Irin Carmon

She almost dropped the baby.

And he started calling for help without even checking her vitals.

The doctor insisted that everything was fine.

This is just what happened.

She just had a baby.

And he's going down the hallway screaming for help.

People come running.

They call a code blue.

And it is later determined that Maggie's C-section incision was not properly closed and she was bleeding out internally.

And only her husband's screams being heated saved her life because she needed a full body blood transfusion and had lasting hormonal damage.

And I was so deeply horrified by this story, and I was trying to understand how it fit into the broader story of American pregnancy care.

She had come to Woodhull through a pathway of seeking midwifery care, which is evidence-based to provide better outcomes.

But that when she needed a different kind of care, she found herself with the same old crappy public hospital, underpaid doctors, understaffed nurses, the stress of being in an area with a lot of people who need a lot of help.

And two months after I heard Maggie's story, a woman named Christine Fields died at Woodhull Hospital in an utterly preventable death.

Yeah.

Tell me about Christine's story.

Christine was born at Woodhull Hospital.

She was raised a few blocks away in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.

Throughout her childhood, lived in 31 different foster homes.

And at the time, before she gave birth, things were really looking up in Christine's life.