
Although Rubia Ferreira and Tyler Campbell planned to marry each other in the city they met, Okinawa, Japan, after welcoming their first child, who was due in February 2018, a series of unexpected events changed the couple’s plans. In November 2017, the pair were visiting Campbell’s family in Alabama when Ferreira began experiencing abdominal pain at 24 weeks pregnant. She was rushed to the University of Alabama at Birmingham hospital, where she was diagnosed with HELLP syndrome — “a series of symptoms that affect pregnant women, including the breakdown of red blood cells and elevated liver enzymes” — and rushed into an emergency C-section surgery to save her and her baby’s lives.
Ferreira pulled through the surgery, as did her and Campbell’s first child, a…