Introducing NATAL: a new docuseries about having a baby while Black in the U.S.
Welcome to the NATAL Community Blog. If you’d like to contribute a piece (a personal story, an op-ed, or some other form of written work), please email hello@natalstories.com.
Gabrielle
“She had the baby, it’s a girl…I don’t know all the details, but it sounds like there were some complications.”
This was the text I received from my mother earlier this summer. My childhood best friend was pregnant with her first child, but the math simply wasn’t adding up. You see, I am a compulsive planner and had been brainstorming the perfect gifts for her Fourth of July weekend baby shower. But it was only June and the baby was due in August. So as I wiped my eyes and sat up in bed to read the text again and again and again, I knew that something had to be wrong. The baby was more than eight weeks early.
Soon after, I contacted my friend and rushed over to her house, where her mother and partner were sitting in the living room. Walking through the front door felt different this time. So much had transpired in a matter of days, and that transformation lived on in their faces and in the space itself. As we got settled on the couch, I realized the only person missing was her baby girl, who would remain in the NICU until her original due date.
Over the next eight hours, my friend would open up about how a routine prenatal visit to her private, Catholic hospital in Southern California almost turned deadly. Prior to her emergency induced labor, her blood pressure was abnormally high and she had developed preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication that causes hypertension, swelling in the feet and legs, and can even lead to early delivery of the infant and potentially death. According to the Preeclampsia Foundation, preeclampsia affects at least 5–8 percent of all pregnancies. In 2014, 7 out of 100 Black birthing women had preeclampsia/eclampsia, and continue to remain more susceptible to the condition than their white counterparts.
After hours of listening, asking questions and rapid Google searches, I still could not make sense of this. How did this happen? Why didn’t my friend even know the word ‘preeclampsia’ before she was rushed into emergency delivery? Why hadn’t her medical care support team discussed potential complications earlier? The thing is, my friend had been speaking up and advocating for herself throughout her entire pregnancy. She told nurses about her swelling, rapid weight gain, and something simply not feeling right for weeks. They brushed it off, told her that all of this was “normal,” and that she had nothing to worry about. Why didn’t they listen to her? How had my friend’s once joyful and easygoing pregnancy suddenly become part of a devastating statistic of Black birthing parents?
In the midst of my confusion, heartache, and gratitude for my friend and her baby girl making it through this harrowing experience alive, I took to Twitter:
The virality of this tweet confirmed once again that Black pregnant and birthing parents have long been suffering in silence. So many people could identify with Beyoncé (who also suffered from preeclampsia during her 2017 pregnancy) and Serena Williams’ recent birthing testimonies shedding light on the gross disparities afflicting Black birthing parents; but where could non-celebrity Black parents and loved ones go to take up public space to share, to mourn, to listen, to celebrate, to feel seen, to feel safe?
Before I left my friend’s home that night, she said, “Gabie, you really need to do something about this. What happened to me is happening to other Black moms and parents. We aren’t talking about it and it’s really, really, really scary. It’s just not right.” And she was right. As a full-time media producer, I knew that I had the capacity and tools to at the very least help more people talk about Black parents’ birthing experiences; to bring these stories to dinner tables, to hospital waiting rooms, to doula centers, even to the Halls of Congress; but I knew that I did not want to go about this journey alone. The only thing I was sure of that evening was that I wanted to create a dedicated space for Black pregnant and birthing parents and those of us in community with parents, in collaboration with a team committed to centering Black people’s lived experiences in audio storytelling.
Martina
“The doctor came over to the bed. ‘This is what we’re going to do to get this placenta out,” he said, and explained how he would remove the placenta that was still inside me. I had just finished giving premature birth to twins, one still born and one with a severe heart condition. I was traumatized. But, I had the presence of mind to reply,
‘You’re going to do what? Won’t I feel that? Shouldn’t I take pain killers?’
‘You’re right. Let me give you some.’
“Martina, when I tell you he didn’t even wait 15 minutes for the medication to kick in. He reached his hand inside me and I hollered. He didn’t care about me. I was devastated. I guess I should have filed a complaint, huh? I didn’t even think about it at the time.”
My mother birthed four children in seven years, and every year on our birthdays, she tells us the story of how we came into the world. It usually starts a day or two before our actual birthdays with something along the lines of, “This time 29 years ago I was packing my baby bag and vacuuming the house to get ready to bring you home.” Her intention is always to celebrate us, to remind us that our being born was a big deal. And so while she paints each story with love and happiness, they are also colored by devastation and trauma. After a high-risk pregnancy carrying my sisters, she went into labor on New Year’s Eve, eight weeks before her due date. Her OBGYN was not on call for the holiday and a doctor she never met before, the one in the story above, delivered my sisters, one stillborn.
