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Home from the hospital, Amoni Thompson-Jones; her husband, Casey Jones; and their newborn baby, Amara Thompson, meet with midwife Ebony Simpson in their Alexandria, Virginia, apartment. Thompson-Jones told Simpson how unhappy she was with the hospital care she received. She said she felt as if the doctors had a “birth playlist” they followed whenever a woman came in and didn’t really listen to her concerns. Even if, like Thompson-Jones, the mother ultimately gives birth in a hospital, the midwives do follow-up postpartum checks with mother and baby for up to a year after the birth.
In Virginia, Black women in recent years have been more than twice as likely as other mothers to have a death attributed to childbirth.
Photographer Karen Kasmauski followed the work of Black midwives between January and April this year in Virginia. Her series of photographs traces the relationships formed between midwives and their clients — from initial consultations and prenatal meetings to the birth and support in the months following pregnancy.
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