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In the September issue of British Vogue, actress Jodie Turner-Smith spoke at length about her motherhood journey.
The actress who recently starred in the Melina Matsoukas debut film, Queen & Slim, had her first child this year with her husband, actor Joshua Jackson.
READ MORE: Jodie Turner-Smith says she and husband Joshua Jackson won’t raise kids in America
“Every stage of my pregnancy brought its own challenges and lessons,” she said. “Nobody really teaches you about what your body goes through to bring a child into the world until you’re actually doing it.”
She told British Vogue that she decided to have a home birth because of “concerns about negative birth outcomes for Black women in America—according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the risk of pregnancy-related deaths is more than three times greater for Black women than for white women, pointing, it seems to me, to systemic racism.”
Turner-Smith said that she labored for four days before her daughter was born at the couple’s home in Los Angeles on April 21.
She noted that giving birth during the coronavirus pandemic also motivated her choice. She said that as hospitals around the country began restricting who could be present in the birthing rooms, forcing mothers to deliver without the support person or people of their choice.
“Delivering at home ensured that I had what every single woman deserves to have: full agency in determining my birth support.”
READ MORE: “Queen & Slim”: 4 Things we could all learn about critiquing Black art
She credited her husband for accompanying her to movie sets and being a support. Turner-Smith filmed her first action film in the early months of her pregnancy, Without Remorse also stars Michael B. Jordan.
The new mother also spoke to British Vogue about how she will talk to her daughter about being born in 2020. “I think I will tell her that it was as if the world had paused for her to be born. And that, hopefully, it never quite returned to the way it was before.”
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