THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE C9
$25 million allocated to support
bias training in medical schools.
The bill also sets aside $125 mil-
lion to identify high-risk preg-
nancies and provide mothers
with culturally competent care.
“I don’t invite a debate about
the facts. The facts are the facts,”
Harris says. “Knowing the facts,
what are we going to do about it?”
Other presidential candidates
have also addressed the issue.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) p lans to
expand Medicaid coverage and
access to doulas. South Bend,
Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg would
tackle implicit bias and expand
access to health care for moms in
rural areas. Sen. Elizabeth War-
ren (D-Mass.) has said she would
reward hospitals that show
marked improvement in their
mortality rates.
When I get Underwood on the
phone, the congresswoman is
fresh from a vote. For the former
nurse and health-care policy ad-
viser, the issue of black women’s
maternal health is personal.
Like so many women who are
amplifying the issue, Underwood
has a connection. The congress-
woman was close friends with
Shalon Irving, the 36-year-old
mother whose tragic death just
weeks after her daughter was b orn
was documented in the ProPubli-
ca report “Nothing Protects Black
Women From Dying in Pregnancy
and Childbirth.” The pair went to
graduate school together at Johns
Hopkins.
Underwood recalled being de-
lighted when she found out Irving
was expecting and devastated
when she died.
A few months after taking of-
fice, she and Rep. Alma Adams
(D-N.C.) a nnounced the formation
of the Black Maternal Health Cau-
cus, a sort of legislative central
nervous system to house all the
data, best practices and support
laser-focused on this one issue.
“I thought we were going to
launch on Twitter, and it’d be the
two of us,” she said. On the first
day they got 50 Democrats to join,
and not long after, Democratic
presidential candidates were
making black maternal health a
campaign talking point.
Before we go any further into
our conversation about the cau-
cus’s plans — including a day-
long summit on the Hill featuring
hearings, panels and testimonies
— Underwood wants to “push
back” on something I said.
I’d told her I was pregnant and
too often frightened because the
message playing on a loop in my
head is that being black and
pregnant is dangerous. I thought
I heard her suck her teeth when I
said it. She has a point of clarifica-
tion.
“There is something about be-
ing a black woman in America ,”
she said, drawing out those last
two words. It’s n ot us, she empha-
sizes. “There’s nothing wrong
with us.”
Before we hop off the phone,
the congresswoman wishes me a
safe and positive delivery “and a
super healthy and strong baby.”B
y the time my 36-week ap-
pointment came around I
was full to bursting, and
that’s not counting the six-pound
baby girl doing a keg stand on my
bladder. I was filled to the brim
with stories: My chiropractor
shedding tears when she recalled
her “amazing” home birth with
family cheering her on. The pow-
erful magazine editor who called
her mama after a tough prenatal
appointment with three words:
“Please get here.” The friend who
showed up at the ER less than a
week postpartum with ankles the
size of hamhocks and told the
staff to get her a bed, stat. I
carried all of them with me, pre-
paring myself for the best and
worst and knowing I’d thrive
either way.
At that nine-month appoint-
ment we’d learn once and for all
whether my marginal previa had
resolved or, if it hadn’t, whether
I’d have to deliver via major sur-
gery.
The news wasn’t great. My
placenta had moved less than .2
centimeters, bringing the grand
total of distance between it and
my cervix to .6 centimeters — not
even half the length of a pea. A
C-section was necessary.
I was still skeptical, still scared
and scarred by everything I knew
about how black women are
failed by the medical system. But
this wasn’t a failure, my doctor
reminded me. This was a fix, the
result of being closely monitored
for months.
“I stared at your sono for a
good while before I came in here,”
said my O B, a woman with henna-
colored skin and a slight Caribbe-
an lilt, before explaining our next
steps.
I would be monitored with
more sonograms — just in case
something changed — but we had
to put my C-section on the books
now.
She saw my hesitation and let
my husband and me sit with it.
Then she looked me in the eyes as
I looked in hers. “If you were my
sister.. .” she began, leaving the
rest unsaid. And I felt safe.
[email protected]Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Ca-
lif.) and Rep. Lauren Underwood
(D-Ill.), two black women serving
in Congress, have drafted bills
addressing black maternal health.
“I was just born into a conver-
sation that was about the dispari-
ties, not only around research
and treatment but how women of
color are treated in the health-
care system,” explains Harris,
whose mother, Shyamala Go-
palan, was a cancer researcher.
