“I was told by the midwife to shut up,” says Tenisha, “and then she put her hand over my mouth…”
Shakira asked if alternative medication to morphine was possible after her C-section.
“The nurse got angry,” she says. “She threw the morphine away, and I was then left alone for hours.”
And when Kadi was recovering from a fourth-degree vaginal tear, she lay alone in her hospital bed crying her eyes out.
She accuses staff of showing no compassion as she screamed in pain.
“The nurses just walked past me and literally ignored me,” she says.
Stories from three separate women who were cared for in three different hospitals, but they all shared a similar experience – their pain was ignored, their concerns were dismissed, and they believe their race played a part in the treatment they received.
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The government says tackling disparities in maternity care is a priority, calling the fact that black women are twice as likely to die during childbirth an “absolute outrage”.
But behind the statistics are real women, living with the consequences.
So what does it actually feel like to be a black woman navigating maternity care in this country, when race is so intrinsically linked to risk?
“I haven’t felt supported, I haven’t felt safe, I haven’t felt like my pain was taken seriously,” says Tenisha Howell, 33, who has five children.
“I have a lot of experiences that I can draw from, and it’s sad to say that a lot of them have been quite negative,” she says.
Tenisha says her most recent birth was “probably one of the most traumatic experiences” she has ever had.
She was screaming in agonising pain as the gas and air she was given was beginning to wear off. The response from her midwife?
“She told me to shut up multiple times and then she put her hand over my mouth to basically say, ‘be quiet’,” Tenisha explains.
“That was very disheartening. It was very sad.”
When Shakira Akabusi, 38, gave birth to her second son, she was “down on all fours, clinging to the wall, asking for medication”.
But she says she was “denied repeatedly, ignored”, and “left for hours”.
“It was a horrifying experience, to be in so much pain, to be asking for help and nobody listening to you.”
Dr Michelle Peter, co-author of the Five X More Black Maternity Experiences Report, says: “This kind of dismissal of black women’s pain and refusal to provide adequate pain relief when it’s requested is a common experience amongst the black women who have shared their experiences with us.”
The Black Maternal Experiences Report gathered responses from 1,164 black and mixed-heritage women across the UK who had been pregnant between July 2021 and March 2025.
Of these women, 54% said they experienced challenges with healthcare professionals, while almost a quarter reported not receiving pain relief when it was requested.
“This is kind of linked to historical, but also ongoing, racialised assumptions about black people’s tolerance to pain, their vulnerability or their strengths,” says Dr Peter.
None of the women Sky News spoke to mentioned racial slurs, instead they suggested there was something more insidious.
“It’s the subtle things that they do, or don’t do that makes you think, ‘hold on, why are they ignoring me? Why are they being so dismissive? So hostile?'” says Kadi Wilson, 43.
Kadi continues to suffer from the birthing injuries she sustained 15 years ago.
After multiple complications, she suffered a fourth-degree vaginal tear, the most severe kind.
She says after her baby was finally delivered, she felt a sense of relief. But that euphoria wouldn’t last long.
Kadi says she began “throwing up in the theatre room because of all the drugs they’ve pumped into me”.
She remembers that she “looked down and I just see all this blood everywhere, and I am like, ‘oh my gosh, what has happened?'”
However, she says the medical staff failed to provide her with the answers or care she required.
“I was pressing that call button and no one came.
“I was crying my eyes out in that ward, and the nurses were just going past me… it was very cold, it was a very dismissive environment.”
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The government’s independent investigation into maternity and neonatal services, which is being led by Baroness Amos, has reported that too many women, from all backgrounds, continue to receive “unacceptable care”, which leads to “tragic outcomes”.
One of its aims is to explore the “impact of discrimination against women of colour”.
“This is not about pitting women against one another and diminishing any one woman’s singular experience,” explains Dr Peter.
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She highlights that maternity services are under a lot of pressure, working in challenging circumstances.
But, she says: “If this was purely a resource or capacity issue, then what we would expect to see is that these poor outcomes would be more evenly distributed across women from all backgrounds, and that isn’t what we are seeing.
“What we need to recognise is that for women who are black, these outcomes are experienced at a greater rate and disproportionately so – and we need to ask why.”
While medical professionals and government officials undertake the work to find solutions, women of colour continue to experience these problems.
When asked what it feels like to know that her race puts her more at risk, Tenisha says “it causes a lot of stress”.
“Constantly thinking, is this the time I am going to pass away? Is my husband going to have to raise the children by themselves? These are the thoughts I had,” she admits.
“It’s a sad thing to know, but it’s the reality.”
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Shakira says the treatment left her “so scared” that she felt like she “couldn’t speak out”.
“To be made to feel inferior because of the colour of your skin… it feels so dehumanising,” she adds.
Meanwhile, Kadi says she wanted to share her story so that people understand that “when we see the statistics, you have to first of all: look at the faces and the people behind it”.
Baroness Merron, parliamentary under-secretary of state for patient safety, women’s health and mental health, says it is “absolutely unacceptable that black and Asian women are more likely to die in childbirth than those who are white”.
She says: “To be in that position in this day and age is an absolute outrage.”
Baroness Merron says the independent investigation will focus on inequalities, adding: “I very much look forward to implementing what we can from that. I am already taking action in terms of tackling discrimination and racism across the NHS because it can’t wait any longer.”
