Celebrating Black Maternal Health Week #BMHW25

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Mom and three kids Greetings from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania! Things have been busy. I am still a working mom of three, working full time who is trying to make a difference. I do a lot of things and try to be present so that I can learn from them. I share them on this blog so that we can learn together. Below are some thoughts, hacks, and/or lessons that I have learned from navigating my world. Black Maternal Health Week April 11-17, 2025 I am a Black mom to three wonderful children. I was blessed to have three successful births. While I am an attorney, my third delivery highlighted the potential risks that occur when a physician fails to listen to the birthing person. Initially, I chalked it up to the physician involved and limited it to my personal birthing experience. Then, I learned that I was not special. Overwhelmingly, Black women experience higher rates of birth trauma, birthing complications and negative birth outcomes.  These statistics are what lead to the creation of ...
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Life with the baby: The early days

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After my mother left things became a little more complicated. She wasn’t there to run the show and check up on me. I learned that she had been coming behind me to burp the baby while she was here. After she left, the baby suffered. She began to cry more, sleep less, and seem less happy. That made me cry more, sleep less, and feel less competent.
Her father tried to console her, but I wouldn’t have it. I was convinced that he was wrong. And while I wasn’t convinced of my rightness, I was confident that I knew more than he did.

I felt guilty every time I wasn’t automatically able to console her. Wasn’t that what mother’s intuition was supposed to be about? Didn’t “mother” translate into, mind reading, clairvoyant, problem solver? For the few weeks “mother” translated into haggard, sleep deprived, lunatic who was barely holding it together. I kept thinking, “I know that women have been doing this for centuries, but how did they do it without Google?!”
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