Dismissed During Labor: The Birth I Needed

I am fresh off back to back births + its my birthday week. Typically around this time of year I start reflecting on the different stages of my life before landing on the motherhood branch. In the past five days I have had the complete honor of supporting two of the most tenderest births. A first time momma welcoming her 1st daughter + a repeat client supporting her 2nd son. Two completely different parts of life yet both experiences equally supported + beautiful. Both incredibly different than my own experience.

I labored mostly alone. People talked at me not to me. My needs were dismissed in real time by the very people whose whole function was to notice them. I literally begged to be admitted + they refused to believe I was in labor. In the end I ended up in a c-section with no real advocacy in the room.

That’s the birth I had.

Then we spent fourteen days in the hospital. Ten of those days, Khyra was in the NICU being fed through tubes. At barely twenty-two, I had never even held a baby before my daughter. Nobody prepared me for any of it + the way the systems are set up it was very clear I was on my own.

That’s the part of my story I don’t tell as often. The hospital stay after. The seven days at home before they admitted us. Sitting inside the NICU pod, only leaving when she went for testing. During testing I was in one of three places, the Chapel, cafeteria or the bathroom getting a quick shower. The days + nights seemed to never end.

Truth Moment?

I didn’t know what I was missing until years later, when I started teaching yoga to pregnant women + realized I didn’t know how to cue their bodies safely. So I went + got prenatal certified. Inside that training, there was the smallest section on birth + doula work. It was in that training that something cracked open for me.

That’s the training where I was introduced to the disparities, the maternal mortality numbers for Black + Brown women, the countless documented patterns of dismissal in delivery rooms. Every last bit of it happened to me 12 years prior. I just didn’t know how deep all of this went.

I’d been told I was being dramatic. That my pain was normal. That I needed to calm down, by people who had never even seen my body. I was told what I was feeling wasn’t what I was feeling. The questions that I asked went ignored + unanswered. I had said no to things + had them happen anyway. When I walked out of that hospital I knew I was lucky to be alive + lucky to have a healthy baby, which was true, but not the whole truth.

The whole truth is my birth was unwitnessed. The thing about not being witnessed in birth shaped how I parented that first week. I went home not trusting if I could read my own baby. If a grown professional who has never met me could look me in my face + tell me what I was feeling wasn’t real, how could I know what my newborn needed?

That’s the part nobody talks about.

An unwitnessed birth follows you into the postpartum room. It makes you second-guess your own instincts when baby is screaming + you know something is off but you’ve been trained to defer. The way it took me months to remember that I knew her better than anyone else in the building.

So here is what I would tell 22 old me if I could go back in time.

You are not being dramatic. You are reading your body correctly. The fact that the room is not responding to what you’re saying is not evidence that what you are saying is wrong. It is evidence that maybe that’s not the room for you.

The Birth I Had vs The Birth I Needed

Keep asking the question. Ask a different nurse. Ask what your other options are. You can ask them to slow down. You can ask for water, a pause + a minute to think. None of that makes you difficult. It makes you human. All of it makes you the patient.

When they admitted Khyra into the NICU, I felt like a complete failure. But the reality was, I wasn’t. I was a 22 year old who was sent home with a brand new baby, no real support + was healing from major abdominal surgery. I knew something was wrong, got my baby seen + was doing the best I knew to do. That’s not me failing at all.

That’s the birth I had. The birth I needed was one where someone in the room actually knew me, actually advocated for me + actually told me the truth.

Those are the births I curate an environment for. For every woman I work with. Every single time.

XO

Denawa Deniece

P.S. If you’re expecting (local to Charlotte) + you want someone in the room who knows, I take a small number of births each season. Let’s connect