00:00She's like, I'm pregnant.
00:03This isn't good.
00:09I always saw myself as having a child,
00:13but not necessarily within the subscribed standpoints
00:19of what was laid out for me.
00:20In retrospect, it makes sense that I got pregnant now
00:24is probably the perfect time,
00:25because if I was closer to 30,
00:26I probably would just have like,
00:27I probably would have let too much get in front of me.
00:30My dad, for the longest, thought I wasn't going to have a child
00:33simply because I was 27 years old without a child.
00:37I wanted things to be a little more solid for my children,
00:39so I always focused on like taking care of my business,
00:42finding myself, making sure I got to at least a neutral space in life
00:46to where a lot of my traumas wouldn't be projected onto my children,
00:50as well as my struggles.
00:51I was in my last semester of my master's when I was pregnant with her,
00:54and I didn't know I was pregnant.
00:55He kept making jokes like, you're pregnant.
00:57You know when you make a funny that you know,
00:59got some truth behind it?
01:00I think you're pregnant.
01:02Oh, look, that's a sign that you're pregnant.
01:03And then I started thinking to myself like,
01:05what am I going to do if I am pregnant?
01:06I ran to take the test secretly,
01:09and I realized I was pregnant.
01:10And I was just like, this isn't good.
01:12I'm like, oh my God, I'm about to be your father.
01:15And I was just super excited.
01:16I didn't know what to do.
01:17Like, I was just telling him nonstop.
01:19What are we going to do?
01:20Like, what am I going to do?
01:21And he was like, you have the wrong outlook on all this.
01:22This is beautiful.
01:23This is life.
01:23She was embracing a lot of other opinions,
01:26and you could tell that.
01:27And for me, growing up,
01:29I kind of had to always dodge.
01:30Having what other people think about me affect me
01:34and be my priority.
01:35It wasn't until halfway through the pregnancy
01:37that I was like, this is absolutely beautiful,
01:39and it's a wonderful thing.
01:40I told my mom in June.
01:42By that point, I was four to five months,
01:48four and a half months pregnant.
01:49Like, my dad and mom were just, like, shocked.
01:51He didn't react so kindly
01:54because his heart was broken.
01:56Slowly over the next three weeks,
01:58I started telling siblings one by one.
02:00I told my parents, like, almost out the gate.
02:02So I told the two people I knew
02:04would help celebrate with me first,
02:06my father and my sister,
02:07and I told my mom.
02:08So it was like, oh, yes, he made it.
02:11Before they shivered up, he made it.
02:14The way I was raised,
02:15it was always, like, marriage, then baby.
02:17My mom's plan is,
02:19you still should go to med school,
02:20you should move back in with us,
02:22and then you'll be successful.
02:23I want to be in New York,
02:25and I want her to be with her father.
02:26That's the main thing that I want in her life.
02:28My relationship with her parents
02:30throughout the pregnancy
02:30was pretty much the same way
02:32my relationship was always.
02:34They just saw me as the same friend
02:36they met me as, like, from day one.
02:39It wasn't until Asada got here
02:42that I was like, okay,
02:45we need to know who you are.
02:47Black motherhood just looks like
02:49patience with the world
02:50and telling you how to raise your child
02:52and trying to force other things upon you.
02:54My whole birth plan was
02:55I want to do it at home,
02:56I want to have a water birth,
02:57and I want to have a midwife and a doula.
02:59I thought that up until day five of labor,
03:03and I was in labor for five days.
03:05She woke up, she's like,
03:05we have to go to the hospital.
03:07I'm like, I'm there.
03:07I didn't honestly want to see her in any more pain,
03:10and I started getting this anxiousness
03:11like I didn't want anything to happen to our child.
03:14Doctors not, midwives not, holistic or not,
03:17we need to go to the professional.
03:18It taught us a lot about
03:20how there's always a great area
03:22because no matter how much we wanted to water birth,
03:25still, and how much we don't believe
03:27in traditional medicine,
03:28still, there was a place in our lives for that.
03:31One thing I've always known about
03:32studying public health
03:33is that black mothers tend to have
03:35the worst treatment in hospitals
03:36and one, giving birth.
03:38With black women in particular,
03:40we tend to get lesser dosages
03:42or like less pain prescription
03:44just because it's believed
03:46that we have like a higher threshold of pain.
03:48Another barrier is just like knowing
03:49that we have to fight for ourselves
03:51out loud consistently.
03:52We're fighting to make sure
03:54that she doesn't get formula
03:54because I want to breastfeed her.
03:56They're ensuring us that she may have
03:58low blood sugar without doing testing.
04:00They're still fighting me on
04:01what is right for my daughter.
04:03That's something that I didn't see
04:04in the person next to me in the room
04:05who was of a different race.
04:06Every day, it's me and Hack
04:08and we are here for society
04:11like in equal parts.
04:12I've learned it's not how
04:14you need people to support you.
04:16It's taking them how they know
04:18how to support you
04:18and learning that that's the beauty of life.
04:21We've acknowledged we're twin flames
04:23and that's my twin flame.
04:24Two weeks from now makes six years.
04:26We've had the bond since almost day one.
04:29He didn't even say you should be on your girlfriend.
04:30He was just like on the phone one day.
04:31He was like, yeah, my girl, so-and-so.
04:33And I was like, oh, okay.
04:35She's my twin flame.
