S1E7 "Rethinking Disability In Birth And Parenting"

What if the barrier isn’t a parent’s disability, but our assumptions about what they can do? We dig into birth, motherhood, and access through a Black maternal health lens, challenging the quiet ways systems define disabled parents before they even speak. From the seductive framing of “choose your baby’s birthday” to the higher C‑section and hemorrhage risks Black birthing people face, we unpack how persuasion can replace consent—and how policy and practice must shift to restore true autonomy.

We share stories from nursing and community organizing that show how quickly options vanish when disability is used as a shortcut for risk. Visible and invisible disabilities—cerebral palsy, quadriplegia, epilepsy, deafness—come with different needs, yet the pattern is the same: people aren’t told their choices. Instead of pity, we make the case for support rooted in compassion and trust, spotlighting how disabled parents craft their own adaptations and set their own limits. The wins are practical and universal: curb‑cut thinking in clinics and homes, interpreters and plain‑language care, adaptive gear that puts baby care within reach, and prenatal education that includes multiple ways to learn.

We also confront the data gaps that keep disabled parents out of maternal health statistics, the policies that omit accessibility, and the everyday moments where allyship matters. Speak up in rooms that forget disabled families. Share your platform with advocates who live the work. Pledge to remove barriers, honor stories, and keep pushing for systems designed around access and dignity.

Subscribe, share with a friend who needs this conversation, and leave a review with the pledge you’re making to support inclusive parenthood. Your voice helps build the community—and the change—that every family deserves.

Chapters

• 0:00 Framing Motherhood In The Margins
• 1:31 From Pity To Respect
• 3:03 Defining Disability And Autonomy
• 3:59 C‑Sections, Coercion, And Risk
• 6:30 When Disability Predetermines Birth Options
• 9:00 Invisible Disabilities And Missing Choices
• 11:25 Help From Compassion Not Pity
• 14:10 Trusting Self‑Advocacy And Limits
• 16:20 Expanding Accessibility To Parenthood
• 18:40 Camp Lessons On Inclusion

