Athletes of Color Face More Health Risks During Pregnancy

By: Greta Stuckey

Track and field athlete Tianna Bartoletta pregnant with her first child. Source: @Tianna Bartoletta.

At the beginning of November, Tianna Bartoletta was only 26 weeks pregnant when she went into labor, putting her and her son at risk of health complications.

A healthy and full-term pregnancy is typically around 40 weeks which is 280 days. A preterm or premature baby is delivered before 37 weeks of pregnancy and in Bartoletta’s case, extremely preterm infants are born 23 through 28 weeks.

Based on 2019 data reported by The New York Times, black women are two and a half times more likely to die during childbirth than white women, when controlling for their age, education and income levels.

Bartoletta is a 36-year-old black woman. She is also a decorated track and field athlete with eight Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal in the long jump and sprint events. Unaware she was pregnant at seven weeks, Bartoletta competed in the 2021 Olympic Trials from June 18-27. She competed in the 100-meter dash 6 weeks pregnant and tried to make the United States team in the long jump at 7 weeks pregnant.

“Obviously, I would not have even bothered if I knew I was pregnant,” Bartoletta said on her blog. “But I didn’t. I went to Europe from the trials for Norway, and Sweden Diamond league meets. Two months pregnant, but all I wanted to do was sleep, eat, sleep and eat some more.”

After getting to the hospital in physical and mental anguish, Bartoletta was told by doctors that they wanted her to stay pregnant as long as possible so they could get the full course of betamethasone to kickstart her son’s lung maturity. The problem was, she was in severe pain and her son was a breach so she would have to undergo a c-section to safely give birth. Bartoletta was given a narcotic to ease her physical pain, but that also left her fearful.

“I looked over to Chuck who was holding my hand,” Bartoletta said. ‘“I don’t want to leave here an addict. Would four years of sobriety go down the drain because of this shit? I didn’t choose this.”

In her first marriage from 2016-2017, Bartoletta dealt with domestic abuse and began taking prescription drugs to self-medicate. She quickly became addicted to prescription drugs and it wasn’t until she got divorced and met her new husband that she got sober.

According to The New York Times, mental health and substance abuse play an important role in the gap between the health outcomes for white women and black women during pregnancy. The differences also include general stress levels, mental illness such as depression, access to mental health care and use of substances like nicotine and illicit drugs. Black women are more likely to suffer from maternal risks related to their socioeconomic status due to racial disparities in education, housing and healthcare.

After days of holding on in agonizing pain, Bartoletta started to slip away and her husband altered the doctors that they needed to take action. Although it was still early, the doctors decided that it was time to complete the c-section. Her son’s heart rate dropped, but he recovered and they were able to take their time with the delivery.

“He slowly recovered, because he’s tough- after all, he’s the fastest fetus on the planet and ran two rounds and took six jumps over two days at the Olympic Trials too,” Bartoletta said in her blog.

The doctors gave Bartoletta an epidural and she lost feeling from the ribs down. She could feel her body being jostled and cut, and even though it was pain-free, but only minutes later, she heard the cry of her son.

“I told him (her son) I’m sorry that I couldn’t hold on to him and that he had so much work to do on his own,” Bartoletta said in her blog. “I have never had an easy go of it, neither has Chuck and now, it should have been no surprise that Kai would start out this way, being tested. But my little man is already a NICU rockstar.”

She and her husband named him Kai. They gave him the nickname Cobra Kai, not after the show, although Bartoletta did admit to binge-watch it during the Olympic Trials. Luckily, Bartoletta and her son were healthy and alive. Bartoletta couldn’t take Kai home from the hospital as he needed support in the NICU, but like the title of her memoir, she and her son “survived and advanced.”