NYC native | Fine-art photographer | Writer | Violinist | Cinephile | Creator of The Vinyl Bridge | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Finding out you’re going to be a mother is like accepting one of the most prestigious jobs in the world, but for women in the athletic industry, it’s one that also comes at a very expensive price point.
The Indiana-born 29-year-old Dallas Wings player started her professional career in 2013 and six years later, after becoming a four-time WNBA All-Star, wife, and mother, spoke her truth via Twitter last weekend.
Athletic companies don’t seem to care about Black mothers and athletes like Allyson Felix and Skylar Diggins-Smith refuse to be silent about it any longer. Skylar, who gave birth to her first child in April, first announced her pregnancy last October nearly two months after finishing out the five-month season.
Since then, she has taken maternity leave to focus on her family and received backlash from internet trolls and sports fans alike as a result of her absence. But Skylar had a classy clapback for her critics and opened up about that she had been hiding from the world for months:
“I played the ENTIRE season pregnant last year! All star, and led league (top 3-5) in MPG….didn’t tell a soul.”
In the tweets, Skylar also revealed that postpartum depression had played a huge part in both her hiatus from the sport and her new journey as a mother. Although WNBA rules state that if a player becomes pregnant, they are entitled to half their salary and have all of their medical bills paid, it’s unclear if Skylar’s employers kept up their end of the deal because the athlete went on to say that she was offered “limited” resources for recovery.
Black women in American face the highest infant mortality rates. The amount of stress, disrespect, pressure, ridicule and health disparities that Black women are subjected to during and post-pregnancy, jeopardizing the wellbeing of our children and ourselves to be everybody else’s content and willing superhero mule 24/7 is fucking insane. Why can’t we too enjoy our pregnancies and be treated with care and respect?…
AMERICA IS FAILING ITS BLACK MOTHERS
For decades, Harvard Chan alumni have shed light on high maternal mortality rates in African American women. Finally, policymakers are beginning to pay attention.
Serena Williams knew her body well enough to listen when it told her something was wrong. Winner of 23 Grand Slam singles titles, she’d been playing tennis since age 3—as a professional since 14. Along the way, she’d survived a life-threatening blood clot in her lungs, bounced back from knee injuries, and drowned out the voices of sports commentators and fans who criticized her body and spewed racist epithets. At 36, Williams was as powerful as ever. She could still devastate opponents with the power of a serve once clocked at 128.6 miles per hour. But in September 2017, on the day after delivering her baby, Olympia, by emergency C-section, Williams lost her breath and recognized the warning signs of a serious condition.
She walked out of her hospital room and approached a nurse, Williams later told Vogue magazine. Gasping out her words, she said that she feared another blood clot and needed a CT scan and an IV of heparin, a blood thinner. The nurse suggested that Williams’ pain medication must be making her confused. Williams insisted that something was wrong, and a test was ordered—an ultrasound on her legs to address swelling. When that turned up nothing, she was finally sent for the lung CT. It found several blood clots. And, just as Williams had suggested, heparin did the trick. She told Vogue, “I was like, listen to Dr. Williams!”
But her ordeal wasn’t over. Severe coughing had opened her C-section incision, and a subsequent surgery revealed a hemorrhage at that site. When Williams was finally released from the hospital, she was confined to her bed for six weeks.
Like Williams, Shalon Irving, an African American woman, was 36 when she had her baby in 2017. An epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), she wrote in her Twitter bio, “I see inequity wherever it exists, call it by name, and work to eliminate it.”
Irving knew her pregnancy was risky. She had a clotting disorder and a history of high blood pressure, but she also had access to top-quality care and a strong support system of family and friends. She was doing so well after the C-section birth of her baby, Soleil, that her doctors consented to her request to leave the hospital after just two nights (three or four is typical). But after she returned home, things quickly went downhill.
For the next three weeks, Irving made visit after visit to her primary care providers, first for a painful hematoma (blood trapped under layers of healing skin) at her incision, then for spiking blood pressure, headaches and blurred vision, swelling legs, and rapid weight gain. Her mother told ProPublica that at these appointments, clinicians repeatedly assured Irving that the symptoms were normal. She just needed to wait it out. But hours after her last medical appointment, Irving took a newly prescribed blood pressure medication, collapsed, and died soon after at the hospital when her family removed her from life support.
Viewed up close, the deaths of mothers like Irving are devastating, private tragedies. But pull back, and a picture emerges of a public health crisis that’s been hiding in plain sight for the last 30 years.
This is THE exact reason why I’m scared out of my mind to have any kids for the future.
Let’s talk about it.
