My husband and the OB/GYN assigned to me were arguing over my laboring bed as contractions seized my body. The fetal heart monitor was loud and my baby’s heartbeat was strong; the sound was a counterpoint to the doctor’s warnings:
“Your wife has a fever. Do you want to do your baby in? Do you want to kill your son?”
“What a stupid question. Can we take this outside? My wife is in labor and you aren’t helping.”
A nurse lingered by my door to take in the interaction, but at the time remained silent. A doula was present as well, shocked, and also silent.
I was terrified. This was my first delivery. My first full-term pregnancy. Despite the childbirth education classes, the books I read, the wide-ranging advice from birthing veterans, I felt conflicted, unsettled, and scared. My own OB was on vacation. I didn’t know this doctor. I had labored for 7 hours and she wanted to do a C-section because she opined that my labor wasn’t progressing fast enough. I declined. Her frustration with my decision was palpable and transformed our interactions from distant and amiable to potently hostile.
Now, my fever (of 99º, not a cause for concern according to the quietly observing nurse on duty) became the tool to wedge us from our birth plan and place me on the operating table. Now the record would declare that I was endangering my child by continuing to labor with a “fever”—a clear sign of infection.
This moment that we had longed for became tainted with rancor and bullying. The doctor who shouted at my husband and accused us of wanting to kill our child would be cutting me open. Her hands would hold him first.
The epidural rattled my body into constant shivering for the next six hours, so I was restrained on the operating table. When Judah was born, quiet with soulful and large, and open! brown eyes, no one brought him to my chest. I didn’t hold him for 7 hours. I was rolled instead to a small, pitch-black room, where I shivered, a damp washcloth placed in my mouth for hydration? and wondered where my husband and child were.
Last week was Black Maternal Health Week. The week always gives me pause; hushes me. I celebrate the efforts to close the racialized gap in infant and maternal mortality that causes Black women to die at 3–4 times the rate of white women in this industrialized and wealthy country, no matter their educational level or economic class. The deadliness of imbedded racism in medical practice is potentially lethal from the start. I know that mine is a story with a happier ending because my baby and I lived. We are still statistics because of the doctor-centered, hostile environment of birthing, and the lack of observing even the lowest standards in fostering the mother and baby (which encourages lactation, boosts the immune system of the baby, and combats post-partum depression). Heck, I was put in a closet after surgery and birth.
My birthing story became my trauma, and it was extremely difficult to for my body to unclench from the familiar fear of physical violation. Depression followed; trouble nursing followed; my relationship with my husband suffered.
It doesn’t have to be this way. It, in fact, is not this way for Black women not living in the United States (I am overjoyed that Rihanna is having her baby in Barbados! Even Serena Williams could not escape combative ambivalence during labor that could have cost her her life!). I have been a Board Member of Abide Women’s Health Services for two years because I want to envision a world where it is commonplace for Black women to receive prenatal care that leads to babies born alive with healthy birthweights, a thriving first year. Black women deserve to be thoroughly supported. We should not be dying here.
Abide has an easy-access clinic in South Dallas—an historically underserved area with high pregnancy rates. Its economic depression and racial composition are the results of the deliberate ghettoization and divestment conceived by white businesses and city government through zoning, redlining, and strategic bombing and terrorization. The clinic is in the right place, providing culturally competent care for birthing people, free of judgement.
If you’re in the Dallas area, I invite you to come to Abide’s first fundraiser, taking place on May 3rd—it’s a speakeasy! If you can’t come, I invite you to donate. And if you’re curious, please ask me about what Abide is currently doing and hopes to do in the future to turn the tide on mortality rates for Black women and babies.
Thank you for sharing your story. And for telling me about Abide! I'm so happy to be an occasional supporter of the amazing work they're doing!