My baby and I already had a higher chance of d*ying during delivery, but when my labour failed to progress and my fear turned to panic, only one person in the room could help: the one who looked like me.Most women go into their hospital delivery rooms heavy with baby—and anxiety. Giving birth is one of nature’s great marvels, but there is always an element of “what if?” no matter how many times you’ve done it before. I was feeling this anxiety after I went into labour with my third son, only mine teetered toward fear. I knew that statistics were against me: I was at a higher risk for complications during delivery, and I had a higher chance of me or my baby dying during birth. Not because of any health conditions, but because I am Black.
My labour progressed rapidly, unlike the two previous times. Within 90 minutes of checking in at the triage desk and with no time for an epidural, I was screaming in excruciating p*ain, which sent my delivery room into a flurry of activity. I became increasingly panicked with each push that did not move my baby down the birth canal. My doctor confirmed that my baby was not moving and told me that she would need to use a vacuum to try to help me. I felt like I was losing what little control I had over the birthing process.
The vacuum didn’t help, and my baby’s heart rate was starting to drop. I was terrified. Though my partner was comforting me as best he could, I looked around the room frantically, asking for reassurance that everything was going to be alright. The doctor then told me that I had one final push to try to move him down, otherwise I was going to be rushed into an OR for an emergency c-section. They announced a “code lavender,” which I later found out signaled a neonatal emergency, such as an unresponsive infant. While I feel that the team that assisted me during my own labour was 100 per cent instrumental in the ultimate success of my delivery, the bottom line is that I entered my delivery room fearful, and that singular fear of what might happen because of my race is not one that any woman in labour should have to grapple with. My Black nurse was the only one who saw my frantic, searching eyes and understood, intrinsically, how I felt. She was the only one able to communicate effectively enough for me to snap out of my panic. Maybe because she was just a highly skilled healthcare practitioner. Maybe because she too knows all too well the crippling fear a Black woman feels when she enters a delivery room full of faces that don’t look like your own.
