28/03/2022
It’s official! Our first Quindaro baby was born early this morning at a local hospital 👶🏽🥰 This past year has been full of opportunities and adjustments. It became clear early on that the best thing for us to do was to sit back and see who organically seeks care with us.
Our typical patient is an immigrant mother who has had previous births here and abroad. She’s typically doesn’t speak English, or needs help from a loved one to communicate with us. If her first language is Spanish, I can provide her care in Spanish. She is uninsured and scared to incur medical debt. Therefore scared to access medical care even when it is indicated. She has been blocked from receiving consistent prenatal care, even when she tried, either due to a language barrier, inability to pay, lack of insurance, misunderstandings, etc.
Our mother that gave birth today came to us at 30 weeks only having received an ultrasound at 9 weeks. She did not understand the schedule of prenatal appointments and eventually was told she was too far along to be a patient at all. She was 20 weeks at that point. We were able to do her bloodwork to ensure she was healthy, get her an ultrasound to ensure the baby was well, and monitor her stats through the last 10 weeks of her pregnancy. She was pretty anemic in the beginning and we helped her fix that through diet and herbs since she couldn’t afford to pay for an iron infusion. By the time she went into labor she was robust and ready with a solid record of prenatal care she wasn’t able to access anywhere else. We look forward to seeing her and baby soon to start postpartum care.
This story is one example of how maternity care in Wyandotte County is failing mothers. This mom tried to schedule appts 4 times before 20 weeks and was unsuccessful. We were her last shot. She found us on her own because she WANTED CARE but couldn’t find it anywhere else.
A cornerstone of JJ Way is Access. We work to remove barriers so women can receive the care they want and need. That’s how we start to make the change we all want to see.
