Episode 28 Five Times More Likely: Maternal Mortality and Activism With Mars Lord

Have you ever heard someone speak and just thought “oh my Lord I need this person in my life?”. Mars Lord was a guest recommended to me by a few of you listeners, and I’m so grateful! My favourite mentors in life have been women who are epic storytellers, make difficult topics easy to talk about by being warm, passionate and funny as fuck. Mars is a mother of 5, grandmother now too. She has been a doula for 15 years and she is a glorious speaker and activist. Maternal and infant mortality rates for black, brown, Asian and Indigenous people are increasing. Black women are now five times more likely to die than white women – in pregnancy, birth or within the first 12 months. Mars talks to us about how the reasons that black women are dying haven’t changed, and yet the system and the people supporting them hasn’t changed to acknowledge that they are dying. You think about other health crises in the perinatal period – like cot death or SIDS. When we found putting babies to sleep on their tummies led to cot death we started putting them on their backs – and infant morality rates dropped. When we found that smoking makes small and premature babies, we started anti smoking campaigns, and infant morbidity associated with smoking reduced. Mars talks about what it means to be a non-racist versus an anti-racist. If you’re not ok with racism, assault, obstetric violence and coercion then be more public about it. If you’re not ok with birthing people and babies dying then what change are you actioning? You are more powerful than you know. If birthworkers and the people they serve remember that they are powerful, then we will change the world. Resources to view the video of this podcast https://youtu.be/nUAHwaaIzSc Mars Lord https://marslord.co.uk/and https://www.instagram.com/_marslord/?hl=en Birth Trauma Training Free access to Lesson 1 https://learn.doctorerin.com.au/pl/121948 Early bird upfront https://learn.doctorerin.com.au/offers/UhzL4bSV Early bird Payment plan https://learn.doctorerin.com.au/offers/Wx9m2z2Z