Yael Stone gave birth to her daughter in May, but the experience wasn’t at all what she’d planned her.
The Orange is the New Black actress has shared her childbirth experience, which began as a water birth at home and ended with an emergency C section in hospital 21 hours later.
Yael said she promised herself she would be honest and real on social media, so across two Instagram posts she shared her story with her one million followers.
She said it left her feeling “like a failure”, but has also inspired her to help mothers and babies in Sierra Leone who do not have as easy access to healthcare.
“I’m sharing the most vulnerable moment I’ve ever experienced. We lived a lifetime during the birth. We labored at home for 18 hours, hoping to deliver there naturally,” she wrote.
“The first 10 hours I felt like a warrior, after that something changed. The next 8 hours had me questioning myself, digging deeper than ever before and still not making the progress that our baby needed. I felt like a failure when knew it was time to go to hospital but we were so incredibly lucky to have that as an option,” she continued.
She shared a photo of herself in an indoor pool with her partner Jack Manning Bancroft.
A second image showed her pulling the peace sign to a camera while in a hospital bed.
“By hour 21 of labor I was being rushed off for an emergency C section,” she began the second caption.
“When our beautiful daughter arrived she needed help to breathe and I needed help stay conscious. Without modern medicine and the expertise of the doctors and nurses our baby would not be here, I would not be here.”
“Our birth experience was not what I’d wanted for but I know how lucky I am to hold my baby and feel her heart beating next to mine.”
Yael wrote that she wrestles what to do with the experience and it was “take time to make peace with it”.
In searching for a positive, she was inspired by mothers who give birth without access to vital, possible lifesaving healthcare like she does.
“I learned about the @aminatafoundation who are saving mothers and babies in Sierra Leone where you are 200 times more likely to die giving birth than in Australia, where I was lucky enough to give birth. I’m grateful to Aminata and part of my healing will be making a donation.”
Yael gave birth to her daughter Pemau Stone Bancroft on May 30.
“Her mum and dad are very tired and very much in love,” said a statement by her rep at the time. “She was named after her great-great-great-grandmother, who provides a powerful link to the past: the Bancrofts’ oldest link to the Djanbun clan of the Bundjalung nation.”
Top Comments
So, she attempted to have her baby at home, it wasn't following the 'normal' progression of a birth, so she went to hospital.
That is EXACTLY the right thing to do, and exactly what a homebirth that doesn't progress should look like.
This woman and her team should be applauded for making the right choice for herself and for her baby.
So. She attempted to give birth in the same way many women do, because they don't have the privilege of first-world healthcare and interventions - so they have no choice but to deliver "naturally". Only now it's dawned on her how lucky she was, when it didn't go to plan, that she wasn't living in the third world, wherein she and her baby may have perished. The irony.