Now that the Black maternal mortality rate has come to the attention of law makers and even some presidential candidates and made headline news, the public is increasingly aware that the rates for Black women are three and four times higher than they are for White women. Yet U.S. media have pathologized the story, as though Black women, Black families, and Black bodies are to blame. Some Black women I’ve spoken with are now scared to get pregnant as if there is something broken in us.
Because our lives are so often framed in a “culture of poverty” narrative, I fear that we have internalized the problem and made ourselves the cause when the truth is we are being treated unfairly, disrespectfully, at worst criminally, or not treated at all. The recently published study, Giving Voice to Mothers, found that “mistreatment is experienced more frequently by women of color, when birth occurs in hospitals, and among those with social, economic or health challenges.”
In addition, patriarchy has shrouded birth in mystery. Start asking the mothers you know about their experiences. It’s stunning how little we share with one another. We are so used to questioning our intuition and the strength and beauty of our bodies, not just in appearance, but also in function. We internalize other peoples’ gestures and comments—even more so when those people are health care professionals. Now, I’m fairly used to being a Black woman in this world. I put on the necessary psychological armor when I leave my home. But who has time for all of that when they are in labor?
The birth of my first son, three years ago, went completely off script. For reasons that I have come to know are pretty much textbook, my low risk pregnancy resulted in extremely questionable actions on the part of those attending and an emergency c-section. My labor was harried, filled with people I didn’t know screaming at me. My doula, concerned with her status at the hospital, who knew I wanted a natural birth, persistently advised me to take an epidural. I agreed, and the epidural left me unable to move. One doctor slammed his forearm on top of my belly in order to force my son down as though I were a tube of toothpaste.
My delivery room had become a circus. There were people everywhere but no one to help me deliver. After the suction cup on my baby’s head failed repeatedly, I feared for his safety and finally asked for a c-section. By the time they rolled me into the OR, I had passed out completely from the trauma of the Zavanelli maneuver. My husband, advocating for our baby and me the entire time, was as traumatized as I was. Postpartum, I was told by someone in the hospital that I had a pelvis shaped like a man’s. I now know that comment was cruel and ridiculous. The worst part of our trial was that our son spent several days in the NICU as a result of his harrowing birth.
“There’s absolutely no reason why black women should be dying at the rate we’re dying,” Brittany Ferrell, a community activist and high-risk obstetrics nurse, says. “Just like state violence is allowing black folks to be shot dead in the street, and no one’s being held accountable or even having to atone for the death of black bodies, the same thing is happening in these medical institutions.” […]
More than 700 women die each year in the U.S. from causes related to pregnancy or childbirth. Black women have a maternal mortality rate three times higher than that of white women. At least 60 percent of maternal deaths are preventable.
From SELF magazine:
9 Organizations Working to Save Black Mothers
1. The National Birth Equity Collaborative (NBEC)
The NBEC is focused on overhauling the systems and structures that contribute to maternal deaths. “We’re not blaming moms or blaming women,” ob/gyn Joia Crear-Perry, M.D., founder and president of the NBEC, tells SELF. Instead, the NBEC is analyzing which large-scale issues are at the crux of black maternal mortality, then addressing them.
For instance, the NBEC provides racial equity training sessions to reduce implicit bias—a known factor that can cloud medical providers’ judgment when dealing with black pregnant and postpartum people. The NBEC also provides training and assistance for other organizations working on black maternal mortality. And to make sure these kinds of solutions will actually work, Dr. Crear-Perry is invested in gathering more comprehensive data not just on maternal deaths, but also on birth outcomes, trauma, and health in the postpartum period.
“We have not done a good job of counting,” says Dr. Crear-Perry, who is also a fellow of The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “Some of the solutions require us to [research] and get the real circumstances of people’s lives.”
As an example, Dr. Crear-Perry cites a 2016 American Journal of Public Health study analyzing the cases of 85 people who died during or within a year of pregnancy between the years 2010 and 2014 in Philadelphia. Just over half the deaths happened because of medical complications, and of those, most were due to cardiovascular issues—“one of those things you assume happens in pregnancy and you can’t control,” Dr. Crear-Perry says. But there were so many other causes of death that told a different story.
someone please link that video where the husband talks about how his wife died from internal bleeding after giving birth due to the hospitals negligence!
She went to the hospital to have her baby. Now her husband is raising two kids alone
“We walked in for what we expected to be the happiest day of our life. And we walked straight into a nightmare.”
In the beginning, there was a man, a woman and a song.
Frankie Beverly’s “Before I Let Go” blasted over the sound system at a birthday party when Charles Johnson saw Kira. In that moment, he did something very out of character. He began singing along, serenading the stranger at first sight.
