Zella Jackson Price meets daughter she was told died at birth in 1965

“I can’t wait to hold my baby,” said gospel singer Zella Jackson Price. “I want to get that feeling when my child’s breath hits my chest for the first time.”

She spoke as if referring to the maternal bonding that takes place immediately after giving birth. But this “baby,” Melanie Diane Jackson, is 49 years old.

Jackson Price, 76, was about to meet the daughter she didn’t know existed until several months ago. 

In 1965, Zella Jackson (before she became Price) was rushed to Homer G. Phillips Hospital. Seven months pregnant, she delivered a baby girl she named Diane. Doctors told her an hour later that her daughter was unlikely to survive.

It was the second time in as many years that Jackson had given birth to a premature child. The first was a boy who weighed less than two pounds. Sadly, he passed away not long after being born.

Baby Diane was 2.3 pounds. In a matter of hours, her body weight dropped to 1.9 pounds. Hours later, Jackson Price was informed by a nurse that her daughter had passed away.

“I experienced the same sinking feeling when they told me my son died, so I didn’t question it,” Jackson Price said.

To this day she doesn’t know the details of how the life-altering miscommunication took place, but believes the hospital’s decline had something to do with the tragic mix up.

“I was told stories of them delivering the wrong bodies to funeral homes, so who knows?” Jackson Price said.

“I left that hospital thinking another one of my babies had died. I felt that sense of loss, and I was heartbroken. But I did what anyone else would do – I went home and went on with my life.”

Part of that life included having three more babies.

‘Y’all always will be family’ 

“You know, I will never forget the sound of that ‘bing!’ on my phone when a message came through at 4 o’clock in the morning.” Jackson Price said. “I can still hear it right now, ‘bing!’”

It was the Facebook messenger alert.

“My name is Mahiska Mae Jackson, and my mother’s name is Melanie Diane Jackson,” the message read. “She thinks that you’re her mother, and I want to know if you’re my grandmother.”

Mahiska, her twin sister Malika and brother Samuel had decided that they would try to find their mother’s birth family as a special gift for her 50th birthday.

They started the search in September in 2014 to give themselves enough time before November 25, 2015. Jackson Price’s son Harvey Price got involved.

Thanks to Facebook, things moved faster than expected. They had Jackson Price send off her DNA and told Melanie that they needed her DNA for a school project.

“We had been regularly communicating with them over the course of all of this, and they were just such wonderful children,” Harvey Price said of his new nieces and nephew. “We told them that no matter what the DNA says, y’all are still and always will be family.”

The DNA was 99.999999997 percent conclusive that Melanie was baby Diane, born – and allegedly deceased – on November 25, 1965.

The Jackson children, all college-aged, filmed the big reveal. They sat Melanie down to meet  her mother and five siblings via the social networking site Oovoo.

“I love you, I forgive you,” Melanie said, overwhelmed with emotion, while using sign language.

She lost her hearing at the age of two because of complications from a combination of childhood illnesses.

The video went viral, garnering nearly two million views.

“People may think that I’d have hard feelings about not seeing my child grow up – especially when she was right here in St. Louis for so many years,” Jackson Price said. “Now I wish more than anything that she was with me and I had raised her, but I’m just so happy that she’s alive. To God be the glory!”

After growing up in the St. Louis area with foster parents, Melanie moved to Oregon when her own children were toddlers and never returned.

A GoFundMe account was set up to fund Melanie, Mahiska, Malika and Samuel’s trip to St. Louis.  They surprised Melanie again, letting her know that she would be going to St. Louis in April to meet her family.

“The only downside is that my husband didn’t live to see all of this,” Jackson Price said. “He would have been so tickled to meet her – I mean truly tickled.”

‘Heal that pain’ 

“There she is,” Harvey Price said, as his sister came walking out of the gate at the airport on August 9.

She is almost the spitting image of their mother.

Everybody cried as Price and Melanie hugged.

“I hated to see how much pain she was in because of it, and we wanted to do something about it and help her heal that pain,” Mahiska said. “And it came true today.”

“All the glory goes to God,” Samuel said. His grandmother – whom he had never met – had a nearly identical reaction just days before.

Melanie kept signing and saying how happy she was.

As they waited for Malika’s plane to arrive, Jackson Price was at home anticipating locking eyes with her daughter for the first time.

“When I saw the SUV approaching the house, I just started swelling up,” Jackson Price said. “I walk with a limp, but when she got out of that car, I was almost ready to run to meet her.”

Mother held daughter so tight that they almost lost their balance.

“She said, ‘Mommy,’” Jackson Price said.

They stayed with Jackson Price for several days, getting to know their new family.  She learned that though Melanie was told that her mother abandoned her, she was placed with a loving foster family.

“It reminded me of Moses,” Jackson Price said, “when they put him in the basket and he floated down to the king’s palace. My baby ended up in a home where she was treated like a queen.”