Fixing the Maternal Health Crisis with Elaine Welteroth

Hello Sunshine.

A vesties today on the bright Side, multi hyphen it Elaine Welterroth is here to talk about career pivots, motherhood, childbirth support, and so much more. It's Monday, May thirteenth. I'm Simone Boyce.

And I'm Danielle Robe.

This is the bright Side from Hello Sunshine.

Hi.

Hi, Simone in New York. Simone in the city.

We had a fun night last night.

Can I tell everyone what you did?

Yeah?

Tell the story. It's fine, So Simone.

So, Simone and I are texting and she's like, I'm at dinner with two girlfriends.

Do you want to come by. I'm like, yeah, I'm getting in a taxi right now.

Go to dinner, I meet her, I sit down, I meet one of the girlfriends, which was Naha, who we've had on the show, her other girlfriend, Christina, who was super sweet, and five minutes in, Simone goes, Okay, guys, I'm really sorry to do this, but I have.

To go to another drinks.

Here's the thing, and then no, no, no, love me finished.

Then she goes to the bathroom, changes her outfit, puts on fully different shoes and it's like, see you, guys.

Here's the thing. Okay, I could have handled this better.

However, However, Danielle, the invitation was for you to join a six thirty dinner. I had already been there for an hour and a half, we had already gotten the bill, and I love that you came by, But unfortunately it was just towards the tail end of the dinner and right up against my next appointment.

I love this for you, Simon.

In the city is real and I actually got to sit with your two friends for another hour and a half.

I was out till ten thirty.

I knew you would be fine. That's why I had no problem leaving you. I just I let you fly now.

I knew you would be flying fun. It was great. The city makes me feel so alive.

I don't know about you, but the energy in this city, the electricity, just the amount of people.

I just I love New York City so much.

I do too. I'm going to see the Neil Diamond musical. Well, it's so fun.

I haven't been to a Broadway show in a few years, so I'm really itching for that. I'm going to see a bunch of girlfriends, and I'm going to eat a lot of different cuisine.

Speaking of girlfriends, an iconic Y two K duo is reuniting for a new reality series. Paras Hilton and Nicole Ritchie may or may not be bringing back The Simple Life seventeen years after it ended.

I feel very strongly about this.

So you all remember The Simple Life, right? I mean, it was a show where Nicole and Paris tried on different jobs in the country, and it was also problematic disastrous results.

Why was it problematic in your eyes?

They went to Walmart and were like, ew, it's gross here, and then they went to Middle America and we're like, ew, it's grows here. Like, first of all, I'm from Middle America. Second of all, I do not think it's cute to pretend to be dumb. They were like spearheading that whole era of really smart, entrepreneurial, strategic women pretending to be dumb.

Well, honestly, I feel really dumb for what I'm about to say, because I thought the show was very entertaining, and my friends and I all watched it and I had the DVD, and I don't know what to say.

No, I mean, it was really entertaining.

I get it.

But it's interesting to me because Paris has had to make such a shift because our culture has shifted, and so she'll go on TV shows. In the past her lower third like how they introduce her was heiress and now it's author. And I think that's so indicative of the shift that we've made in culture because people, specifically women are no longer accepting any of that behavior, like we want more from people, and so even she has had to rise to the occasion.

I mean, she was they were playing a character, though they were playing characters, and in the same way that housewives are playing characters on these reality shows.

There's no reality in it.

There's a little bit of reality. You can't totally go outside of yourself.

You think that, like all those Housewives characters are fully playing a character.

I mean, maybe there's a kernel of truth in there, but it's highly produced and so I think that Paris and Nicole just monetize that side of their personality, like they enhanced it, they heightened it for the cameras and they turned it into a character.

If they bring it back, I hope that they do it really differently and meet culture where it's at now.

I think they will listen, we're all more evolved.

The simple life was a snapshot in time when culture was very different. I think these two women have grown, and I think there's a good chance that this new show will represent that, I don't know.

The Complicated Life.

That's what it will be rebooted as The Complex Life.

Yeah.

All right, after the break, Elaine Welterroth is here to talk about pivots, motherhood and how we can all join the fight to improve maternal health.

We have a woman here pushing the culture ball forward. Elaine Welterroth is a best selling author, a journalist, and a TV.

Host, And today Elene is here to talk about something totally new with us.

So.

She recently launched the Birth Fund, a coalition that supports mothers who want to use midwives during their pregnancy and childbirth, and she's here to tell us all about it and how it works. Welcome to the bright Side, Elaine.

Thank you ladies for having me. How are you?

We are so good. We're really happy to have you here. You are sunshine. Oh, I could say the same thing about you guys. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Elene.

