One of my dear friends shared her birth story with me and gave me permission to share it while keeping her identity anonymous as these events are still traumatic for her.
After delivering her first and only child she was bleeding a lot. The ob/gyn who delivered her baby was eventually able to stop the bleeding but stitched up her tear poorly and the sutures ruptured while she was still in the hospital.
She was in a lot of pain and couldn't walk but the hospital was trying to discharge her anyway. They tried to send her home with a bleeding vagina and Tylenol. This took place in a prominent hospital in the Los Angeles area a few years ago.
It wasn’t until a black nurse saw her condition and sent her to the operating room where a surgeon told her the stitches were unrepairable and she would have to heal without them. It took a really long time to heal and exacerbated her postpartum depression 😔
Recent studies have found that doctors are twice as likely to underestimate Black patients’ pain compared to their white counterparts, and are less likely to prescribe the necessary medications or treatments.
The trauma and pain my friend experienced made it extremely hard for her to care for her newborn 👶🏾 Bonding activities like breast feeding felt nearly impossible 🤱🏾
Her daughter is now in elementary school, and to this day she is afraid to have another baby because of what she went through. Unfortunately, her story is not uncommon.
It’s easy to tell ourselves that these things only happen to people in other cities or states, that it only happens to people we don’t know, but it's happening to our friends and the people in our communities everyday.
We have a black maternal mortality crisis in this country and it’s not going to be the courts who fix it, not the justices in their robes. It will be us, the people. If we speak up for one another and hold each other accountable, I hope change will come.
As pelvic health physical therapist who works with pregnant women and postpartum mom's this issue is extremely close to my heart. We need to take better care of Black mother's and mother's in general. As an ally of the black and brown community it is my duty to speak up and shed light on these injustices.
References:
Black maternal and infant health, Owens & Fett 2019. American Journal of public health
Racism, African American Women, and Their Sexual and Reproductive Health: A Review of Historical and Contemporary Evidence and Implications for Health Equity. Prather et al 2018 Journal of Health Equity
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