Making a Mother E4: Why Aren’t We Doing Things To Change This?
Coffee + Crumbs Podcast
Ashlee Gadd
4.8 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jerrell’s first baby is born six weeks premature, despite an otherwise typical and healthy pregnancy. At her postpartum appointment, she learns that Black women are 60% more likely to give birth prematurely than white women, and that Black maternal and infant mortality rates are more than double those of white women — regardless of socio-economic status or education. Experts weigh in on why these disparities exist and challenge all of us to ask: what are we doing about it?
“Making a Mother” is a production of Coffee + Crumbs.
Executive Producer, Writer: Ashlee Gadd.
Producer, Writer, Host: Julie Vlahon.
Writer: Sonya Spillmann.
Music, Sound Design, Mix Engineer: Scott Vlahon.
Special thanks to Dr. Lauren Bouchard and Cecily Smith. To learn more about Abide Women’s Health, the Cleveland Clinic or any of the information we shared in today’s episode visit our show notes at coffeeandcrumbs.net/makingamother. If this story impacted you, please consider sharing it with a friend and leaving a 5-star review wherever you listen to podcasts.
This episode is brought to you by Needed—offering Radically Better Nutrition™. Use CC20 at checkout to get 20% off your first order.
Thank you for supporting the brands that helped make this series possible.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | it scared me and it made me sad and it made me angry too because I'm like why did nobody tell me this |
| 0:07.7 | imagine entering motherhood with the odds stacked against you odds you didn't even realize were there |
| 0:14.9 | getting pregnant carrying a baby giving birth all of this takes a considerable toll on a woman's physical and mental health. |
| 0:23.7 | But what if your chances of complications, putting you and your baby at serious medical risk, |
| 0:28.9 | or even death, are significantly higher simply because of the color of your skin? |
| 0:35.4 | Why do people not know this? Why are we not doing things to change this? |
| 0:42.1 | Today we are telling Durell's story |
| 0:43.9 | and shining a light on the nearly unbelievable gap |
| 0:46.7 | in maternal health for black women here in the United States. |
| 0:50.6 | We talk to experts about why this gap exists |
| 0:53.5 | and how every one of us can be part of the solution to change it. |
| 0:59.5 | From Coffee and Crumbs, I'm Julie Valon, and you're listening to Making a Mother, |
| 1:05.0 | a collection of stories about the complex circumstances and unique challenges women overcome in the pursuit of motherhood. |
| 1:12.7 | From the physical scars left on our bodies to the emotional scars that remain on our hearts, |
| 1:18.6 | this series is about heartache and love, broken dreams and resilience, loss and redemption. |
| 1:25.9 | Motherhood remakes us all, but at what cost? |
| 1:29.3 | What would you be willing to endure to become a mother? |
| 1:33.3 | Jarrell Everett grows up in Ashburn, Virginia, a wealthy community outside of D.C. |
| 1:41.3 | She's the oldest of three children, and even as a young girl, she knows she wants |
| 1:45.8 | to be a mother. Oh, like starting when I was probably like 10, maybe even earlier. All I thought about |
| 1:52.2 | was getting married and having kids and what my husband was going to be like, how many kids I was |
| 1:58.4 | going to have, and I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom like my mom was and do all these fun things that I saw her doing with her friends. |
... |
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