Racial Disparities in Maternal Health Outcomes Difficult To Erase – By Steven Ross Johnson for Modern Healthcare
When Lynette Granger had her first child four years ago, she described both her pregnancy and delivery as going smoothly.
“My first pregnancy was amazing, no complications, sickness or anything,” she said. When Granger, who resides in the West Side Chicago neighborhood of Humboldt Park, became pregnant with her second child last year however, complications developed almost immediately.
Three months into her pregnancy Granger was diagnosed with a short cervix, which carries a 1-in-2 chance of causing premature birth. As a result, Granger was ordered to remain in bed. At six months her water broke, and at seven months she delivered her daughter.
Granger’s child had to stay within the neonatal intensive-care unit at the University of Illinois Medical Center for three weeks. With her thoughts solely on the health of her child during that time, it wasn’t until months after her daughter was released from the hospital and safely at home before Granger began to think about the toll the experience had taken on her own health, or the risks she now faces if she and her partner ever decide to have another child.
During her second delivery Granger experienced excessive bleeding to the point where doctors considered performing a C-section. Because of those concerns, her physicians told her future pregnancies would be considered high-risk. “That’s what scares us about possibly having a third child,” Granger said. “Overall I think it’s scary for my body and what it could do to my organs and my insides.”
The health difficulties Granger experienced during her second pregnancy and delivery have become increasingly more common among women throughout the U.S. in recent years. While rates of maternal complications and death have been declining for years in other industrialized nations, the U.S. rate has been rising.
