Black Women Watchers

Abstract

Black Women Watchers Wendy M. Thompson (bio) I remember the first time I went into labor. It was as though I was being forced to dance to a new choreography. The pain gripped and twisted the whole of my body, my lower back folding inward, my five-foot body contorting to music only I could hear, moving on a stage only I could access. Each sudden lightning strike of pain reminded me that in that moment, my body was not my own but was shared by the small thing—a girl, they told me, who might have a congenital anomaly, so we were on high alert—pushing inside. My mother, who had given birth multiple times without anesthesia, reminded me of her mother, who had also given birth multiple (nine) times without anesthesia in a foreign country, and told me I was not the first woman to go into labor. She said this to me while panicked and driving to a hospital in Fremont at night, where I had intentionally chosen a young Asian American female doctor and knew that there would be Black female medical staff present, among many other nurses of color who would at the very least, see me and attend to my body. Unlike in the videos and manuals I was given by the birthing center, there was no defining marker between the beginning of real labor and the moment when pain arrived to fight me for my body. There was no breaking of water. There was no voice outside of me that gently guided me into the golden meadow of motherhood. Just sharp violent pains that, if I were to describe it to a counselor later, had no color, no smell, and weren't even five minutes apart. I barely remember standing in front of two panicked male front desk staff with swollen legs and feet, wearing a loose-flowing housedress while I struggled to pull my driver's license out of my wallet. One of the staff [End Page 165] members, a young Chinese man, ran—literally, ran!—to get me a wheelchair and quickly wheeled me up to my room. Then someone helped me onto the bed before leaving me alone. Everything that came after that, the breathing, the rotating nursing staff, the pushing, the family members who stopped by, the white female doctor who came in to get my signature in the event that I died during delivery, ran together like watching a movie in fast-forward. Everything except for the Black nurse who I never saw at first but who came to me after I let out what I can only now describe as a wild animal sound. Alone in a room on the labor and delivery floor in this hospital, a cry was heard through my open door by another Black woman, a nurse, who wasn't even assigned to me but was conveniently (or divinely) right outside my room and who I would never see again during the rest of my stay at the hospital. I will never forget how she came in, looked at me, and immediately said, "Don't worry, honey. I'm going to go call the anesthesiologist to come right now." No need to explain on a scale of one to ten. No need to prove my pain according to a white man's threshold. Just a matter-of-fact acknowledgment that a baby was coming, her mama was in great pain, and there needed to be some immediate action taken. With a little sugar on top. Honey. ________ I thought about this birthing experience and the traumatic one that would follow seven years later in Minnesota after reading a post made by writer Kiese Laymon on social media on January 4, 2021. Kiese wrote: My mother had major spine surgery. It was terrifying. She's still trying to recover. When she finally woke up, all she could talk about was this Haitian nurse who told her it would be okay because there would be a Black resident in the operation room watching. We talked more and she made it clear that even if she would have had a Black surgeon, she really wanted a...