Diagnostic tests are a part of many pregnancies today. They help us ensure the children we are growing are healthy and strong. But when your provider suggests that a test to rule out genetic conditions such as sickle cell disease, does the recommendation also come with a call to protect your mental health? In this episode, I share my experience with having an amniocentesis—a common diagnostic test done during pregnancy. I first talked about my experience in a blog published last year on my blog. You can read that here. In this episode, I talk about how the procedure affected my anxiety and why I decided to forgo this exam for my second pregnancy. There is a sweet audio surprise on this episode; a mini-cameo with my daughter playing “I’ve Got Music” on the piano.

Seiea Britt is the mother of 2 beautiful girls, a singer/songwriter and Washington DC area native. She joins me on this episode to talk about her experience of not only birthing during the coronavirus pandemic—oddly enough, her second time becoming a mother during a global pandemic— but facing a diagnosis of cholestasis late in her 2nd pregnancy. She talked about the power of affirming positivity everyday and leaning on (and providing) support within a group of expectant mothers who all shared the experience of new motherhood post-COVID.

This episode contains descriptions of difficult and traumatic birthing experiences. Please use discernment and protect your peace, particularly if you are currently pregnant.

Who is at the center of care if a pregnant mother is advocating for herself, by herself? It’s a question far too many of us have to answer. My 1st guest is Yanikie (pronounced YAHN-EEK) Tucker, a fellow Caribbean-American who is an educator, Howard University alumnus, creator of JamDown Foodie, a blog that centers Jamaican cuisine, wife and mother of 2 boys who were born 10 years apart. She joined me to revisit both of her birthing experiences. Yanikie shared her navigation of the bias and willful neglect she encountered in the hospital setting during her postpartum recovery, how her own mother’s traumatic birthing experience colored her mindset around birth, and her hope for what well-informed, empowered black birthing experiences can be.

It is important to put it in its proper context because it is an emotion that takes way too much control over people's lives and in the context of this podcast, people’s birth experiences. Fear is not a useless emotion. If we understand and get more comfortable with fear, we can then put it in its rightful place, because it is NOT the keynote speaker of our lives and certainly not our births. On this episode, I share with you how fear showed up in both of my births, and how I moved through it to take the mic back with the help of my support team.

Welcome! My name is Lou-Ann and I’m the creator of Well Worth Watering, a blog and online community that uses education, empowerment and transformative storytelling in order to nourish the maternal health experiences of black birthing people. I opened this episode with a reading of my first blog. In so many ways, this new beginning—expanding my work into a podcast— stirs up many of the feelings and conviction I had back then. As we work to dismantle the disparities that exist in black maternal health, we can't ignore the narrative. We have to uplift as many stories of success as we do stories of sorrow. Lou-Ann's goal is to fearlessly hold space for both. You can read the piece heard in this episode here.