Actress Kyla Pratt is sharing the story of the challenges she faced while she was in labor with her second daughter in 2013. Pratt opened up during a roundtable discussion to talk about how difficult it can be to navigate birth as Black women, and how there are systemic barriers to getting the care you deserve.
"I remember for my second pregnancy, I went into labor early," Pratt revealed. She gave birth to her second daughter, Liyah Kirkpatrick, in 2013, and her oldest daughter, Lyric Kirkpatrick, in 2010. "Being in the hospital, I told the nurse there I was having contractions; she looked at the machine and said, ‘No, you weren’t,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I am. I’ve done this before; go get my doctor.'"
She continued, "Luckily, standing up for myself in that moment, my daughter is here now. She went to get my doctor; my doctor said, ‘You’re 6 cm dilated, and we have to do an emergency C-section.' But because I was so small, it wasn’t showing up on the machine. In that moment, I didn’t really recognize when people weren’t listening to me, because I was young, because I am Black, because I am a woman."
