Survivor Stories

GABBY

Iowa City-based entrepreneur Gabrielle Williams turns 38 this year. The occasion was both a milestone and a miracle because the mother of two had nearly lost her life twice during childbirth. She describes her first experience with prenatal care as isolating and demeaning. “I was a high risk pregnancy. There were issues with the baby, and during my appointments they made it seem like the baby was already dead even though there was still a heartbeat, there was still kicking.”

Tragically, neither of her first two children survived. Her first delivery required a blood transfusion. “They gave me something and I don’t even remember pushing — I woke up with the baby in my arms, and the baby was dead.” During her second labor, Gabrielle informed her attending nurse that the baby was coming. The nurse disregarded her pleas for help. “She told me it wasn’t happening, and she left the room. The baby was born after she left, and choked to death with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck.”

KENDRA

For Kendra*, a Black professional in Cedar Rapids, the way this bias played out in the delivery room was traumatizing and dangerous.

“Throughout my prenatal visits, I kept hearing comments about my pain tolerance. They told me that Black women don’t feel contractions as much. Because of this, when I went into labor they told me that I was not to trust my own body and what I was feeling — that I should be further along in the process and that I was in danger. That they should get the kid out as fast as possible through surgery.”

She described being pressured to first take Pitocin, then an epidural, then to undergo a cesarean section. With both of her children, she nearly lost her life — in one instance, her mother was forced to intervene when medical professionals in the room refused to respond to her pleas for assistance because she couldn’t breathe.

Kendra was subjected to at least four HIV tests during one pregnancy. “What was really demeaning,” she said, “Was that I had never even been with anyone but my husband in my life. You go to an appointment, and they’re asking you if your children have the same father. There are enough spaces where you are given the message that you are not good enough, that your voice doesn’t matter. To have to go through that at a hospital or a clinic — I don’t like doctor’s offices anymore. I will put off going to the doctor or the hospital until I absolutely have to.”

SOFIA

At 17, Sofia headed back to the hospital with complications after her baby was born. When she arrived, hemorrhaging rapidly, she was told by the doctor who examined her that she was “probably just having her period.”

“I lay in the room bleeding out for the next four hours. I lost half of the blood in my body, it was spilling from the bed to the floor. I was shivering; I never knew that people really get cold when they bleed out until then. My mother finally went out in the hallway and started screaming for them to bring someone else to look at me. It turns out I was bleeding from an artery. I kept thinking about my two small children while they rolled me to the operating room. Would they grow up with their mom?”