Black Maternal Health Week 2023: Jessie Laurore
“We view our work as investing in midwifery, reclaiming the legacy of Black midwives, and providing more options to our community. And it goes so much more beyond, you know, they have a healthy baby and they're healthy – all the mental and spiritual aspects are really important. They can feel supported, and that's part of their own body's healing process, and mental healing as well.”
Jessie (she/her) is the Program Manager of Neighborhood Birth Center and she is passionate about reproductive justice, midwifery, and community care. Jessie is a former Birth Sister at Boston Medical Center and current local birth doula based in Dorchester. She brings a calm and supportive presence to her doula work. Before becoming a Boston birth worker, Jessie worked as a research analyst at Child Trends, where she engaged in compelling research on maternal and child health, equity, juvenile justice, and environmental racism. Jessie completed her undergraduate studies at Harvard University, where she majored in History and Science, with a focus in Mind, Brain, and Behavior, and minored in Global Health and Health Policy. At Harvard, she wrote a senior honors thesis on African American women’s mental health activism. Jessie will soon be a student-midwife, as she is joining the Yale School of Nursing’s midwifery cohort in 2023.
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April 2023 | Interviewed and edited by Jessie Colbert, Executive Director, Mass. PPD Fund
This Black Maternal Health Week (BMHW), the Mass. PPD Fund is proud to feature Jessie Laurore, Program Manager of Neighborhood Birth Center, a trained doula, and an aspiring midwife. Neighborhood Birth Center’s vision represents a tremendous step forward for maternity care for Black moms and all birthing people in the Boston area, and has been an inspiration to me personally, and for so many others.
It was a pleasure to speak to Jessie about how she sees the Birth Center as exemplifying BMHW ‘23’s theme of “Black Autonomy and Joy,” key tenets of the reproductive justice movement. We also talked about her exciting career path, and how person-centered birth means better outcomes all around – including for perinatal mental health.
This year’s theme for Black Maternal Health Week is “Our Bodies Belong to Us: Restoring Black Autonomy and Joy!” Can you share how Neighborhood Birth Center’s mission and vision overlaps with this theme?
We're very aligned with the theme of bodily autonomy - restoring autonomy and focusing on joy. At the Birth Center, we focus on the midwifery model of care. Going back several generations, everyone was caught by a midwife. There was an intentional campaign to diminish the importance of midwives. A combination of eliminating a workforce that was doing very well and really supporting the Black community, while simultaneously not investing resources in maternal care, really set the tone for the outcomes that we see today.
We view our work as investing in midwifery, reclaiming the legacy of Black midwives, and providing more options to our community. Midwifery is person-centered care, that really centers the individual's autonomy as they're making choices about their birth. Making sure that it's relationship-based – so when you see your midwife during labor, it's not the first time you're seeing that provider. It's someone that you know, that you can trust. And people can have access to the resources that they need throughout labor, as well as postpartum. The research also supports midwifery care as an evidence-based solution for a lot of the maternal and child health issues that we're facing today.
We want to have doulas integrated into our model as well, because having that extra support is really important. And we want to make sure that doulas are also able to thrive within the model, since it can be [financially] challenging to be a doula full-time.
Neighborhood Birth Center has a beautiful vision of birth center birth as liberating and empowering. What do you see as the connections between a positive birth experience and birthing people’s perinatal mental health, including for Black women in particular?
The research definitely supports the connection between someone's experience during labor and their postpartum mood. The recommendations that come from that are really to help people feel supported, honor their agency, and make sure that, as someone entering their parenthood journey or expanding their family, they're not starting off with trauma and obstetric violence.
[We did a] community needs assessment in Boston on whether people were interested in a birth center, and how they were feeling about the current care options. People were sharing that they weren't feeling known by their care providers. Especially for People of Color, they worried a lot about racism and had to do a lot of extra work to try and be taken seriously, including code-switching and behavioral changes, such as dressing a certain way. We want the Birth Center to be a place where people feel at home, where people know they'll receive quality care and feel empowered. Our Founder Nashira [Baril] often says, after she had her home births, she felt so powerful and supported, and that's what we really want for people.
Of course, we know that so many different things can happen during the birth. But the feeling of, you know, you're safe, you're supported – those are things that should be a constant despite the location. So even if someone does need a hospital transfer, we’re hoping to transfer from midwifery care to midwifery care, so people don’t feel like they're in a totally different model. Regardless of what might come up during the birth, the person feels like they know what's going on and they are in control.
Are there other aspects of Neighborhood Birth Center’s model of care that you see as contributing to birthing people’s mental health and well-being?
I can draw from some of my experience as a doula. A lot of times first-time parents don't know what to expect when they're going to the hospital. If the [maternity care] provider isn’t really emphasizing the need for breathing practices, and how they want the experience to go, it can be hard for the doula to emphasize that. Then sometimes the day can come, and people feel unprepared, like so many things are happening so fast. A lot of times second-time parents are the ones who, after the period of reflection, they're like, Wow, I just had no idea how everything was gonna go. That’s what makes them want a doula the second time around.
