Story #82 - Katie Barrett, Executive Director/March for Moms, Washington DC (USA) - Miscarriage, Retained Placenta, Positive Hospital Birth, March for Moms & Advocating for Mothers
Katie Shea Barrett is the founding Executive Director of March for Moms. She is a mom of two and a postpartum hemorrhage survivor.
I came to March for Moms because of my love to bring people together over issues that are dear to my heart.
I have an interesting journey: I am a public health professional and used to work as a policy director in an agency that informed the state. I have a graduate degree in maternal and child's health, and yet, going into my own experience of motherhood, I realized that there's so much about women's health we don't talk about.
I'm lucky to be the mother of two healthy children, a son and a daughter. In between, I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks. I got through it, but I began to look at the data and inequities and got very interested in maternal health care.
Overall, my birth experiences were wonderful. I chose a practice that had OBs and midwives who worked in collaboration together. For both of my kids, I needed the obstetric and midwifery expertise, and the connexion between both was very seamless. I'm grateful for that because I know it's not always the case.
My first child was a girl, and I had to be induced because I was passed 42 weeks. I had a very long labor, incredibly tiring, and I ended up with a third-degree tear. I took a long time to recover.
I wanted to avoid that with my son, so when I got passed my due date, I gave the castor oil a try. I went into labor on my own, and four hours later, he was born.
Unfortunately, the placenta didn't come out with him. My midwife was a very good friend of mine, and they waited and waited for as long as they could. I trusted her to know when to make the OB call, and eventually, she did. The hospital had to remove it manually. I lost a lot of blood and needed two pints because I had passed out.
Again, I'm grateful the teams were able to come together and work as a partnership to make sure I remained alive.
My husband took the baby, and my doula stayed with me every step of the way. All went as it should, and two days later, I was home with my newborn.
Our healthcare system needs to take care of the moms during these situations: the experiences might be intense, but if a protocol goes into place quickly, then the family remains whole.
I was privileged because I had all the resources are available, my teams work together, and I felt supported and respected.
This is how you keep mothers alive.
(Family photo)
The trauma and clinical recourses aren't created equal, and it costs lives. For example, women of color are 3 to 4 times more likely to die during childbirth than white women. The U.S. has the highest rate of maternal death out of every high-income country.
It could very much have been me.
After that experience, I became passionate about maternal health care and decided to use my background in system reform to make a shift in my career.
A midwife and an OB founded March for Moms as a volunteer organization. It was eventually put on the rally, and they raised enough money to hire me and build the organization as a nonprofit. We've been up and running for three years.
I never thought I'd be coordinating an organization like this. As I said, I was drawn to it because of my personal experience of having my children, but beyond the clinical issues, I was also a working mom who was denied maternity leave. I started my previous job at four weeks pregnant, and my employer rejected my claim because there was no pregnancy test in my hospital record. I didn't realize it at first, but at 38 weeks, my boss said, "We only have to give you eight weeks, unpaid. Take it or leave it."
I chose to leave it.
Call it what you want, this is pregnancy discrimination. Even though my employer had the legal freedom to do it, it doesn't make it right.
So I took the eight weeks of unpaid leave, worked for one more month afterward, and then left.
Going back to work three months after you gave birth makes no sense. Your kids aren't sleeping, and your brain isn't functioning. There's real violence in this act because you suddenly find yourself having to push through the day to keep your family afloat financially. It has a substantial emotional and physical toll on the birthing person.
My experience was also a "best-case scenario." I had a vaginal birth and was home after two days even if I hemorrhaged. If you have a c-section, you are allowed two more weeks of leave, but it's a major surgery. Some people experience postpartum depression or anxiety and don't qualify for these extra weeks. Complications also don't necessarily happen within the clinical time-frame given by hospitals.
We need more time to heal, and if it statistically makes sense for legislators to send birthing people back to work after six or eight weeks, humanely speaking, it makes none.
On a day to day basis, my job is to bring partnerships to do advocacy work together. That's the unique value of March for Moms.
The spirit is very much in the OB/Midwife relationship, as the founders embodied it. The scope of practices aren't the same, but the spirit of interprofessional collaboration for the moms that they serve is.
So we're bringing in actors from different backgrounds to help: professionals, hospitals, corporate America, maternal health experts.
