Jodie Turner-Smith and Joshua Jackson welcomed their beautiful baby girl back in April, and the couple opted to give birth at home for reasons outside of being in the thick of the coronavirus pandemic.
While speaking with British Vogue, Jodie opens up about her and her man wanting a home birth because of concerns about the risks that come along with giving birth as a black woman. Unfortunately, black women in America are at the highest risk for dying during birth, which Jodie says is due to “systemic racism.”
“We had already decided on a home birth because of concerns about negative birth outcomes for black women in America,” Jodies said. “According to the CDC, the risk of pregnancy-related deaths is more than three times greater for black women than for white women, pointing, it seems to me, to systemic racism.”
The couple was grateful to have avoided the risks of entering a hospital amid the pandemic, but they were even more excited to be able to be with one another during the labor process, which took four days for Jodie. Due to the pandemic, medical facilities have strict restrictions on allowing multiple people in a patient’s room.
“We never imagined that in the coming weeks, hospitals around the country would begin restricting who could be present in the birthing rooms, forcing mothers to deliver without the support person or people of their choice,” she said. “Delivering at home ensured that I had what every single woman deserves to have: full agency in deterring my birth support.”
She says Joshua was nothing less than supportive, and vowed not to miss a moment of her pregnancy.
“Both of us had watched our own mothers struggle to raise children without such support. Both of us were determined to create something different for ourselves,” she explained. “He kept saying to me, ‘There’s no part of this that I’m going to miss.’ And there wasn’t.”
As we previously reported, Jodie and Joshua welcomed their baby girl back in April, and announced they were “happy and healthy” in the process.
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