From a very young age, Harris
said, she knew that the issue of
health-care inequality wasn’t just
about the disparities, it was about
dignity. That’s how she frames it.
Before we get started, Harris
asks me how I pronounce my
name. When I tell her, Huh-LAY-
nuh, the senator kicks off our
rapid-fire 10 minutes on the
phone with a story about her
goddaughter, whose name is also
Helena and who pronounces it
like I do. Harris took her on a trip
to Helena, Mont., “to see all the
things that pronounced her name
correctly,” from the fire depart-
ment to the library and the local
coffee shop. The senator is basi-
cally telling me a story about
being seen, about being recog-
nized and acknowledged — and
it’s one of the most important
things I can remember from our
conversation. I can’t r ecall wheth-
er my own doctor has asked how
to pronounce my name.
Racism is a huge, snarling,
near-insatiable beast. How can
we slay it? I ask her. Most of the
pregnant women I spoke to
would rather opt out of a system
that is so clearly not designed for
them.
“Let’s keep speaking our truth
because we cannot let people get
away with failures of systems. It’s
not just about ‘We’re being failed.’
This is about system failure — not
just who is being failed but the
system,” Harris says, shifting the
burden from the mothers to the
institutions.
In May, Harris reintroduced
the Maternal CARE Act, a bill she
first put forth in 2018, which
seeks to address racial bias in the
health-care system head on withwomen in her family. “There was
some real truth to when they used
to say, ‘Don’t stress her out. She’s
pregnant. She needs to relax.’
They were getting that right back
then.”
Villarosa agreed. “We created
‘take care of each other,’ ” she
said. “That’s our jam.”
What really excites her is the
legislation, specifically new bills
drafted by African Americans in
Congress seeking to attack the
issue head-on. “These are black
people who care. I think we have
to give ourselves credit for taking
care of each other.”Ding ding ding. Another black
woman telling me that I was
enough and that I was all right? I
couldn’t thank her enough.T
here is something to be said
about the passed-down
wisdom among black ma-
triarchs that we should get back
to, said Regina Davis Moss, execu-
tive director of public health pol-
icy and practice at the American
Public Health Association. It was
much more than mere supersti-
tion when Big Mama (or Auntie
or Nana or Madea) would guard
the mental health of the pregnantthe solution,” said Thomas, “is
sharing the amazing stories along
with the terrifying ones.”
For most of the night Thomas
simply allowed everyone to re-
lease all the things they were
feeling, good or bad, like a big
sister and soothsayer rolled in
one. There was the lawyer who
hoped to have a baby one day; the
doctor who’d survived cancer but
had few options left to become a
mom; the young woman who
wasn’t pregnant yet but freaked
out by the idea of pain. Thomas
jumped in occasionally to smooth
over the edges with her calming
baritone. There is ancestral wis-
dom in each of us, she said. You’re
not just one, you’re many, s he told
us.
“Black women,” she’d tell me
later, “birthed an entire nation.”
We w ere hours into the conver-
sation when I told these women,
these former strangers, that I felt
like a failure, as if my body wasn’t
equipped to do something funda-
mental. “My placenta is being so
whack,” I’d tell my best friend
weeks later when the previa still
hadn’t resolved as we all had
hoped — and it was becoming
clearer that having a C-section
would be medically necessary.
But there was still this constant
drumming in the back of my
mind, reminding me that the
medical system wasn’t built for
women who look like me and that
I’d have to watch my back.
At one point, Hillary Lopes, 33,
who was sitting across from me
and had had an emergency C-sec-
tion at 33 weeks pregnant with
triplets, addressed me directly:
“I’m not sitting here saying my
C-section was bomb. However, I
am sitting here, and my kids are
home and hopefully asleep right
now. I wanted to offer you a space
that if that does happen in some
weeks, know that you can also
meet that with the same amount
of love and care I already feel
from you. I guess I’m here just to
offer you here’s my number, text
me, call me. It’s p ossible for you to
have a great experience with that,
too. It is all so right on time and
okay. That’s all.”“I had a bunch of Ivy League
degrees. I was completely
equipped to advocate for myself,”
said McClain, who recognizes her
privilege as an educated woman
seemingly able to arm herself
against becoming a statistic. Her
C-section went fine, and she and
her baby were healthy in those
postpartum weeks, but her anxi-
ety did not end with the birth of
her daughter. Once you learn how
broken the system is, McClain
said, it makes “our charge as
black parents that much more
important.”