“She just cracked this smile that was like from wall to wall, and it was history,” Charles remembered.
Ten years later, only one of them would be alive to share their love story and the conversation it sparked about mothers, medical care and racism.
Charles Johnson shares the tragic story of his wife Kira’s death hours after giving birth.
Charles’ informative interview with MadameNoire:
MadameNoire (MN): What happened to your wife was terrible. I’ve seen reports that she died from hemorrhaging, but ultimately that was caused by negligence, right?
Charles Johnson IV (CJ): I’ve learned so much about this over the past almost three years doing this work, and what I’ve learned is in a situation where a woman is having a cesarean section, and she is healthy and the baby is not in distress, the cut time from when they make their first should be between 12 or 15 minutes, give or take 3-5 minutes, depending on the situation.
In a situation like Kira’s, where she’s had a previous cesarean, you should add an additional 3-5 minutes to cut through the scar tissue, all in that same procedure. We’re talking 15-20 minutes in that ballpark. Would you like to take a guess on what the cut time was on my son?
MN: 10 minutes?
CJ: Less than two minutes.
MN: Wow, that’s crazy!
CJ: In the process, [the doctor] lacerated [Kira’s] bladder. That’s where she was bleeding from [Writer’s note: There were 3.5 liters of blood found in Kira’s abdomen just before she died]. There’s so many layers of this. The way this has been described by medical experts [when] they reviewed the records, is that what happened to Kira was not a medical tragedy, it was a medical catastrophe. The reality of the situation is that in a hospital like Cedars-Sinai, with a woman that’s healthy, postpartum hemorrhage is not uncommon. Things happen. It wasn’t necessarily that. It was the continued neglect. It was everything, it was the failure to utilize hemorrhage protocols that they have in the state of California.
MN: How are you coping with your wife’s death today, especially while raising small children?
CJ: It’s different. For me, honest to God, they really are the blessing. I’m so grateful. They’re just the coolest little dudes. They really have all the best parts of their mom. It’s hard. You hear these statistics and they’re so horrifying. Like I say all the time, there’s no statistic that can quantify what it’s like trying to tell an 18-month-old that his mommy’s never coming home. You can’t try and get your head around trying to explain to a son that would never know his mom, just how amazing she was.[…]
MN: What steps did you take following this catastrophe as far as filing a complaint against the hospital? I’m asking you this because I think sometimes people feel like they just feel powerless when you’re dealing with a system as extensive as the medical industry.
CJ: That’s an excellent point. That’s one of the things, too, that I hope to not only empower but also help people understand what they’re entitled to, and empower them from a patient advocacy standpoint, too. We did a couple of things. I think people who are concerned, who have had situations, whether it’s just in childbirth or just medical, they feel like they may be a victim of medical malpractice, two things are critical. If the situation or circumstances present themselves, file legal action, which we did. There is a lawsuit against Cedars-Sinai hospital and the doctors that are involved in this. Also, file a complaint, make sure that you file a complaint with the local medical board against the doctors.
I have this acronym that I use, which is just ACT. We’ve got to have accountability, compassion, and transparency. Those are the big things that I feel are missing in medicine today. We’re working hard to make sure there’s a priority and a focus on them.
MN: Tell me about the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act.
CJ: The Preventing Maternal Deaths Act is the first-ever federal legislation to help put an end to this maternal mortality crisis. What it will do is give the CDC funding to create what are called maternal mortality review committees in all 50 states.
What those maternal mortality review committees will do is any time a woman anywhere in the country dies as a result of childbirth, they will go in and investigate the situation and collect all the data, very importantly, in a standardized way. The reality of the situation is this is a very, very complex problem, and in order to fix it, we really have to understand all the root causes. People think to standardize the data, but what does that mean, and how does that have an impact?
I’ll give you an example. We talk about Kira’s case. It’s very clear that this is a cut and dry case of a woman that died from preventable causes related to childbirth. However, when you look at this from a data collection standpoint and a standardization standpoint, when you look at Kira’s birth certificate, it simply says that she died from hemorrhage/shock. It says nothing on her birth certificate about her even being pregnant.
I’ll just be honest with you too. We know that the United States leads the civilized world in women dying in childbirth. We know that African-American women are dying four times as much as their Caucasian counterparts. One of the things that I’m –just my personal opinion in my field, this is not backed up by any scientific data — but I’m concerned that once we start collecting real data in a standardized way, that the statistics may even be more severe. I think there are women that are still slipping through the cracks because of the way that there just hasn’t been a focus.