I can't wait to dig into mom's stuff with you, because I feel so much overlap with the journey that I've gone on as a mother, and from what I know about your journey as a mom. So let's start with your pregnancy journey and how your experience as a pregnant woman as a mother led you to the creation of this fund.

I will say I always imagined i'd be a mom one day. I have a great relationship with my mom. I love babies, but I am a career woman and I was not planning on getting pregnant when I got pregnant, and so it was a big surprise, and there was a lot to learn really quickly, and I had just moved to LA in the pandemic, didn't have a doctor, had to, you know, go out there and find an obg yn.

But I thought, how hard could it be? And ultimately.

That process of finding a doctor who much a doctor that I felt comfortable with, who I felt listened to me, who I felt really was invested and cared, and even just someone that made me feel respected, was so much harder than I thought. You know, I have referrals from

Elaine, I know you've worked in journalism and in women's spaces for years. How aware were you of the problems with maternal health care in the US before you became pregnant yourself.

You know, as a journalist, I was aware of the maternal health crisis in a peripheral sense, like I think a lot of us are. We hear these scary stats, but somehow I think we live under this misconception that it doesn't those stats don't apply to us.

The more I was experiencing this.

The more I recognize that this is this is reflective of a system that's much more broken than I had realized. And I kind of put my journalistic hat on and I dug in. I started understanding that you know, yes, black women are dying at three or four times the rate of white women during and after childbirth, but fifty percent of American mothers label their births as traumatic, and in the richest country in the world, that's not normal.

It shouldn't be that way.

And then as I dug deeper, I learned that eighty percent of these maternal deaths are preventable. I learned that in other high income countries, there is a default birth model called midwif free that is contributing to much better birth outcomes. And yet in most places in this country, mid with free care isn't covered by insurance, and it isn't accessible, and there are so many birth care deserts

So let's get to work.

And really that's kind of the sort of fix it spirit that gave birth to Birth Fund.

Okay, so you officially launched the Birth Fund last month and you count Serena Williams, Chrissy Teagan, Kelly Roland, Ashley Graham among your founding funders. It's a coalition that supports American families who can't afford the out of pocket costs of Midwiffrey tell us more about how it works.

We pair midwives with families who are seeking out that support but can't afford it. And so we are leaning into the midwives in our network who know their communities and their needs better than we do. And we basically put out a call to them and said, you know, here, here's what we are offering.

Can you find.

People in your community who want access to your care? And a number of them were on these sort of financial wait lists, like they just they couldn't afford it, but they were already approved for the care. And so those women were nominated by their midwives in the community

We are not here to solve this crisis on our own.

We know that we can't, but we are here to bring together the most effective organizations that have been doing this work for years in the shadows. We're here to bring them into the light and really really lift up the families and the birthing people and the birth workers who are doing God's work every single day and frankly not in a sustainable way. And it's the most rewarding work of my career to date.

How much does it cost to have a midwife.

That is a great question, and it really depends on where you live. But the price can range from anywhere between four thousand dollars to over ten thousand dollars and it's an out of pocket cost for most people.

There's different types of midwives.

There's midwives that work in the hospital and then there's midwives who work outside of the hospital system. We're supporting the midwives who work outside of the hospital system because those are the ones who are often not covered by insurance and those ones who are able to practice mid with frecare, by the way, which is a holistic form of maternal healthcare that addresses your mind, body's spirit. They spend an hour with you versus the fifteen minutes that

I think this is such a systemic issue.

I remember reading one or two of the pieces that you wrote in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one on this topic. I know you've been thinking about it for years and thinking what can I do to make this better?

One? Why is midwiffery the answer? And also I'm so curious as.

To what people, individuals, communities that are interesting and helping can really do too.

Yeah.

Well, what I'll say is, Danielle, You're no different than I was before I had a baby. I had never heard of midwiffery before having this child has expanded my purview on what's important in my work in ways I could have never anticipated.

I didn't know what a midwife was.

Like most women in this country, It's not our default model of care, right and if we do, if we have heard of it, we sort of associate it with like maybe a witch doctor or you know, we think of them as like some unskilled, unsafe or less, lesser safe option to a medical doctor. Right, Like, there's a lot of misconceptions about midwiffree in this country, which is part of why we want to reintroduce midwiffree and reframe it and redefine it for a new generation of parents.

You know, we're not.

Here to push midwiffree and out of hospital births on families across this country. What we're trying to do is illuminate the choice, you know, when we are in a maternal health crisis. So if you are a family that is not getting the care that you need, you should be armed with a sense of agency about what other choices you have. And we are lifting up this alternative choice that has saved lives, that is helping women not

That put me back.

