Friday, March 29, 2024

Jodie Turner-Smith on Not Passing ‘Fear’ to Daughter Through Breastfeeding

Joshua Jackson & Jodie Turner-Smith

*Jodie Turner-Smith says it was quite challenging being a new mom and balancing her emotions during protests surrounding the death of George Floyd. 

The “Queen & Slim” recalls being home in California with husband Joshua Jackson as the nation erupted over the police killing of Floyd.

“We decided to live in West Hollywood for the birth [to be closer to a hospital in case of an emergency], so I was hearing the sirens and the marches,” the “Queen & Slim” star recalls in a new interview with Porter. “I could hear all the unrest outside the door, and it actually took me a while before I could watch the video of George Floyd because I was nursing my daughter and you think about the generational trauma that we already carry and deal with and pass on.”

“I was trying really hard not to pass on that fear, sadness and anxiety through my breast to my child,” she added. “I had to shut a lot of it down and just stay insular and inside my family for a bit.”

READ MORE: Jodie Turner-Smith Opens Up About 4-Day Labor Journey: ‘I Was Fatigued’

Turner-Smith had a home birth with the support of her obstetrician, her doula, her midwife, her mother and Jackson.

“Right after I gave birth, my husband washed her, and the midwife and doula cleaned everything up. Then me, my husband and my daughter, we just slept for a good 12 hours. I needed that. We needed that,” she recalled.

She opted for a home birth amid the COVID-19 pandemic and due to the “negative birth outcomes for Black women in America.”

“We had already decided on 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,” she wrote in an essay for the September issue of British Vogue.

“We never imagined that in the coming weeks, hospitals around the country would begin restricting who could be present in the birthing rooms, forcing mothers to deliver without the support person or people of their choice,” she explained. “Delivering at home ensured that I had what every single woman deserves to have: full agency in determining my birth support.”

Turner-Smith spent nearly four days in labor in late April.

“Early in the morning on my third day of labour, my husband and I shared a quiet moment. I was fatigued and beginning to lose my resolve. Josh ran me a bath, and as I lay in it contracting, I talked to my body and I talked to my daughter,” she shared. “In that moment, he snapped a picture of me. An honest moment of family and togetherness — a husband supporting a wife, our baby still inside me, the sacred process of creating a family.”

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