mentally ill, the way that she was having her daughter confirm these wild delusions and putting her in this mental anguish of thinking her brother and sister were going to just show up can't have been good for my daughter.

One day I was at the eye doctor with her, and across the street is a charity store. I went in and looked around, and then after she got out of the doctor's office, I also went back into the store with her. There were a few blankets and stuff that we could use, but I was not thinking we needed them too badly. But she loaded up with about 30 dollars of stuff and went to check out.

Unfortunately, my bank account was overdrawn as my insurance payment had come through the night before so when I ran the card it was declined. I had a few dollars in my pocket so I figured I would buy a few items and leave, but my wife had started talking to a mother of twins, which was normal to us both, having twins ourselves, we would talk to parents of twins from time to time, so I did not think anything of it, but moments before the card was declined she had told this woman that she was pregnant with multiples and that we lived in a cold house. We needed these blankets for those babies that are on the way.

Now I did not want to make a scene. I wanted to get out of there but one lady that heard this conversation wanted to help, and told me not to put the stuff back, and went out to her car and got the money to buy these poor babies these blankets. How could I tell these ladies that this pregnancy was not real? And do so without getting my wife mad at me. In the end, I just accepted the gift, thanked them, and left, not wanting to make matters worse. But I was mortified. I did not want to be a party to a scam. I was in college and not working, but the social security was enough to cover our bills. Things were tight sometimes, but it was not like I needed it that badly.

After the nine months came and went on her alleged pregnancy, I asked my neighbors if they had heard anything on what she was saying. I was told that she was still telling them that she was still pregnant and that "they will come out when it's safe."

At one point I put an app on her phone to record her calls and had her sister call her to see if she can convince her to abandon this pregnancy talk. It did not work.

She ended up leaving with my one daughter that she could control and left me with the one that she hated. She told that one that they have a "hate-hate" relationship. The majority of the money that we were getting was from her and the one girl. The other girl was getting 100 dollars and that was not enough to pay the rent, so I ended up raising money through Facebook that first month and then after a couple of months, I took her and put her in a group home. She is now in college and doing well.

The other day she asked me about what town my aunt lives in, and I told her, and one day I would like to go back up there and get to know them again, but for now, I'm trying to survive myself.

Thanks for reading,

-Joseph Slabaugh