Transcript

Jaye Wilson: 0:15

Hey girl, hey, it's your girl Jaye. Welcome to another episode of Melinated Mommy Talks, the podcast, where we are talking about and exploring all things within the Melinated Moms spectrum. If you listened to our last few episodes, then you know we have been really unpacking and defining what it means to be a mom in the margins. If you're just tapping in, then I highly recommend that you check out all those previous episodes from this season and really journey with us as we deep dive into this important topic. Our last guest really helped us see how a blind mom is raising her children, learning to transition into a sightless life, changing careers to uplift and advocate for her community, and practicing one of the greatest examples of body autonomy I have seen to date. But often, as our guest mentioned, we are quick to go to the place where all we see is her disability and assume she needs help out of pity before we see and respect that she probably is handling her motherhood or parenthood, and she's got it all under control. So go ahead and pull up your metaphorical seat, tap in, and enjoy this episode focusing on disabilities in the birthing, motherhood, and parenthood space. Alright. So, what are some of the other disabilities outside of blindness where moms and birthing people are thriving as parents, but may not be getting the respect, recognition, and trust they deserve because we assume they ain't got it. When I think about even the word disability, it's a disempowering moment. When we are defining for someone else what they can't do, that is a marginalization. When we think about how that relates to the black birthing community, how many times have you been told what you can't do before you were told what you can? This happens so much in all aspects of birth. We have to start wondering: are there things that are considered disabilities that actually we actually have the ability to do? I recall a very pivotal moment when I first started Melinated Moms. I got an amazing opportunity to actually open up for the governor of New Jersey when he was introducing a bill into state law. This bill specifically was addressing how C-sections were considered an elective and how that actually created a bigger disparity for birthing people in general. After doing more research and getting more involved in birth equity work, I actually discovered that black women are three times more likely to receive a C-section. And this is crazy, we're also more likely to have hemorrhage during our birth. Now, could you imagine someone electing to give you a C-section and then you also having a higher risk of bleeding out from that C-section? Why would you choose that? And I bring this up because when they sign this into law, the goal was to allow the birthing process to happen naturally, instead of it being given to us as a persuasive version of coercion. Moms hearing the term, you can choose your baby's birthday. And aren't you tired of being pregnant? As if any mom is going to say, nope, this is great. I just want to continue this pregnancy forever. Every mom is gonna say, uh, yeah, let it, let's go, let's get it out. But if you don't understand the ramifications of electing to put your body through something that it's actually not ready or prepared for, how much of that can actually put you at higher risk for a potential disability? I bring this up because one of the considerations of C-section is to actually mitigate risks. In my job as a nurse, I've had the opportunity of actually serving individuals who had visible physical disabilities who also wanted to have children. And even though their choice was to give birth, go through pregnancy, have the same experience as everyone else, they were told from the very beginning they did not have a choice in how their baby would be born. So this was the first time I actually got to see in real time how that person's disability defined their birthing outcome, whether they wanted to elect to that or not. I say all that to say if a person is able-bodied and already limited in the choices that they can have with their reproductive health and their birthing journey, what could that possibly look like for those who are disabled? In my work through Melinated Moms, as well as a nurse, I've been able to meet a wide range of moms who had different levels of ability. Some of them have visible disabilities like cerebral palsy or quadriplegia. Some of them have things that are not so visible, such as epilepsy or even deafness. But they're all expressing the same commonality in terms of how their pathway to motherhood is limited because they're not even told what options they have. They almost have to be rebellious and find their own pathway, even though they are not one of one. I think that also ties back to why Melinated Moms exists. A lot of the moms that are a part of our community feel like they are socially isolated. They're the only persons that have ever experienced these things. And that's why it's so important for us to have this podcast where we're shining the light on the reason that we need to recognize disability and it, and the intersections of the journey to motherhood is incredibly prevalent. And if we're not thinking about it unless we are in it, we're actually creating a larger disparity. I think about what Jennifer said with not wanting pity when you want to offer help. Now, from every angle of motherhood, every mom needs help and support. I don't care if it's, I just need you to hold this baby so I can take a shower, I need to take a nap. Can somebody help me navigate this new space that I've never been in? Every mom, regardless of the ability to have ability, needs support. But I haven't ever met a mom who wanted help out of pity. We want help out of compassion. We want support out of human decency. But if the only way you will recognize what help and support looks like is through the lens of that person's disability, you're not being helpful. I think we often make the assumptions of what disabled people can do based on our ability to do it. So we're looking at things from the framework of as an able-bodied person, I need this level of help. But we're not thinking about how this person is still navigating the same world that we live in and what that looks like from their perception. What we learned in Jennifer's episode is she's been able to find her own accommodations and her own pathway to still enjoy and thrive in her motherhood. She's also aware of her own limitation. So if she needs help in the area of where she's limited, she knows how to ask for it. Why don't we trust that same process for others who may have the same or similar disabilities? One thing that stood out to me about Jennifer's episode is how she was very clear about what she won't do. Like, I'm blind. You won't see me driving a car. Totally understand that. Appreciate you. Thank you for shouting that out. But why is it that we can limit those who are wheelchairbound or those who have disabilities that are not visible? And we think that their only limitation is to restrict them from parenthood. That's not our choice to make. We've created all of these different accessibility options for everything except for their parenthood. How do we honor their life and their journey? How do we also teach our children that accessibility may look different, but it doesn't mean that they're exclusively removed from this being a part of their life's journey? Funny memory. When I was a teenager, a young person, really young, I actually attended this really amazing summer camp that actually integrated us with children who did have disabilities and children who were able-bodied. The best part of that camp that I can literally vividly remember is being able to see how we all still were very interconnected, regardless