![]() ![]() One of the women, 26-year-old Amber Isaac, had reportedly tried to switch to a home or birth-center delivery after not getting an in-person appointment with her obstetrician as providers abruptly switched to telemedicine in the wake of the shutdown.įor Katrina Ayoola, 29, avoiding unnecessary medical interventions that researchers say can lead to dangerous maternal complications was a key reason for switching to a home birth. Tennis superstar Serena Williams' harrowing 2018 account of her own near-death postpartum experience with a blood clot in her lungs and a cascade of life-threatening complications was a sobering reminder that even wealth and fame are no protection from being dismissed or mistreated during one of the most vulnerable moments of a woman's life.Īt least three Black women have died in childbirth since March in New York City, which was hit hard early on by the coronavirus. She provides pre- and postnatal care regardless of where women plan to deliver, though the majority of her clientele choose home births.Īfrican American infants are more than twice as likely to die as white infants, and the risks extend across social class. Jordan's practice is now 98% Black, "something I've never seen before," she said. ![]() Many Americans think of giving birth at home as backward and scary, or as a quixotic practice of privileged white women, akin to cloth diaper services and home-cooked baby food.īut the growing interest in home births in recent years has fueled a growing Black midwifery movement that harks back to a venerable, if long-forgotten, tradition in the United States. "Every midwife I'm talking to has seen their practice double or sometimes triple in the wake of COVID," said Jamarah Amani, a Florida midwife and co-founder of the National Black Midwives Alliance. Birth centers and midwives who attend home births say they've been swamped by new clients since the pandemic. Images of hospitals inundated with coronavirus patients have sparked a flurry of new interest among women of all races in home births, which account for just over 1% of deliveries in the United States. Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March, she said, the practice's clientele has more than tripled. "It feels like we are needed," said midwife Kiki Jordan, who co-owns Birthland, a prenatal practice that opened early this year in a 400-square-foot storefront in Oakland's Temescal neighborhood targeting low-income women of color. Researchers argue that the roots of this disparity-one of the widest in women's health care-lie in long-standing social inequities, from lack of safe housing and healthy food to inferior care provided at the hospitals where Black women tend to give birth. We're going to the hospital,'" she said.Īs the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare health care inequities, more Black women are looking to home birth as a way not only to avoid the coronavirus but also to shun a health system that has contributed to African American women being three to four times more likely to die of childbirth-related causes than white women, regardless of income or education. "Up until then, he was like, 'You're crazy. It took the COVID-19 pandemic to get her husband on board. She wanted to deliver at home, surrounded by her family, into the hands of an experienced female birth worker, as her female ancestors once did. Already a mother of three and a part-time lactation consultant at Highland Hospital in Oakland, Calif., Camara knew a bit about childbirth.
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