A lot of women are suffering in silence or they’re having complications that are catching up with them a couple of months down the road that are stemming from their pregnancy, but they’re not even being viewed as maternal mortality statistics. Once we’re really taking a look at this, I think we’re going to have some data. I’m hopeful that, even though it’s scary, I am hopeful that this is going to be an important first step in turning this all around.
MN: What advice do you have for fathers who are with their partners in labor and may recognize signs that something is going wrong? How should they communicate?
CJ: I think first and foremost what I advise everybody to do is be very informed about understanding your patient bill of rights. Every hospital, every healthcare provider has a patient’s bill of rights. That will tell you exactly that you are indeed entitled to a second opinion and under what circumstances they are.
Be relentless about your concerns. Try your best to stay cool, try your best to stay level-headed, but if you see something and you’re concerned about something, make sure you escalate it. Do your best to have a resource outside of the team that’s responsible at the hospital that you can call.
If there’s somebody at your significant other or wife’s office that you can reach out to, have that number programmed into your phone so if the doctors and the staff are telling you one thing at the hospital and you’re not comfortable with it, have a resource that you can reach out to. One of the things we’re working on, too, is making sure at our foundation that we can help. People have access to those things when those times are critical, but yeah, just be involved. Be aware. Advocate relentlessly, if you can.
The other thing is ask questions. I know that logistics don’t always permit, but if you can make those check-up visits, go. Ask questions so that you’re all on the same page. If you don’t make the visit, interview your wife or significant other when she gets home about exactly what the doctor said. Be clear who those doctors are. When you get to the hospital, understand what the chain of command is. If there’s a nurse, know who the supervising nurse is. If you’re concerned, don’t be afraid to escalate the situation by any means necessary.
the lack of people sharing this vital information proves the point that america truly does not care about the black woman.
Carol’s Daughter and the Mama Glow Foundation Announce ‘Love Delivered’ Doula Grants to Address Black Maternal Health
Posted Dec. 9, 2021
On Tuesday, Carol’s Daughter teamed up with the Mama Glow Foundation to commit $225,000 over the next three years to positively impact birth outcomes for Black families in need.
Carol’s Daughter CEO Lisa Price and Mama Glow Foundation CEO and world-renowned doula Latham Thomas came together to fund doula services and provide educational grants for aspiring birth workers through their Love Delivered initiative. The initiative was created in response to the Black birthing crisis impacting maternal mortality and poor birth outcomes.
After kicking off on Tuesday, Black birthing people can now apply for a grant to be matched with a Mama Glow-trained doula for complimentary doula support. The grant is accessible to pregnant or recently postpartum applicants located in NYC (Metro-Area), Miami, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., with other major cities to follow.
“My hope is that with this grant program, more Black birthing people are heard and supported, and most of all, lives are saved.”
Love Delivered aims to raise awareness about Black maternal health and inform 100 million people and directly engage 10,000 people to become advocates through event activations, maternal health forums, webinars, access to resources, and Love Delivered self-care gifting by 2024.
Jacqueline Woodson is one of my favorite authors. I’ve read a few of her novels—Another Brooklyn, Red at the Bone, Ever After—but never dived into her autobiography, Brown Girl Dreaming, published in 2014, until today.
Brown Girl Dreaming is Woodson’s memoir-in-verse, a window into her world as a child growing up between South Carolina and New York in the 1960s and 1970s, and trying to find her place within it. It’s written for a middle grade audience, but is fitting for older readers as well.
Here’s an excerpt:
Gifted
Everyone knows my sister is brilliant. The letters come home folded neatly inside official-looking envelopes that my sister proudly hands over to my mother. Odella has achieved Odella has excelled at Odella has been recommended to Odella’s outstanding performance in She is gifted we are told. And I imagine presents surrounding her. I am not gifted. When I read, the words twist twirl across the page. When they settle, it is too late. The class has already moved on. I want to catch words one day. I want to hold them then blow gently, watch them float right out of my hands.
Just call her Jacqueline “Lyrical” Woodson. Her writing is always this delightful.
You can always start again. Clean out your social media. Create a new account for your new taste in music. Study or work in a new city. Start socialising with new people. Choose a new signature scent and style and purge the outdated parts of yourself. If you don’t like where you’re at, but you don’t know what to do about it - try starting again.
After struggling to conceive for years, Carlos and Erica Morales were overjoyed (albeit a bit overwhelmed) to learn that they were expecting quadruplets. But tragedy struck when Erica passed away in January, just hours after giving birth to their four babies.
