The Washington Post - 05.09.2019

C8 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 , 2019

We’d j ust spent our Saturday at
the “Momference,” a gathering of
millennial mothers of color in its
second year that feels as intimate
as a family reunion, as celebra-
tory as a 21st birthday and as
necessary as a therapy session.
It was a bottle-popping escape
from the onslaught of bad news
about black women and pregnan-
cy that has permeated the head-
lines for the past two years — a
timeline that unfortunately
matches up perfectly with my
own maternal health cycle, mak-
ing my first birth feel like a trial
by fire, and my second pregnancy
at 38 — well, I’m still trying to
figure this one out. According to
the media and a raft o f dire stats, I
should be preparing for battle,
not bopping to Queen Bey. But it
was impossible not to dance that
spring night. Not to feel giddy,
significant, and finally willing to
“let go” like the song said.
Since 2017, black women and
their wombs have been trending.
In h er 2019 documentary, “ Home-
coming,” Beyoncé, arguably one
of the most visible yet private
black women on Planet Earth,
disclosed details of her “extreme-
ly difficult” second pregnancy
with twins. “I had high blood
pressure. I developed toxemia,
preeclampsia.” The year before,
another one of our patron saints,
tennis great Serena Williams, re-
vealed her mortality and recount-
ed her harrowing birth story,
which included an emergency C-
section, and doctors who she said
ignored her as she pressed to get
the CT scan that ultimately saved
her life. This summer Williams
announced she’s investing in an
app, Mahmee, with the aim of
combating maternal mortality.
This past June, while making the
case for reparations at a congres-
sional hearing, author Ta -Nehisi
Coates repeated the devastating
statistic — “black women die in
childbirth at f our times the rate of
white women” — as one example
in a long line of proof of the
continued legacy of slavery.
The bad news is everywhere, as
inescapable this summer as an
“Old To wn Road” remix but not
nearly as fun.
Forget putting your feet up or
sticking your head in the sand.
That isn’t an option for black
women staring down a plus sign.
These days your pregnancy must
be “woke,” 1 0 months filled with
research and study and planning.
As a black woman, it’s n ot enough
to “stay hydrated,” make your
prenatal appointments and cu-
rate the perfect nursery on Pin-
terest. There are studies to digest,
articles forwarded by your best
friend on C-section rates to read,
summits to attend on combating
implicit bias, and doctors to
screen for implicit bias. It is ex-
hausting work.
And I need a break.
I needed to read an article
about black motherhood that
wasn’t a horror story. So this
piece won’t b low up a scary statis-
tic, an alarming anecdote or a
gut-clenching quote. Because
we’ve had so much (and some
would say too much) of that
recently. The floodgates first
opened in 2017 when NPR/Pro-
Publica published “Lost Moth-
ers,” their joint series on Ameri-
ca’s maternal health crisis, in-
cluding black maternal mortality.
These are the facts I can’t h elp but
know: 700 to 900 women die
every year because of pregnancy-
related complications (the worst
statistics in the developed world).
Women of color have the highest
rates of maternal death. Black
mothers are among the most at
risk no matter their socioeconom-
ic or educational status.
I am eternally grateful for the
series, but I’m also tired of letting
“the numbers” replay in my head
in a warning loop like the nega-
tive side effects of a prescription
drug ( pregnancy while black may
cause irritability, constipation,
diarrhea, oh, and death, don’t
forget death! ), of strategizing with
my husband on how to fight — er,
advocate — on my behalf as the
weeks tick by on my second preg-
nancy and the countdown to my
daughter’s birth begins in ear-
nest. Honestly, I’m just tired peri-
od.
See, I, like so many black moth-
ers attempting to square all the
research and reporting with ev-
eryday living, am juggling
enough as it is. We have to have a
respite, a collective detox, a way
to digest the numbers without
letting them eat us alive.
I had questions: How were
pregnant black women navigat-
ing the dreaded numbers? How
were they experiencing joy? How
were they scrolling past the scary
headlines and instead sharing
stories of uplift? So, over the
course of the last five months of
my pregnancy, I asked more than
two dozen black women how they
were dealing, and the answers
were surprisingly simple.

