Joan and Jerry Campbell call their daughter the most special child in the world because of what they went through before bringing her home from the hospital.

Mary Hannah was born 24 weeks premature at 1 pound, 12 ounces.

Her lungs weren’t fully developed and she had a stroke when she was first born due to bleeding on her brain.

The amniotic fluid began leaking around Mary Hannah at about 19 weeks and doctors told Joan and Jerry their daughter had a 10 percent chance of living.

The first thing they did was pray their newborn daughter would survive.

“We stayed there and hoped she was in the 10 percent,” Jerry said. “There’s really nothing you can do but just be there and she made it.”

The Campbells were told if the blood from Mary Hannah’s brain were to dissolve back into her blood stream, she might have developed handicaps such as Cerebral Palsy.

Mary Hannah spent more than three months in the hospital and six weeks on a ventilator. However, Jerry and Joan were fortunate to not be faced with the decision to take her off the ventilator.

“Through everything she went through, she actually came out with no brain damage,” Joan said. “We did not come home on a monitor or anything like that.”

When she was brought home from the hospital, Mary Hannah progressed well and Jerry said they didn’t have to go through any extraordinary measures to protect her. She weighed 4 ½ pounds and for the first month slept on a pillow in her crib.

As she grew older, however, there were some late developments such as not walking until 20 months.

Joan and Jerry told Mary Hannah about the difficulties around her birth when she was about 5 years old, but didn’t understand what her parents were telling her.

“They’ve always referred to me as a miracle child,” Mary Hannah said.

She feels that with her story, God has given her a second chance to help people and change lives. To help influence her peers and those younger than her, she began babysitting at the age of 12, takes care of children and has been to Romania and Hungry on mission trips.

After spending two years at the University of Mississippi, Mary Hannah currently studies nursing at Hinds Community College. The way she was born spawned her love for children and hopes to become a school nurse or work in a neonatal intensive-care unit.

While November is National Prematurity Awareness Month, Joan and Jerry are proud of the women Mary Hannah has become.

“I could not be prouder. She’s like the most wonderful thing in our lives,” Joan said.

“She’s been a great child. She cares about people, never been in trouble, totally organized and studies hard,” Jerry said. “She’s just a good kid.”