In an interview with People magazine, Carlos described welcoming their son and three daughters as “the best day of [his] life.” But roughly five hours later came “the worst day of [his] life,” he added. Shortly after delivering her babies via C-section, Erica went into hypovolemic shock, an emergency condition characterized by severe fluid loss, and ultimately, her heart stopped.
When doctors told Carlos the news, “I was shocked,” he recalled in the People interview. “I was devastated.” After a short time in the NICU, two of the quadruplets — Tracey and Carlos Jr. — got to go home. Babies Paisley and Erica joined them on March 11.
Carlos appeared on the TODAY show this week, along with Erica’s mother Sondra Bridges, to discuss life at home with the new babies. Holding the quads in their arms, they explained that they’re taking things day by day. “We’re just doing our best,” Carlos said, adding that the babies are healthy and growing every day.
As a warehouse supervisor, the dad was concerned about his ability to provide for four new babies on his income alone, so Erica’s best friend Nicole Todman set up a Facebook and GoFundMe page to help cover some of their expenses and share updates about the quadruplets. To date, the page has raised over $350,000 from friends, family, community members, and total strangers who were moved by the Morales’ tragic story.
Carlos told TODAY that he is “grateful” to everyone who donated to his family. Expressing her gratitude, mother-in-law Sondra added, “It’s funny how things turn out. Bittersweet, but at the same time, thanks to God, and the outpouring support of the public, it’s been phenomenal.”
While the road ahead will undoubtedly be difficult for the Morales family, Carlos is committed to being a good father to his children. As he told People, “These babies don’t know yet what blessings they have given me. They have given me four reasons to live.”
Awwww!
This was actually the first post that had me studying black mothers and postpartum mortality. It’s horrible how the rates are increasing each year.
Mmhmm. I have another post that touches more on Black maternal mortality here. We need solutions. I’ll add more updates soon.
As for this post, I saw it was circling a bit recently and looked for a “where are they now now” update. The Morales quadruplets will be 7 on Jan. 15, 2022, the anniversary of their mom’s passing. The pic below is from their 5th bornday.
I can’t get over the fact that one of them is named Erica 🥺
Around the time Miles [Davis] and I married, I had my hands in a trio of projects. The first two—a film with Richard Pryor and a TV movie based on the life of trailblazing educator Marva Collins—were filmed back-to-back. The last, a Broadway show with Liz Taylor, ended in a lawsuit. […]
In 1983, Liz’s production company, in conjunction with Zev Buffman, presented a stage “revival of The Corn Is Green. I played the main character, Miss Moffat, an English spinster teacher, and was the first Black actress to take on the role.
Critics excoriated the show, as well as my performance in it (I never could get down that British accent), but that had nothing to do with the small kerfuffle between Liz and me. Near the end of the show’s run, I—someone who had, up to then, never missed a single one of my scheduled performances—requested one night off to attend a tribute to Miles. When the show’s director would not grant me the time off, I took it anyway. I was subsequently—and unjustly, I might add—fired and replaced for the remainder of the production.
I promptly sued Liz’s production company for the earnings they still owed me. We shouldn’t have had to go to court. I tried to reason with Liz’s team, tried to come to an agreement that would’ve saved us all a headache. But the show had done poorly, and they seemed intent on recouping at least some of their losses. I heard Liz went through four lawyers in attempting to mount a defense, and she no doubt spent hundreds of thousands in fees.
As the court battle played out, many others in the industry stopped speaking to me altogether, simply because I’d dared to sue someone of Liz’s caliber. Let me tell you something, my dear: If the situation had been reversed, Liz would’ve sued my nylons off, do you hear me? I would’ve been down on Sunset Boulevard, living in a cardboard box and begging for my supper, and no one would’ve cared. I knew I had a strong case, and I intended to see it through. Once the suit was filed, Liz and I didn’t speak directly about it.
That changed years after the verdict. As I entered the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for an engagement, an attendant whispered to me, “James Earl Jones is having dinner in the back.” In Hollywood circles, folks knew how much James and I adored one another, ever since those days when we’d both played in The Blacks and Moon on a Rainbow Shawl. Before meeting my dinner companion, I stopped by James’s table to greet him. Not until I walked up did I realize that Liz Taylor was there with him.
We exchanged one of those fake double-cheek kisses, and she laughed as she said to James, “You know something? Cicely sued me.” She then turned to me and smirked, “And how much money did you get?” I raised my shoulders, thrust my nose heavenward, and announced loudly enough for the room to hear, “I was awarded more than a half-million dollars.” She just shook her head and grinned. Liz might’ve been Hollywood’s golden girl—but I claimed the golden egg.
