When Tayshana Jones learned she was expecting triplets, she considered ending the pregnancy.
“It’s not that I didn’t want them,” Jones said as she cradled one of her sons in the neonatal intensive care unit at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where she gave birth in May at just 29 weeks’ gestation. “I just didn’t want to be struggling.”
Jones, 33, already had been a single mother of two for almost a decade before finding her “person,” Johnny Burden, about two years ago. Burden wanted kids, and Jones loves babies. But after delivering their son, Burden’s firstborn, in July, she was shocked to learn just a few months later that three more were on their way. Burden, though, had no hesitation, and they decided they would be a family of eight.
Then Burden was killed in January when shots were fired into a car in which he was a passenger. Jones, a private person with a small circle of family and friends, was more isolated than ever.
Multiples often arrive before nine months, but 29 weeks, almost three months shy of full-term, is dangerously early.
“I think it’s because I was grieving,” she said.
While Jones held her babies — Kaisyn, Karsyn and Kisyn — in the Family Maternity Center on Monday, just a few hallways away, Sentara hosted a roundtable discussion with community organizations on improving maternal health outcomes and connecting mothers with support before, during and after birth.
Melissa Herd, the acting U.S. Department of Health and Human Services director for District 3, which includes Virginia, participated remotely. The federal government, Sentara and other organizations have been working to address disparities in Black maternal health, which Herd has said is in a state of crisis across the country.
“What we’ve found is that the resources are likely there. The problem is they’re not connecting,” said Dr. Francine Pearce, Sentara’s medical director of health equity.
That can mean community organizations may have difficulty connecting with individuals who need them, with each other to provide wraparound care or with traditional health institutions such as hospitals and obstetricians.
“There’s a whole hidden system of care that people don’t know about,” participant Stephanie Spencer said after the roundtable.
In 2015, Spencer founded Urban Baby Beginnings, an outgrowth of the Capital Center of Virginia. She said her nonprofit and other community organizations are “reaching in” to systems like Sentara to make resources more visible and to get to pregnant women and mothers sooner.
For the past three years, Urban Baby Beginnings, or UBB, has maintained an office in the Family Maternity Center at Sentara Norfolk. It connects with mothers right after delivery.
“We try to find our moms where they are, because we realize the barriers are too great for them,” Spencer said.
Spencer doesn’t know Jones, but thanks to that outreach, Jones knows UBB. A representative helped her sign up for the organization’s services, Jones said, and a postpartum doula visited her at home and is trying to connect her with other resources.
UBB often refers to its doulas as “birth sisters,” Spencer said, because not everyone is familiar with the work of doulas. They’re trained to provide physical and emotional support to expecting women through the birth of their child and the postpartum period. Their assistance can help to reduce the length of labor by 25% as well as the use of pain medication by 30%, according to the nonprofit’s website.
Jones recalled how Burden, a deeply involved father, was willing to reach out for support, including making the rounds of organizations that offered diapers and other necessities.
“He wasn’t ashamed. He would go for help,” Jones said. “I’m prideful.”
She’s been a painter in the apprentice program at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth for the past four years, and still hopes to walk in her October graduation, but for now, her benefits have run out. Since the boys came so early, she wasn’t able to work long enough to get the last of the three car seats she needs — a special kind for triplets that cost $300 apiece — much less a car big enough to fit all six kids or a place to live, after her Portsmouth home sustained recent water damage. She and her kids have been staying with various family and friends for a few days at a time.
“I always thought I could do it all my own,” Jones said. “I need to get out of that mindset.”
Spencer said that “superwoman syndrome” is one of the cultural barriers her nonprofit and similar organizations try to address.
“No one has a cape here,” Spencer said. “I especially think for women, women of color as well, we tend to just say, ‘No, we can do this ourselves,’ because everyone’s doubting us. That is common, and I think that’s a barrier that we’re constantly fighting.”
On the other hand, that persistence contributes to a remarkable ability to move forward through hard times, she said.
“It really shows the resilience of women,” Spencer said.
Jones said faith and prayer are what’s gotten her this far. Burden is gone, but he left a legacy he never got to know: his four sons. They hadn’t yet learned the triplets’ gender when Burden died.
“I knew I was strong, but I didn’t know I was this strong,” Jones said. “Lord, please don’t give me another test.”
Have a health care or science story, question or concern? Text, call or email Katrina Dix, 757-222-5155, katrina.dix@virginiamedia.com.