Being able to prevent some of these negative experiences and just start people off strong will be really important, as well as the healing aspect for people who experienced trauma the first time around. This time, they can feel supported, and that's part of their own body's healing process, and mental healing as well. For them to really feel that support is out there, that their healing is valuable. And it goes so much more beyond, you know, they have a healthy baby and they're healthy – all the mental and spiritual aspects are really important.
What do you see as the importance of culturally congruent care in the maternity care space?
We usually say cultural reverence. Reverence is really honoring someone's culture and being able to support them during their birth experience. So, one of the things we talk about at the Birth Center is the communal kitchen that we’ll have so people will be able to reheat their postpartum meals. You know, food is at the core of many cultures. One of our board members reflected that she was in a space where she was going to reheat food and people were like, Oh, these smelly foods, we don't want them. Having a place where you're saying, Bring your postpartum meal, bring your kids, bring your family, is really respecting and supporting someone's experience from that aspect. There are certain postpartum traditions that people have, and we really want to approach those with respect.
Oftentimes cultural reverence does come from having providers who look like you, so we want to have the providers reflect the community. While also making sure that people are equipped to engage and support people across the board, because everyone has different cultural backgrounds. We want people to feel at home stepping into the Birth Center no matter who they are.
Some of your academic work has focused on the history of Black women’s mental health advocacy. Do you see connections between that and the work you’re doing now at Neighborhood Birth Center?
As an undergrad, I studied History of Science with a focus in mind-brain behavior, and I had a minor in Global Health, so I was seeing myself at the intersection of mental health. But as I did my capstone project, I couldn't avoid talking about reproductive justice because over the course of activism, that's something that people were consistently talking about – the right to their own autonomy, the attacks on their autonomy, [forced] sterilization, and the impact those things have on the psyche.
I haven’t focused as explicitly on mental health as I've continued in my professional journey. But I think especially with becoming a midwife focusing on maternal health, of course the two are so intertwined. So it does feel like a full circle moment for me.
In your undergraduate capstone project, you also mentioned the damaging impact of racist stereotypes on Black women. How do you see this as playing out in maternal health, including maternal mental health, and what can we do about it?
I think moms in general are really struggling when it comes to the load that society places on them, as well as work-related stressors, and just so many aspects of life that don’t support parents or families. Approaching people individually and making sure that they’re supported is important. Community support is really great, too. We’re hoping to have spaces at the Birth Center for people to be able to connect with other new parents, to help them know they're not alone and they have others to rely on.
For Black moms specifically, I would say that sometimes stereotypes can prevent people from really receiving quality care. There’s past stereotypes around breastfeeding that can make it really challenging for people to access resources. And in many communities the intergenerational knowledge has been lost because Black women were forced to be wet nurses. People are really reclaiming Black breastfeeding and have new associations.
Can you share more about your career path, including what led you to Neighborhood Birth Center, and your goals as you look ahead to a career in midwifery?
After college, I decided to work in research. I really wanted to support issues that I was passionate about, as well as just learn more about the field. I was working in an organization on issues affecting children and families called Child Trends. Once I started getting into maternal child health research, I learned more about doulas. I had a lot of service in my background throughout college and even before, so I was feeling a pull to get back to that, and I decided to become a doula. I started supporting birthing people and I really did enjoy it! And I was really motivated due to a lot of the outcomes that are facing people, and just the state of maternal health in the U.S.
When I moved back to Boston, someone immediately told me about the Birth Center and what Nashira and others had been working to build. So I got connected, and that person encouraged me to apply, and I joined the team. Along the way, I also served as a Birth Sister at Boston Medical Center, and I was the only Haitian Creole-speaking Birth Sister at the time, so it was great to be able to give back and support people. In my doula training they said, We need more Black doulas, we need more Black midwives. So I immediately said, I'm going to do it, I'm gonna pursue midwifery! So took my prereqs, and I’ll be heading to Yale this fall. It’s been a great experience to feel at this point in my journey that a lot of people are really interested in what I’m doing, as well as invested in my success.
What is your vision for the future of birth for Black birthing people?
For people to have the choice, and the support, and to reframe what it means to give birth. That they’re able to feel empowered and liberated, and feel powerful – for it to be a healing experience. That's why Nashira says, If we can just get birth right, what else can change?
When we think of how the [birth] experience is designed, it’s [typically] provider-centered, it’s more for efficiency. And there’s so much else that gets lost when that’s the focus, rather than focusing on the person and the person’s needs. So once the experience is better, it means that you've already dealt with so many other things in the process. And knowing when the person’s needs are met, the outcomes are better. That’s how I’ve come to see it.