BLACK MOTHERHOOD FROM C1

Young black mothers, would-

be mothers, birth workers, politi-

cians and presidential candidates

are using our present reality as

fuel for something like a social

time machine, taking us back to

the days where community, sister

circles and tight bonds were re-

sponsible for knitting wounds.

Basically, they’ve folded in on

themselves, creating an origami-

tight safe space.

They used the stats as both

bulldozers and bricks, knocking

down the idea of one system

(opting for home births, adding

doulas to their teams and inter-

viewing their doctors) while

building up safe spaces for them-

selves.

The women I interviewed were

woke, but never woeful.

‘H

ey, Mama,” called a

Momference volunteer

decked out in purple

(t he royal and official color of

District Motherhued, the Wash-

ington-based events organization

that created the conference in

2017). She’d clocked me wobbling

five months pregnant to the ball-

room packed with moms. I gave

her a look. Did we know each

other?

“I’m just shouting out every

beautiful black woman I see,” s he

told me.

We were — all of us — there to

be seen. Everyone, and I mean

everyone, looked good. Hair was

laid, locked and lifted. The heels

were as high as the “hashtag

mood.”

“Your decision to be here today

is a radical act of self-love,” said

one speaker, emphasizing that all

of us, just by showing up, were

“no longer going to accept the

negative stereotypes about black

motherhood.”

We were creating space for

ourselves, centering our own pos-

itive stories that had less to do

with surviving childbirth and

more to do with how to handle

nagging mothers-in-law or your

daughter’s newly independent

head of hair.

At one point the morning’s

keynote speaker instructed the

crowd in the main ballroom to

look left, look right and behind

them and say, “Hey girl, hey,” an

old Sunday service ritual of ac-

knowledgment remixed for the

social media set. Throughout the

day, references were made to cre-

ating your “mom tribe,” another

callback to the security of kinfolk

that could neatly fit into a

hashtag.

What’s funny, or surprising re-

ally, is that the Momference’s

co-founders, publicists Nikki Os-

ei-Barrett, 34, and Simona Noce

Wright, 29, didn’t plan on start-

ing a movement of black millen-

nial moms — at first they were

just trying to be cute.

“I didn’t realize this was need-

ed,” Noce Wright, a mother of two

boys younger than 5 and step-

mom to a 10-year-old daughter,

told me over lunch a few weeks

after the conference. “These

women are really building rela-

tionships,” s he said, still in awe of

the two-year-old conference’s im-

pact and the growth of District

Motherhued. They’ve since host-

ed many events, including Mom-

my en Blanc, a sold-out gathering

of black moms dressed in white

on D.C.’s waterfront.

Noce Wright met Osei-Barrett,

a fellow Ghanaian American, on

Instagram three years ago, and

the two moms decided to throw a

night of pampering for moms of

color because they hadn’t experi-

enced anything like it.

One event turned into many,

and in less than a year the whole

thing quickly went from “this is

fun” to “this is fundamental.”

Osei-Barrett’s third child, a

daughter, was born a few months

before this year’s M ay c onference,

and the journey from hospital

bed to glammed out in front of

hundreds on the main stage

wasn’t easy.

“I could have absolutely been a

statistic,” Osei-Barrett recalled

over lunch after settling into the

seat next to Noce Wright about 15

minutes late. A fashion publicist

by trade, she rocked a bold red lip

and oversized sunglasses — all

the better to conceal her exhaus-

tion.

“I feel like I’m losing my mind,

basically,” Osei-Barrett said

bluntly, snatching the wig off any

illusion that she and Noce Wright

are just doing this for the ’gram.

She’d been through two traumat-

ic C-sections before this third

high-risk pregnancy. S he’d s hown

up at the doctor’s office nearly

twice a week to track her daugh-

ter’s growth, but once she went

into labor Osei-Barrett was told

she had placenta previa, a poten-

tially dangerous condition in

which the placenta grows too

close to, or completely over, the

cervix. It c an cause hemorrhaging

in a vaginal birth and lead to

death. I know all that without the

aid of Google because I was diag-

nosed with marginal previa the

month before I sat across from

Osei-Barrett.

“Wait, you were going in twice

a week, and they didn’t know?” I

asked incredulously. “Girl.”

