Black Maternity

Being pregnant is a beautiful thing, it’s also a stressful thing and sometimes even terrifying. For many black women, the fear that comes with pregnancy is heightened by the simple fact that of being black.

I’ve had this talk with many of my girlfriends and women in my family. All of stories have a similar undertone to them. All of our stories have one or more instances where we were not being heard or cared for how we should have been.

I’ve for sure have had many instances where I have been neglected and mishandled during my pregnancies. I can think of a few off hand. When I was pregnant with my second child, the doctor would see me for 3 minutes tops. It was always cold and very quick. This caught up with her because one time, after one of my ultrasounds, she came into the room for 3 minutes and that was it. I received a phone call a few days later saying that I needed to go see a specialist for my son. They wouldn’t tell me anything other than and it’s was on a Friday. After calling them multiple times, crying and pleading they tell me what is going on over the phone, they told me my son didn’t have half of his brain, stomach, and heart. I was devastated and demanded a reason as to why they are barely telling me this. I asked to speak to her but they kept telling me she was unavailable and that I would have to wait until the following week.

After hours of going back and forth with her staff, she finally gave me a call. She told me that she did not look at the ultrasound notes from the technician when I was there. She said she barely decided to look at them and that the notes stated what was seen during my last visit. From this she decided without trying to contact the ultrasound tech, that she would have her staff call me and send me off to someone else. But after I bought up the fact that I had many ultrasounds and nothing was ever said about missing organs she decided to look at all of them. After looking at my ultrasounds she determined my baby did in fact have all of his organs. A simple task. I was told to “relax” over the weekend until the final confirmation from the ultrasound tech, who was out of the office at that time.

Doctors aren’t listening to us. There’s a lot of pre-judging that definitly goes on and it needs to be addressed.

Serena Williams

With my son that I just had, I went into labor pretty fast. It was completely natural, something I was not prepared for mentally. I was in the most pain I ever been in with no real lesson on how to deal with it. I screamed, cried and couldn’t stop moving my body back and forth. I couldn’t stop moving my legs. I went into labor so fast that my midwife couldn’t be there in time so I had to have a random male doctor. During my labor, this doctor told me that I need to stop kicking his nurses as if I was trying to beat them up. Luckily the nurses understood that wasn’t the case. My thing is why would you say that? I’m in labor, crying and trying to get through something I did not mentally train for. Why is there a comment about me fighting nurses? Why was that necessary?

There’s many other stories throughout my pregnancies and labor and deliveries but if I went through them all, we would be here all day. But maybe that’s what we need.

Often black women are neglected. Medical professionals often think that when we have pain, it’s not “that bad”. We have to fight to be taken seriously and for some black women by the time they are taken seriously it’s too late.

There’s many stories of us being neglected during our pregnancies and labor, which result in us dying. The countless news stories of young black women dying after birth is terrifying and heartbreaking. It’s not just when we are pregnant either, it’s with anything. One time after I had my second son my toe would go completely numb and I wouldn’t know why. It was very concerning to me because I never had any issues like that before and it would sometimes be painful. I went to a doctor, he looked at my toe for a second and said “you seem fine” and that was my appointment. I had a friend who lost 30 pounds during her pregnancy be told that she wasn’t really that sick until she actually threw up in the doctors office. Only then did the doctor say “Oh, you really are sick, let’s bedrest you.”

I’ve known women who had to go to more doctors and appointments than you can count on two hands just to get a diagnosis. They had to be told they are fine 100 times before one doctor said “okay, I hear you”. One of the craziest stories I watched recently…This black woman told her story about how she complained about painful stomach issues amongst other issues and was told she was being dramatic and that she was fine numerous times. She finally found a black women doctor. This woman had a 35 foot tapeworm in her stomach and it had laid so many eggs in her stomach that if that doctor didn’t catch it, they don’t know what would have happened. How insane is that?!

My hope, is that one day we don’t have to jump through hoops and basically be dying on a hospital bed to be taken seriously. There needs to not be this bias narrative that black women are dramatic and that we can handle more pain than other women of different races. We are just as delicate and should be treated as such.

Until then, if you feel something is wrong, don’t take their “you’re okay” for an answer. Fight for your life to be taken seriously. Call them out on their bias. Have them put in writing that they are refusing to help you, refusing to send you to where you need to go, refusing to help you find a specialist. Unfortunately, we have to do these things until they get to a point where they check themselves and each other.

Do you have an experience where you were neglected and not taken seriously medically? Please share your stories.