ABSTRACT
Hello, my name is Felicia Hanney and I would like to share a story with you eh, about a time that I experienced not being heard and seen as a black woman and a first-time mom. I delivered my first child in March of 2018, and, after 36 hours plus of labor, I had to have a C-section. So, the experience was not, um, the best for both me and my child … the recovery also was not the best. Normally for someone who delivers and has a C-section you have to wait at least four weeks, no driving, try to keep your feet elevated and so that’s what I was trying to do. However, I also developed baby blues. I was struggling with breastfeeding and having my baby latch on, and I was dealing with severe pain as a result of the C-section. So, in April of 2018, um, I noticed that I had a tear on the right side of my C-section which caused a lot of pain. And at that time my parents they told me: ‘well you need to go to the doctor, you need to be seen,’ you know? ‘We need to get this taken care of.’ There was some pain medicine that I was allowed to have, but I had ran out of that pain medicine, and I also felt guilty for thinking that if I took all the pain medicine that it may go through my child, through my breast milk. So, I was dealing with a lot of emotional, um, issues at the time.
