Tatyana Ali’s eldest son was “pushed” back inside her during a traumatic birth.
Vaughn Rasberry, Edward and Tatyana Ali
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air actress is still reeling from the “obstetric violence” – the term the star uses to describe the experience, in which she was “held down” as Tatyana and her husband, professor Vaughn Rasberry, welcomed Edward into the world in 2016.
Tatyana, 47, recalled on a recent episode of Rider Strong, 46, Danielle Fishel, 44, and 49-year-old Will Friedle’s Pod Meets World podcast: “I had a really healthy pregnancy, luckily; this is my first son. And all of that changed once we got into the hospital.
“Our birth plan wasn’t followed, there’s all that, but I was also held down, my arms and legs. The term that I use is obstetric violence.”
The Jawbreaker entertainer added: “I mean, I’ll be real with you, they pushed him back inside me, Danielle. That’s what happened, my baby was all the way crowned. That’s not a real procedure.
“In my records, it shows that he goes from the lowest station, I saw his hair, I touched his hair, to the highest station, and it doesn’t say how that happened.
“It’s an incredibly dangerous thing that they did; they could have snapped his neck, but this is after hours of them holding me down, not allowing me to move.”
Edward, now nine, stayed in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) after he was born.
Tatyana remembered: “Once it was time for us to leave the hospital, and this is after my son has been in the NICU, he couldn’t pee on his own for a long time, for about five or six days.
“And when they realised that – actually, it was a paediatric urologist who was the only one who came to my side and said, ‘I saw what happened during your birth, the things that resulted in this emergency C-section.’
“And she said, ‘I think the traumatic nature of his birth is what is causing this.’ And that was the only person in the whole hospital who mentioned what happened.”
The Sesame Street alum added: “When we left the hospital in the middle of the night. As soon as we got the go, I think it was like past midnight, we ran away.”
The nightmare ordeal has made Tatyana raise awareness of it because the experience is “very commonplace”.
She said: “It’s been happening for a very long time … black women are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth, and I think a lot of times people go, ‘Oh well, those are other health risks.’
“Yes, that’s in the mix of things, but there are incredible traumas that are also being experienced in the hospital when you’re a black woman, an indigenous person, giving birth, that the treatment is just totally different.”
And Tatyana feels a responsibility to use her experience to speak up for people whose voices are not being heard.
She said: “I’m supposed to say something because all the people I’m talking to, no one puts a mic in their face. It kind of just was like, ‘God, I’m going to take all the things you give me – the good and the bad – and do something with it.'”
In 2021, Tatyana told SheKnows that giving birth to her and Vaughn’s second son, Alejandro, via a C-section, was an “amazing experience” because “I had choices, there was somebody there who respected me, respected us as a family, got to know us as a family, guided us through everything”.