“Thank you,” Osei-Barrett said,

exasperated. “I knew I had to be

informed. I asked all the ques-

tions.” She’d even chosen her ob-

stetrician based on the physi-

cian’s l ow C-section rates. “So, I’m

thinking, I’m good.” But she was

far from it. Baby Faye was deliv-

ered through Osei-Barrett’s pla-

centa via emergency C-section.

Both mom and baby lost a dan-

gerous amount of blood in the

operating room. The newborn

spent her first 24 hours in the

NICU. Osei-Barrett woke up from

surgery not knowing exactly what

happened to her. She didn’t see

her carefully selected obstetri-

cian again for nearly 10 days. “I

was so hurt,” she continued, her

voice determined but with a hint

of something fragile underneath.

As she continued to recount

the tale — the mistrust, the trau-

ma, the feelings of betrayal —

Faye, known as “shesfayemous”

on Instagram, pipes up from her

mother’s lap. “Okay, okay,”

soothed Osei-Barrett.

She said her experience “shift-

ed my perspective altogether”

and strengthened her faith in the

value of the community of moth-

ers she had been helping to build.

“I don’t t hink that I would have

been able to survive the first

couple of months or even now, the

present, today, without this net-

work of women, and I don’t even

know some of these women,” she

said.

Y

ou know that feeling you

get immediately after

clumsily tripping over

something but right before actu-

ally falling? The throat catching,

the stomach diving, the arms

airplane-ing. That’s how it feels

waiting for the medical system to

fail you in the way so many

articles and anecdotes tell black

women it inevitably will.

I grew up with a hippie mother

who favored “healing white light”

over Ty lenol. Holding hands in a

circle and chanting the “sound of

the universe” were a part of our

Sunday service. When I gave birth

for the first time, my OB, my

doula — heck, even my c hiroprac-

tor — were all black women. I

created a sister circle without

really realizing it, and my first

daughter was born without com-

plications on a Sunday morning

in April.

But this time around, my pla-

centa just kissing the edge of my

cervix but not covering it could

potentially complicate my best-

laid plans of pushing out my b aby

as Lizzo tunes play in the back-

ground. I felt vulnerable, in the

hands of a shifty medical system

— hoping it wouldn’t let me and

my baby fall through the cracks.

During the summer of 2016,

when she was in her third trimes-

ter, author Dani McClain, 41, had

a similar experience. She’d spent

months reporting on the black

maternal health crisis for a story

that landed on the cover of the

Nation — “What It’s Like to Be

Black and Pregnant When You

Know How Dangerous That Can

Be.” That article became the foun-

dation of the first chapter of her

book, “We Live for the We: The

Political Power of Black Mother-

hood.”

During that long summer as

her pregnancy progressed, Mc-

Clain delved deep into the health

system’s fissures, reading a ton of

research about the physiological

impact of white supremacy, a bout

black women’s b odies bearing the

burden of racism, about those

very same bodies aging at a more

rapid rate than their white coun-

terparts’ and directly affecting

their birth outcomes. Rather than

cripple her, the data made her a

vigilante.

“I couldn’t trust that anyone

could keep me safe,” s he said.

When McClain went in for her

C-section, a necessary surgery

because of a grapefruit-size fi-

broid — one she only believed she

had after getting a second opin-

ion from a black OB — knowing

everything she knew about im-

plicit bias in the medical system

and racist myths about black

women’s supposedly high thresh-

old for pain, McClain looked her

doctor in the eye and said:

“Promise me that I won’t feel

anything.” She’d just read a uni-

versity study that said medical

residents held at least one false

belief about black people, includ-

ing that their nerve endings are

not as sensitive.

Needing respite, black moms lean on sisterhood

PHOTOS BY DAYNA SMITH FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

TOP: Olafunke Adefemi cradles her pregnant belly while posing in front of a MOM balloon backdrop at the Momference, a

conference for millennial mothers of color held at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Washington in May. ABOVE: Simona

Noce Wright, left, and Nikki Osei-Barrett welcome guests to the Momference. The pair met on Instagram three years ago and

eventually founded District Motherhued, the Washington-based events organization that created the conference.

CHRIS SORENSEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Celebrated birth doula Latham Thomas at Mama

Glow, her maternity and wellness studio in Brooklyn.