Obviously, in light of COVID, it's an interesting time: moms, birthing people, and babies need our advocacy more than ever. They are separated from each other while they wait for the test to come back, they have to quarantine from their other children, etc. States and hospitals are making decisions without community input. They have their safety in mind, of course, but it still doesn't make sense. Hospitals and front lines providers are setting themselves up for failure right now. There's not enough evidence on pregnant people, and we're making decisions in a vacuum. We're not blaming anybody (better safe than sorry as they say), but it's more divisive than helpful; they're not hearing the voices of the people who are suffering the most from their decisions.
To be honest, all this was happening even before COVID: we're criticizing first care providers, but our health care system is underfunded.
Ultimately, there is no safe place to give birth in this country. COVID only brought up these holes in the system. We have to think, "How are we going to fix this? What are we going to rebuild in the wake of this incredible societal and health crisis?"
Politicians keep talking about "changing the system" without confronting the fact that racism and capitalism got us into this ill phase.
March for Moms, and I personally, are happy to work behind the scene not to lead, but to coordinate. We're looking up for other people—namely women of color—to command and manage. They are the voices that need to be leading right now.
Our white privilege in this organization has to serve these voices, not the other way around. We bring in resources to issues they are leading on and make the case. It’s sad but the fact that I'm white affects whether or not corporate America, policymakers, doctors, and clinicians will listen. So I'm using my influence to start and change the conversation.
People already don't care much about what happens to women and birthing people before, during, and after birth. We need all the help we can.
You know, I went so far in my career because I had birth control. Planned Parenthood and other organizations are in our coalition, and it makes it hard sometimes to get policymakers to listen to us because all they see is "abortion." They don't want to have anything to do with it.
From a political perspective, we're tiptoeing around, while reproductive access and healthcare are at stake. COVID might help reset some of these issues... or at least we can hope it does.
I was fearful of running a nonprofit at first. You have to do fundraising and put yourself out there to ask for money. I know a lot of women who aren't comfortable with that. But when it's something you're so personally motivated and invested in, it's different. I want to have those more in-depth conversations. This isn't an abstraction: we need funds to change policies and support families.
There's a health crisis right now with COVID, so we don't want to take money away from front line organizations. We keep doing our advocacy, but we're not diverting funds: people are donating to who they want.
But advocacy needs to keep happening. This "indirect" work ultimately provokes real changes and make direct services happen for real people.
In the end, it's all about dignity. I love this concept because it encapsulates treating people with respect, which is the antithesis of how women and birthing people have been treated historically.
Everybody deserves a dignified treatment that is patient-centric and equitable. We have to put the person in the center of their treatment and make sure they have a graceful and empowering experience.
Luckily, a lot has evolved, but it's still not enough.
For example, you hear a lot of folks saying, "Why add 'birthing people' to your advocacy? You're stripping moms from an experience that is at the core of what it means to be a woman!"
I don’t believe it’s the case at all. Being more inclusive doesn't strip you of your identity. We make space for another being who hasn't been historically and politically recognized. You're not losing anything: you're welcoming and caring. That, too, is empowering.
We have to shift to a more appropriate language regarding gender. That's part of the word "dignity." There's a lot of different kinds of families. All growing families deserve dignity.
There're lots of issues with women-centric movement because once you get a little control and power, there's an in-fight. It's to be expected, but we need to move past them if we're going to care for all birthing people and make space for each other.
Together, we can work on some change—even if we only agree on one or two things, like health insurance. These one or two things will make a big difference in people's lives. Medicaid is decimated by COVID right now. People can recognize that it needs to be addressed. Same with the ACA [Affordable Care Act.]
We don't have to agree on everything, but we must make space for one another.
One of the benefits of advocacy is that you don't have to censor yourself, but you have to come into this power by being cautious about it, and use your voice for good.
Call out those issues. Educate yourself. Listen. And empower if you can.
March for Moms has a ton of resources on how to help improve the health and well-being of all mothers and birthing people.
They tackle many issues, namely the rising maternal mortality and poor health outcomes, integrated model of care, access to health care, payment reform, and health care disparities.
This organization makes a real impact in the lives of real women.
For their May 2018 edition, I had the privilege to sit with a group of maternal-near-miss survivors who had come to DC to attend the March.
To support their ongoing work of advocacy, you can donate here or shop there. They make lovely face mask!