Christina Elmore on choosing a natural birth experience with an all-black care team.
📸@Christina.Elmore
Christina Elmore // on choosing a natural birth experience with an all-black care team.
“I made that decision years ago when I first started dating my husband. I made him sit down and watch this movie called The Business of Being Born that Ricki Lake had made. It’s about how especially in New York in 2007 and 2008, there were the highest rates of c-sections. [There were] so many convenient c-sections happening and doctors scheduling them so they could go golfing.
Women weren’t having births in the way they wanted to. I’m grateful c-sections exist. I’m grateful for Western medicine. I’m grateful for all of it, but I also know that my body was made to do this.
I knew from jump I wanted to have an out-of-hospital natural birth when I had kids. I didn’t know whether that would be a home birth or birth center birth. With my first baby, I had him at a birth center with some wonderful midwives who happened to be white. It was a fine experience. But, through that experience, I realized I would drive from my neighborhood in South LA to Silverlake to go to the birth center.
Then, when I would go to the pediatrician that we picked, they were far. Then, when I would go to "mommy and me class," it was in Santa Monica. It was with all white women. All these natural mom things I was doing were always with white women. I thought, Why am I always the only Black person in the room? Why is my child the only Black person in the room? This isn’t right.
At first, I thought maybe it didn't exist for us, and I had to leave my area to find it. But that was my bad because I just had not sought it out. I didn’t realize there were Black midwives in South L.A. delivering babies. I didn't realize there are Black mothers in South L.A. getting together. I didn't realize there were amazing Black pediatricians in my area. I just had to do more work to find them.
With my second child, I decided I wanted it to be different. I happened to find out I was pregnant on the day Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd. That was sort of the start of what all know to be a racial reckoning in this country, and nothing was new, but it did have a different urgency for me.
I was mourning and in grief, but also celebrating this new life. I knew I needed to start doing what I’ve talked about doing. I went to find Black midwives because I wanted to be surrounded by them. I wanted to sidestep all of the health disparities you were talking about—like doctors not believing us when we're in pain and forcing interventions on because they think we don't have a birth plan—and find some Black women who see me, know me, will care for me, and hear me.
I found the most incredible midwives down the street from me. [But], there was no birth center with midwives, so I thought I would have to have a home birth. Then my midwife opened a birth center during my pregnancy, and I was the first person to give birth there.” —Christina Elmore via Byrdie
If you know of any resources, please list them in the comments to help other women. Thank you.
More Resources:
Why Black Women Are Rejecting Hospitals in Search of Better Births