In a feeling of being empowered over my body and over what we were going to do to bring this child into the world. And I had the most beautiful birth experience beyond what I could have imagined.

I have heard from friends that midwives are more open to different birthing positions that can help moms get the baby out. With a midwife, did you give birth on your back like we're used to seeing in the traditional hospital setting or did you give birth vertically?

Were you standing up?

This is a very kind of basic, simple visual that opened my eyes and my mind to giving birth with a midwife when I was very skeptical, like I was very close minded at first, I thought that, you know, just to be safe, I'm going to give birth in the hospital with a doctor. But when I one of my best friends had a home birth. Two of my

I said, well, when.

You put like that, I mean, there's literally no question I would rather be upright working with gravity to get that thing out of me as fast as possible.

And when it's.

Those kinds of little aha moments, those little revelations where you start to think, wait a minute, why have I been conditioned to think that giving birth in this one way is the only big way, is the superior way. So once you start to understand and unravel like everything that we've been taught is normal about birth, and start to realize there's holes in this there's holes in these theories, and they're not necessarily advantageous or favoring the mother or

There are many solutions. This is a complex issue.

But we will not get anywhere if we don't start somewhere, and so we are starting with middle break care.

We have to take a quick break, but when we come back, we're getting into the joys of motherhood.

Stay with us. We're back with Elaine Welterroth.

Y'all, I really appreciate that you're presenting this as one solution to a really multifaceted issue, because I don't know about you. When I saw what Serena Williams went through with her birth, that was a huge wake up call

So I actually did have a hospital birth.

I had two hospital births, and I loved it. I had an amazing experience. I felt so safe and so cared for. But it was because I sought out a black doctor. I found a black female doctor, and I knew that I wanted to have someone who saw me and understood the black maternal health crisis and understood my fears. So I also want to shout out all the incredible black obgi ns out there who are working tirelessly to make sure that these outcomes improve in hospitals.

I'm so glad that you had that experience. I am so glad that there are incredible obgyans out there who have a heart for caring for mothers and who understand the fears that we're walking in with, especially black moms.

So I think it's important to lift up.

Those positive, joyful birth experiences inside the hospital and outside the hospital. But I think what this work is about, it's about hope, it's about joy. It's about lifting up positive birth experiences so that we know going into birth what even to dream for, like what to wish for?

You know, what is the vision to have in our mind.

We don't want the visions that we've been we've inherited from media and you know.

Hollywood, which depicts birth as like this.

Wild emergency, the water breaks, the panic ensues, like it's just for alarm fire like it's just crazy. I'm so aligned with you on that, Elaine, Like, I think that we really do need to highlight these incredibly positive, joyful birth stories because motherhood is so joyful and I'm always reticent to paint a picture of motherhood that is overly dark or like negative, because I want people to know how amazing it is to bring another human being into this world.

I find motherhood to be the most fun thing I've ever done. Yes, Wow, it is so much fun. And I wish people talked more about how fun it is. Yes, me too, just hear about like how hard it is. I'm like, I've actually found more balance through motherhood than I ever had in my life, like work. Life balance came after having a baby, because now I have a physical reminder of what's more important, like you, and it forces me to stop and to pay attention to not

Girl?

Boom, do you that was me? I was like, give me all the drugs.

Bo Like I was that girl too, by the way, Like I got turned out by my midwife. Okay, I didn't decide to have a home birth until thirty six weeks, which, as you know, is at the very eleventh hour. I was like, I literally was like, I love you, midwife. Shout out to Kimberly Jrden and Allegra Hill. They are two incredible black midwives who are the co founders of Kindred Space, LA, the only black owned birthing center in all of southern California.

I want to shout them out.

But they took such good care of me, you guys that I was like, you know, I really love.

This care that you're giving me.

But is there just any way that you could just like sneak some epidural just a little drop?

Yeah? Can you just can we just if you could.

Tell me that you could give me some epidural, I will sign up today. And they're like, you know, that's the kind of the whole thing with natural birth and home birth is like you won't have access to it, you know.

Like that was the hardest thing for me to swallow because I was that girly.

I was like, I'm looking for the epidural, you know, but I just didn't want everything that came with the epidural.

I didn't want like the hospital's rules.

And I didn't want to have to be upright if I didn't want to be it. I didn't want needles in my arm when I'm trying to be as zen as possible for my body to expand and push out this bowling ball of a baby.

And so on that note, let's focus on the solutions here. Walk us through how the fund works. How do you connect with the women who need the services, how do you find them, and then what do you provide for them?

