Hello Hello: The Inspirational Guide to Pregnancy. Danielle Jai Watson

      Dedicated To

      Troy and Victoria Boston: the two souls who created the life I have, who never left my side, encouraged me to embrace my power, and allowed me to purpose my dream with extraordinary support — letting me grow and evolve in order to discover the person I dreamed of becoming.

      I love you forever, Mom and Dad.

      

      Acknowledgements

       Inspired by:

      Davi Khalsa, Rashida Cohen, Andrea Custis, Beatrice Dabney, Yodit Crouch, Jasmine Witt, Donna Marshall, Dana Hutchinson, Candace Brown, Quinetta Shaw, Brit’ne Brown, Britney Thomas, Shannon Smith-Holmes, and Dnay Baptiste — the powerhouse of women who ignited this journey and made me believe that I was worthy of it. I love you all more than you’ll ever know.

       In Memory of:

      Susie Olive Miles, the one who’s fighting spirit lives through me. Mary Etta Dabney Hodge Boston, the one whose passion emanates through everything that I do. And Louise Daniel Hutchinson, my angel who blessed me with the gift and love of all things literary. Your spirit lives on and I will forever be indebted to you. I love you all from now until forever continues.

       Made Possible by:

      My husband Dion Watson, whose infectious spirit ignites every single space he enters. Thank you for pushing and uplifting me. You see the highest parts of my soul. And to my beautifully kind, brave, and intelligent babies, King Jay and Zenzile Monét Louise Watson — you stripped all the old and poured in the new. The greatest gifts I’ve

      ever been given. You make it all make sense.

       Written because:

      I promised my best friend I would write this book. So I did. I love you Grandad (Ellsworth Hutchinson Jr, WWII Vet). I hope this makes you proud. Love, Toughie

      Hello Hello Beautiful

      It is with humble gratitude and an enormous amount of empathy that I offer you my compassion project. My sole purpose is to create a safe space for you to learn about the task at hand. It requires the strongest amount of human resilience. My desire is to offer the inspiration needed to vitalize an uplifting perspective on motherhood.

      With purposeful great sensitivity, this book brings forth information from pre-pregnancy through pregnancy in a means to provide direction and encouragement on topics closest to your heart and experience. I’m not here to convince you of anything other than my belief that one can become exactly who they’ve always dreamed of becoming and I want to offer reassurance that you make it through every struggle, wave of adversity and conscious or subconscious fears that arise in this unpredictable journey.

      During my first pregnancy, I was thrust into a whirlwind of emotions. I was so excited and in the same breath, realized I knew nothing about what I was supposed to do next. In the beginning of my journey, I followed the current traditional path of finding an OB-GYN who would give me tons of ultrasounds, so I could collect the pictures for a future scrapbook.

      I arrived to the office and was immediately handed a piece of paper: PLEASE SELECT THE KIND OF DELIVERY YOU

      DESIRE. I gazed at my husband with a confused look. How was it that in this moment, with my first baby and not even having met a doctor, I could be expected to select a cesarean section (i.e. major surgery)? Why was that even an option for me? Still uninformed about what was happening to my body, I continued to follow protocol. I met with the team (there were five different doctors at the office), each instructing me to “… just relax for the next nine months and enjoy eating for two.”

      Yes, they actually told me to sit down and eat.

      Five months into my pregnancy, my aunt, Dr. Rashida Cohen, asked me a question that would lead me to write this book: “Have you considered a home birth?” I wasn’t offended by the question. Rather I was upset with myself for still not knowing what was going on with my body or that there were even different options for any number of things including delivery.

      In that moment, I went home and started reading and researching — one of the very things my OB-GYNs had instructed me not to do as to avoid “getting scared by information online.”

      The more I researched, the more I realized I didn’t know much. The more I realized that I’d been willing to do more research on which hair dye I was going to use — more so than the technicalities of growing a life within me and the options I possessed for childbirth.

      The more I researched, the more obvious it became to me that most of us have no clue what is going on until we are knee deep in the game. In time, I discovered how embarrassingly high the United States maternal death rate is (the highest among all industrialized countries). The maternal death rate in the U.S. today is WORSE now than it was 25 years ago.

      According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it’s estimated that approximately 900 women die from giving birth each year in the U.S. There are also roughly 50,000 near-death experiences that occur each year, with over half of those deemed completely preventable.

      Graph by NPR Special Series, Lost Mothers: Maternal Mortality In The U.S.2 The more I read, the more I learned just how often women in the U.S. are subjected to cesarean sections (roughly one out of every three births). Every single one of my peers who’d recently had babies (all under the age of 35 and in exceptional shape as athletes) had cesarean sections. Even with them working out their entire pregnancy, eating healthy and being young, they were all still experiencing the exact same birthing scenarios.

      How could each woman be having the same problem?

      During my research, I learned that medical intervention during delivery has the propensity to cause more harm to a woman’s body than actually reducing pain. Even when a woman has never had a baby before, we are more likely to assume that an epidural will somehow make delivery much easier. For some of us, this may be the case. For others, the data seems to suggest otherwise. With roughly 92-94% of women deemed low-risk during pregnancy — or, put another way, 92-94% of women more likely to have a satisfactory birthing experience versus an emergency surgery or some sort of trauma — more than 30% of these healthy women are having major surgery in order to deliver babies (that equals to over 1.2 million women each year in the U.S.).3

      It became apparent to me that somewhere along the line, mothers have been let down. Interestingly, people were more skeptical of my decision to have both children at home with no medication than they were about a perfectly healthy woman under the age of 35 with no prior medical issues, having major abdominal surgery with opioids and narcotics.

      Why was my birthing option deemed less safe when quantifiable evidence shows the opposite?

      With home births and hospital births showing no disparity among the infant mortality rate — yet hospital births showing a drastic increase in the number of maternal death rates versus home birth, I knew there was something missing for us. And it was, simply: information. Information given in a way that was empathic, nonjudgmental, sensitive, heartfelt and from actual mothers. Whether you decide to birth at home, a birthing center, or hospital, there needs to be a safe space presenting this information in one place, with one goal: to empower!

      The more books I found, the more I discovered that men are the ones at the head of the ship, deciding the best practices for women during