But there must be a counter-
balance, she said. Black women
can’t be expected to be on high
alert 24/7. “There have to be
spaces where we can relax, where
we can let down our guards,”
McClain said. “It’s important that
we hold this thing very delicately
because we can’t just be focused
on the challenges and the anxiety
and fear. We’re black women, but
we’re also just people living our
lives.”
What are black women doing
to mentally and emotionally pro-
tect themselves? I asked Linda
Villarosa, a veteran journalist
whose landmark piece in the New
York Times Magazine, “Why
America’s Black Mothers and Ba-
bies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis,”
was crucial in growing the aware-
ness of the systemic issues facing
black moms.
For one, keep in mind that the
numbers are abysmal, but they
aren’t all-consuming, said Villa-
rosa, a former health editor for
Essence magazine. “It’s hard for
people to understand statistics
when they are packaged in this
way that makes it seem scary.”
While the maternal mortality dis-
parity between black and white
women is stark and unaccept-
able, the number of mothers who
die in childbirth is significantly
smaller than the number who
have healthy babies, and who
survive.
But you don’t just want to
survive birth — you survive war,
famine, zombie attacks, alien in-
vasions.
J
oy? Check. Fear? Double
check. Healing space? That’s
what I had to find. I needed
to heal or at the very least get
out of my own head long enough
to enjoy the final months of what
is probably my last pregnancy. I
needed to flush the negative
mainstream news, my own per-
sonal negative news out of my
system. And that’s how I found
myself seven months pregnant on
a train to New York.
I was headed to celebrated dou-
la and birth advocate Latham
Thomas’s doula training center,
Mama Glow. Thomas and I had
met at C olumbia U niversity n early
20 years before, probably at a bad
spoken-word event in a basement
near campus. When I emailed her
decades later in search of a cura-
tive, she didn’t hesitate. Come,
Thomas told me, I got you.
It was a soft summer night in
Brooklyn and Thomas, in skinny
jeans and sporting a cowboy hat
over a cantaloupe-size chignon
brimming with locks, spritzed
what smelled like rose water in
my f ace. Through my w et e yelash-
es I clocked her gliding around
the room tapping a metal gong
and crooning a string of affirma-
tions to the women she’s pulled
into her orbit.
For nearly two hours I sat
cross-legged in a “sister circle” of
strangers who have given birth,
almost given birth, are about to
give birth or are coming to terms
with never giving birth as the
eight of us unwrapped the stories
we had been itching to tell and
handed them to the woman next
to us, hoping she’d m ake good use
of them.
Directly to my right sat Nadia
Mbonde, 10 weeks pregnant,
who’s studying anthropology at
New York University while com-
pleting doula training prompted
by the loss of her first pregnancy
last year.
“I’m just focused on affirming
future happiness,” said Mbonde,
- “I’m focused on black mater-
nal health and wealth and abun-
dance versus black maternal
death.”
That last line sends a visible
ripple through the circle, poking
the bubble to near bursting.
“Yeah, yeahs” and
“Mmhmms”and “Yassses.” It is
the reason we were all there on
the ground floor of a Williams-
burg brownstone bathed in mil-
lennial pink and mindfulness, “to
share stories, challenges, tri-
umphs and hopes.”
“I see your vision,” Thomas told
Mbonde in such a way that we all
saw it.
“I think we’ve swung the pen-
dulum really far in one direction.
Everybody knows the stats. I
don’t really want to sit in that,”
Thomas said in an interview after
the circle. “It’s good to know, but
there’s a point when you know too
much and it cripples you.”
For black women, looking after
their mental and emotional well-
being is just as or more important
than taking your prenatal vita-
min every morning. The existen-
tial stress can take a toll. “Part of
CHRIS SORENSEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTANDRE CHUNG FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTANDRE CHUNG FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
The author and her 2-year-old daughter, Sally Dyer,
share a moment of joy at Mommy en Blanc.TOP: Thomas, right, leads a relaxation exercise as part of a discussion on black motherhood and pregnancy at Mama Glow
on June 2 4. The women in attendance sat in a “sister circle,” sharing their stories with one another. ABOVE: Katryce Pedro
of Upper Marlboro holds her 2-year-old son, Ashton, as he and her 7-year-old niece, Dylan Heart Neal, play with bubbles on
the lawn at Yards Park during Mommy en Blanc, a celebration of black motherhood hosted by District Motherhued.