FULL VERSION

MEET THE JOHNSONS

After taking his wife to the hospital for a routine C-section, it never crossed Charles’ mind that they wouldn’t walk out together to raise their sons. Langston was born perfectly healthy, and Charles and Kira were overjoyed welcoming this beautiful bundle of joy. But shortly thereafter, as they were taken back to recovery, Charles saw blood in Kira’s catheter.

After he brought it to the attention of the doctors and the nurses, they assessed her and ordered a series of tests, including blood work and a CT scan. This was around 4:00 in the afternoon. “At first, I'm thinking, ‘My wife is healthy, my baby is healthy and we're at what's supposed to be one of the best hospitals in the country,’” Charles says. But as the hours went by, the CT scan still hadn’t come.

“Kira's beginning to become pale and in a lot of pain, and I'm asking, ‘Hey what's going on? Where's the CT scan?’” Charles adds. “They're telling me, ‘It’s coming, it's coming, it's coming.’ 7:00 comes. No CT scan. By this time, she's shivering uncontrollably. 8:00, 9:00, 10:00—still no CT scan. Her condition is continuing to deteriorate. She's in immense pain, and the entire time, I'm begging, I'm pleading for the staff at the hospital to just do something. And now they're saying they might take her back to surgery. But they still haven't even taken her for the CT scan. 11:00 came and went. It wasn't until after midnight that they finally took Kira back to surgery, after allowing her to bleed and suffer needlessly for more than 10 hours while myself and my family begged and pleaded for them to just take action.”

When they finally took Kira back to surgery, Charles was angry, frustrated and exhausted. “But at this point, I'm relieved somewhat because they're finally doing something,” he recalls. “And as I'm walking down the hall to the operating room, and I'm holding Kira's hand, she was still conscious, but she was very weak, and she's saying to me, ‘Baby, I'm scared. I'm scared.’ And I did the only thing I knew how to do as a husband at that point. And that's just tell her that everything's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. And so finally as we're walking down that hallway towards the operating room, we finally get to that set of double doors, and they opened. And they closed behind her. And that was the last time I saw my wife alive.”

When the doctors took her into the operating room, there were three liters of blood in her abdomen.

While it never occurred to Charles that Kira could die giving childbirth, afterwards he started to see just how common it is. “People began to share their stories,” he says. “People began to share stories of other women who had had traumatic birthing experiences, and other women who had died giving birth. And at first, I was thinking that this is just people's way of trying to connect with me and support me in my grief. But the more I'm hearing these stories, the more I'm thinking to myself, ‘Something just isn't right.’ And that's when I began to research this for myself, and I came to understand that, what so many of us now understand, is that we're in the midst of a maternal mortality crisis right here in the United States that's not only shameful domestically, but it's shameful globally.”

After Charles then discovered that Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy compared to other women, he felt like he had to something about it. “I began to share Kira's story publicly and advocate and work to shape policy reform and five and a half years later, I'm still here fighting,” Charles says. “Fighting to make sure that other dads don't have to have the conversations with their sons that I've had to have with mine.”

“One of the challenges that we've had in our country for far too long is that these experiences that are so painful have been happening in silos,” Charles says. “And that, that's the reason that it's been business as usual. Its people are suffering, and they're not expressing it. And not understanding that the women or the family across the street, across the cubicle, has been through something similar, right? And so, regardless of where you're from, what color your skin is, what your social economic background is, these issues that we're standing here speaking out against today affect all of us. And there's so many things in our country that divide us, but this is something that is uniquely unifying people. And that's why I'm so proud to be here, and I'm so proud to stand in solidarity with March of Dimes as we do this important work.”

 

SHORT VERSION

MEET THE JOHNSONS

After taking his wife to the hospital for a routine C-section, it never crossed Charles’ mind that they wouldn’t walk out together to raise their sons. Langston was born perfectly healthy, and Charles and Kira were overjoyed. But shortly thereafter, as they were taken back to recovery, Charles saw blood in Kira’s catheter.

After he brought it to the attention of the doctors and the nurses, they assessed her and ordered a series of tests, including blood work and a CT scan. “It wasn't until after midnight that they finally took Kira back to surgery, after allowing her to bleed and suffer needlessly for more than 10 hours while myself and my family begged and pleaded for them to just take action,” Charles said. When the doctors finally took Kira into the operating room, there were three liters of blood in her abdomen. And her heart stopped immediately.

While it never occurred to Charles that Kira could die giving childbirth, afterwards he started to see just how common it is. “I began to share Kira's story publicly and advocate and work to shape policy reform and five and a half years later, I'm still here fighting,” Charles says. “Fighting to make sure that other dads don't have to have the conversations with their sons that I've had to have with mine.” And March of Dimes is by his side fighting to end preventable maternal health risks and deaths, which disproportionately impacts families of color.