So Birth Fund is really singularly committed to covering the cost of midwi free care for all the families in our network. And I'll tell you, like the best part of the phone calls of meeting our families. Is this part like where we go, but wait, there's more, and we get to tell them what else comes with participating in birth funds. So Sofar is coming in and investing actual, real dollars.

In these families.

Each of our families are getting ten thousand dollars as a gift from so By to open up what's called a newborn vault, and they're being paired with a financial advisor who's going to sit down with them and help them pan out their famili's financial future. And one other resource I'll share is we've partnered with the Postpartums Support International organization, which is incredible. They offer mental and emotional support to families in the postpartum stage.

So you have access to.

A peer to peer network of moms who have recovered from really serious a range of mood disorders, which can affect a lot of families in that postpartum stage, especially when you don't have the support that you need. We're creating this kind of a wrap around care program for our families that we really hope will become a model for the government and for other private companies to say, you know what we can do that we can do better for families who are bringing new life into this world.

So this is just the beginning.

We're in our first cohort, but there's so much more work to do, but we're really we feel really good about how about how strong was starting.

I know the Birth Fund is just starting out, but tell us about the women you've helped so far.

Do you have any updates?

We had our first birth. Don't make me cry, you guys. We've had a lot of happy tears in the last week in December. I had this idea for Birth Fund, but I sort of started in baby steps and I started with no pun intended. I started just like an ig fundraiser. On my birthday, I felt so indebted to my midwives that I was just like, for my birthday, all I want to do is pay it forward and cover the class of care for another family in my community. To have access is kind of transformative mid with free

For any woman who is pregnant, thinking about getting pregnant, visualizing a family in the future, what do you want to say to her?

Oh my gosh, this question makes me emotional. But what I would say is trust your body. Trust your body, Mama. You were built to do this. And when I say trust your body, I also mean trust when it doesn't feel right.

Your body is your protector. Your body is full.

Of wisdom, and so you deserve the care that feels good, the kind of care that feels good, and if it doesn't feel good, it's not care. And so keep fighting for the best for yourself and for your baby, because you deserve it, and it's available to you, and there's also resources available to you to help you get that.

Carry user knowledge is power. Learn it all to your research, ask your questions. I think, know all the choices, know all the Yeah, it's.

Nice to hear what your choices are and then make the right one for you. Yeah, exactly, And you're getting the conversation started, which I think is one of the most important parts of this.

Thank you so much, Elaine. Thank you for having this conversation with me.

I can't tell you like we should be talking about this more so, thank you for taking on this topic, and and thank you for sharing your story too. I think it's so important to hear like really positive, joyful hospital bird stories, just as much as it's important to hear, you know, joyful births that are happening outside Plastica as well.

Yes, thanks Elaine, Thanks.

Thanks ladies.

Elaine Walterroth is the founder of the Birth Fund, a best selling author, a journalist, and a mom.

For more information on the Birth Fund, you can check out birthfund dot com.

You know, so many of our conversations revolve around feminism and the women's movement, and one of the things that I always take away is that so much of feminism is just about choice, and so I appreciate that Elaine is bringing a conversation to the table about choice in delivery and pregnancy. People don't really talk about midwiffery all

Yeah, learned a lot during that interview. I didn't quite think about the fact that midwiffery gave way to this whole industry of childbirth, and I think that's just something that's really important to consider when you're thinking about having a family. And I definitely factored in the industrialized element of medicine and hospitals whenever I was planning my birth.

I also loved when you talked about the joy of motherhood, because I really do hear people talk about how hard it is and I'm sure that's incredibly true. Yeah, but you had two birds. You love giving birth.

I love giving I know that's controversial, but I absolutely love it. I would be a surrogate if I didn't hate being pregnant so much. But I think it's I think it's so important to talk about positive birth stories. We can't go around just only talking about the negative, really scary stories. Like we know that those exist, but like we have to be mindful of showing the other side and that you can have this really peaceful, yet

Well, that's it for today's show, y'all.

Tomorrow, we're talking with actor Melissa Joan Hart. Do we even need to elaborate on her credits? I mean, she needs no introduction, but Clarisa explains it all. Sabrina drive me crazy. I mean, we have major MJH nostalgia And she's going to join us to reflect on her illustrious career and her recent move into stand up comedy and directing.

We cannot wait for that. She's such a huge part of our childhood.

She really is.

Okay, well, don't miss it.

Meet us back here tomorrow, and thank you all so much for listening and hanging out with us. Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Simone Boyce. You can find me at Simone Voice on Instagram and TikTok.

I'm Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok.

That's ro Ba y. Stay on the bright Side.