Years later, two days before delivering my brother, her doctor informed her that he weighed 7.5 lbs. He was actually 11.5 lbs. She delivered him vaginnally, endangering them both. And though her pregnancy and delivery with me, her oldest, was smooth, the hospital told my mom she was all clear to breastfeed when in fact she didn’t produce enough breastmilk to do so. After a few days she felt something was wrong and that I wasn’t getting enough to eat. She took me to the doctor, and later the hospital. She was right, and I was malnourished.
Growing up I just assumed that my mother was misfortune prone. In reality, she had done all of the right things. She selected OBGYNs from the teaching hospital in New York State where we lived at the time. She read feverously, and asked tons of questions. Only as an adult did I put her stories into context. After I had my own experiences with medical practitioners who dismissed or talked down to me; after I heard countless instances of family, classmates, friends, and celebrities’ overcoming pregnancy and birthing complications; after I learned about our country’s dark history with medical racism and malpractice, did I realize that my mother was a victim of a medical system designed to fail her.
So, when I saw Gabrielle’s tweet, I knew we had to do something and sent her a DM.
The statistics are staggering: In the United States, mothers die at a rate 4–5 times their developed, Western peers. Black women face bleeker numbers; according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we are 243 percent more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth related issues than white women. The World Health Organization estimates that Black expectant and new mothers in the U.S. die at about the same rate as women in countries such as Mexico and Uzbekistan. Black parents are also more likely to face complications directly associated with pregnancy and/or childbirth, such as preeclampsia, fibroids and physical weathering. And while there’s less clinical research about trans and non-binary parents, individual anecdotes detail the dangers faced due to general lack of preparedness and training for non-cis births.
Of course, success stories exist, both interpersonal and political. For example, more families are opting to use Black doulas, whose expertise, studies show, result in better birthing outcomes. At the state level, lawmakers are beginning to address the gross discrepancies in favor of Black lives. In the past two years, New York launched a taskforce on race-based maternal mortality and California passed legislation requiring greater transparency on maternal mortality rates and prenatal healthcare providers to complete implicit bias training. Earlier this spring, U.S. Representatives Lauren Underwood (D-IL) and Alma Adams (D-NC) launched the first-ever Black Maternal Health Caucus “to raise awareness and develop legislation to combat disparities in maternal health outcomes experienced by Black women.”
But at the core of these policies and statistics are people: survivors, loved ones, and parents across the gender spectrum with intimate stories about their birthing experiences. From access to care, to interactions with medical practitioners, to navigating policies and identifying the best birthing space, these stories have the power to educate the public, medical practitioners, and lawmakers alike.
Together, we have decided to launch NATAL, a multi-part docuseries about having a baby while Black in the United States.
The first installation of this multi-season podcast will explore how space influences the birthing experience. We emphasize space to confront the irony of places where Black people bring life into this world while too often having their humanity robbed in the process. Using birthing spaces as a lens, we aim to explore the variety of social, political, economic, and personal interactions Black families have within our nation’s medical system, as well as highlight the resources available to families affected by this crisis, or looking to begin their parenthood journey.
NATAL is grateful to count Black Mamas Matter Alliance as a thought partner for season one. “We know the statistics around Black maternal health, but it’s important that we don’t lose sight of the faces, the voices of women — their families, their communities — who are living and, in many cases, dying by these numbers. This docuseries will give us the opportunity to do just that,” says Angela Aina, Interim Executive Director, Black Mamas Matter Alliance.
Our goals are to support existing advocacy and activism by facilitating digital and in-person conversations to:
Empower Black pregnant and birthing parents with information and resources to navigate their parenthood journeys;
Press medical systems to drastically reduce the Black maternal mortality rate and Black birthing parents’ high rate of medical complications;
Create space for Black parents to share the lessons learned from becoming parents within a supportive community; and,
Provide our audience with the tools and language to amplify the national conversation about Black parents’ birthing experiences.
We hope that you will join us on this journey to birth new conversations, new ideas, and tangible solutions centered on the health, safety, and well-being of Black pregnant and birthing parents in the United States. Whether you are pregnant, child-free, or know someone who is about to embark on a birthing journey, we invite you to support NATAL. Know a parent with a story? Nominate them, here. To stay connected and receive updates on the April 2020 podcast launch and live event schedule, please visit www.natalstories.com, and follow us on Instagram and Twitter at @natalstories.
Gabrielle Horton (@gabhorton) is an independent media producer based in Los Angeles, CA, and co-executive producer of NATAL.
Martina Abrahams Ilunga (@MARTINTAdotA) is an entrepreneur and producer living in Brooklyn, NY. She’s the co-founder and CEO of You Had Me at Black, and co-executive producer of NATAL.
NATAL is made possible by individual donations and grant support from the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism and Economic Hardship Reporting Project. You can make a contribution to NATAL, here.
We’re accepting submissions to the NATAL Community Blog. If you’d like to contribute a piece (a personal story, an op-ed, or some other form of written work), please email hello@natalstories.com.