Women spread awareness for maternal mortality, morbidity in Oklahoma

TULSA, Okla. — In Oklahoma, nearly one woman per month dies during pregnancy or from childbirth complications.

Two local women almost became part of that statistic.

“I requested a doctor a lot, and never saw one until it was time to push,” said Sarah Johnson, who suffered from maternal morbidity.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, maternal morbidity describes any short-term or long-term health problems that result from being pregnant and giving birth. Maternal mortality refers to the death of a woman from complications of pregnancy or childbirth that occur during the pregnancy or within 6 weeks after the pregnancy ends.

Johnson was 35 years old when she delivered her daughter, Mila Rose, on Valentine’s Day in 2016 in Tulsa.

She said she labored in the hospital for about eight hours and chose not to have an epidural, because she wanted to bounce back and recover quicker.

She was bleeding a lot during labor and looked pale. She said she and her husband raised concerns several times, and nobody addressed those concerns. Then things turned critical after Mila was born.

“So I delivered my daughter all natural, and then about an hour after delivery, I started having excruciating pain. Worse pain than what I had had during childbirth, and I had just had an unmedicated delivery,” Johnson said. “It was so bad, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t hold my daughter. I was holding the rail of the bed, shaking and begging someone to help me.”

She said hospital staff ignored her until she passed out and was rushed into emergency surgery.

“Typically, when you have that kind of pain, what should happen is it’s an immediate red flag to the nursing staff and the doctors, because hematomas happen like this and they’re excruciating while recovering in the hospital,” said Johnson.

She hemorrhaged again, and needed even more blood. A day after she returned home, she hemorrhaged a third time.

“I said goodbye multiple times,” Johnson said. “There were moments that I thought, my husband and I had to have conversations that were like, ‘Please tell my daughter that I love her.’ It was very traumatic.”

“It’s hard when your birth story is scary,” said Barbara O’Brien is the director of the Oklahoma Perinatal Quality Improvement Collaborative (OPQIC).

“I’m a grandmother. I have grandchildren who are young, and my daughters had a higher risk of dying when they gave birth to their babies than I did when I gave birth to them,” said O’Brien.

“Hemorrhage is the number one preventable type of maternal mortality and morbidity,” O’Brien said.

“Oklahoma doesn’t have great statistics when it comes to maternal mortality and morbidity,” said Johnson. “It just fueled me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, because I knew that there had to be a change. There had to be a way to make a difference.”

The State Health Department’s maternal health, morbidity and mortality 2021 annual report shows maternal mortality is worsening in Oklahoma. Even as fewer women are getting pregnant, birth and fertility rates are dropping.

Between 2006 and 2019, 20 women in Tulsa County died during pregnancy or after giving birth.

Marnie Jackson delivered her fourth child, Blair, in 2013 via cesarean section. A couple weeks later, she had back pain, trouble breathing and headaches.

“We have always focused on the baby. We worry about the baby’s care, but we don’t worry about the momma’s care,” said Jackson.

Her obstetrician sent her to her primary care doctor, who diagnosed her with double pneumonia and sent her home with medicine. But she just got worse.

Eventually it got so bad, she drove herself to the hospital.

“If I would have waited one more day, they said I would have had a heart attack,” said Jackson.

She said the doctor told her she had postpartum cardiomyopathy, and her heart was functioning at only 15 percent.

The state’s report shows heart conditions are the leading cause of maternal death in Oklahoma.

The death rate for black women in Oklahoma is more than one and a half times higher than it is for white women, but it actually dropped more than 30 percent between 2016 and 2018.

Now Johnson and Jackson both share their stories, working with OPQIC, to help other women feel empowered and to help labor and delivery teams learn how to better care for moms.

“Generations of women are used to not speaking up,” said Johnson. “It’s unfortunate. It’s sad and we lose lives over that.”

In 2019, FOX23 showed you when Saint Francis Hospital became one of only four hospitals in the country to launch the Team Birth Project to improve communication between doctors, nurses, mothers and relatives there to support the patient.

All delivering hospitals in Tulsa are now on board. OPQIC said their goal is for every hospital in Oklahoma to use Team Birth.

OPQIC provides ongoing education for doctors and nurses and has several resources online, including a one-page, post-birth clinical survey you can ask your physician to fill out, detailing exactly what happens during your delivery.

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