of what we were able to do, physically or otherwise. Just thinking back now, I'm wondering. I am 40 plus one. All of those people that I went to camp with are all also in their 40s. How many of them had the opportunity to be a part of their own parenthood journey? And how many of them didn't even get the opportunity because someone decided to take it away from them? So I want to encourage you to think about that. How do we actually contribute to a pathway, even if it's not one that we travel? How do we ask better questions? How do we hold more space? How do we also do the research so that we can figure out where the commonalities lie? I think about that camp quite often, actually. And the things that I've learned and the things that I embraced about individuality as well as compassion for others still stick with me to this day. Parenthood is no different. That camp taught me there is nothing that we all can't do if we have the right support behind us. That's the total foundation of why Melinated Moms exists in itself. We've all been able to find community through those commonalities. And we've also been able to learn from those areas that we may not share, but we still see the beauty and the resilience of it. What's hard is that there are many moments where assumptions can be dangerous. It can take away our abilities to even expand our own thoughts about what's possible or what's not. I think that goes back to our conversation between prevention versus reaction. There are a lot of things that we can prevent, but there are very few ways that we can actually control what our reactions are going to be when we're thrown into something that we weren't prepared for. I think there are a lot of laws that, or systems that exclude people that don't always say it. They don't always say what the exclusion is. So when we see things like that happen, the exclusion is the disability. If we're not naming it, we're actually amplifying the gap between access and resilience. And that's why I keep harping on that advocacy piece. I know y'all gonna be sick of it, but prepare to be sick of me. We advocate for why restrictions take away people's ability to have autonomy. So as we learn when we were talking to Jennifer, her and her husband made a decision despite people telling them what their decision should be. We've seen over time what that looks like and how that's also evolved a lot of what we see our normal everyday things now. Do you remember when our sidewalks actually didn't have the dip for accessibility needs for people who are uh wheelchair bound? And what we didn't think about was how that also created more access points. So, yes, we have these dips in our sidewalks for people who are uh in wheelchairs, but you know who else gets to take advantage of that? People with strollers, people who may have issues with walking for a variety of reasons. So, again, like let's pay attention to how those restrictions actually affects us all, even when you don't think it does. When I think about how advocacy plays a role in expanding reach or accessibility for people in a traditional sense, it actually makes me reflect on the time that we got the opportunity to go to Kenya. I met this amazing young lady who had this incredible journey into becoming a advocate for those who are deaf. She was a hearing person. However, different life circumstances actually led her to go to a school that was made for deaf people, even though she was hearing. She had no idea that pathway to make sure that she had foundational education would actually become her life's work. So when she became a mother, she coupled the two. She was able to take her ability of understanding sign language, hearing with her eyes, not with her ears, what their needs were, and then using her actual voice to advocate for the things that they couldn't say out loud. She was the first person to help me actually open up my eyes to saying, do you know what any of the statistics are for mortality or morbidity in people who are deaf or hard of hearing? And I had absolutely no idea because it never crossed my mind because that was not my walk. When she said that to me, I went down a rabbit hole. And y'all know I love a rabbit hole. But she just reminded me that there are things that we may take for granted because we're, we're always considered in some way. But when you look at someone who does not have that capability and they still have to navigate a world that is hearing, that walks or talks or shows up and is fully present in a different way than they present, it challenges you to realize advocacy is so much deeper than we need this, I want that. That example reminds me of why this is even a conversation. Those women were never considered in any of these conversation. Their experiences were never counted. People already counted them out because they put them on restriction of saying parenthood is not a part of your journey. When I think about from the nursing aspect, there are things that are considered contraindications. Based on their ability or disability, some people are encouraged to move forward, and some people are discouraged from moving forward. Based on those examples, we saw that these women were discouraged from pursuing motherhood. It's pretty clear when we're looking at bills or laws or systems that does not include language about disability accessibility to uh reproductive health. It's not there. And because these laws and these systems are not created to be inclusive of those people, then they're not even recognizing that they're missing. So that's why it's so important to learn who is doing this work and how their lived experiences is actually creating the awareness and the representation that people who are living like them are being seen. So if we're not recognizing it, I'm so glad to say that we have partners who do. I don't want us to get to the point of where it becomes our lived experience for it to matter to us. I want you to think about how you're able to show up in those spaces and places without restriction and how you can include more people who are disabled into those same spaces and conversations. Speak up. That's how we can actually understand like our power as an ally in spaces that don't often include disabled people. And here's how I'm going to pledge my commitment to changing the narrative for moms who are disabled. I pledge to use my ability to eradicate the perception of their disability from removing them from parenthood. I pledge to honor their stories and continue to stand alongside them so that they can experience all the joys of parenthood just like I have. I pledge to keep saying their name in rooms that don't even know that they exist. What will your pledge be? In this episode we dismantled the way that disability shows up in parenthood. We invited new voices into spaces, whether they were able to speak out loud or not. We've learned that accessibility does not restrict parenthood and it shouldn't. We've also learned how to create new systems in places where they are excluded. I'm really excited about all the ways that we're going to continue to learn to beat those margins that our moms are experiencing. Melinated Mommy Talks, the podcast, is your place for authentic and raw conversations about what it means to be a melanated mom. So make sure to subscribe on all of the platforms where you listen to your favorite podcast. Make sure to like and share. And if you want to continue seeing our podcast grow, make sure to become a paid subscriber for exclusive bonus content or become a donating listening supporter. If you're interested in becoming an individual or corporate sponsor of this podcast, go to melinated moms.com/podcast for more information. We can't wait to have you with us in our next episode. So keep listening, stay connected, and stay tapped in.