Montana Brown has revealed that she chose to have a home birth when welcoming her son Jude last month because she felt that hospitals are not “the safest place” for non-white people.
The former Love Island star, 27, shared a YouTube vlog about her pregnancy and birth plan recently to answer questions from followers about her experience.
She opened up about her decision to have a home birth, adding that she hired a doula, a trained professional who supports women through labour and birth, as well as through post-partum.
Brown, who is mixed race and has Japanese and Jamaican heritage, said she “can’t wait” for her home birth. She filmed her vlog before giving birth to Jude in June.
“I feel like hospital isn’t the safest place to give birth and I know people are gonna be like, ‘What the f***, you’re an idiot’ but I just think it’s personal preference,” she told her followers.
“Also, I just think as a non-white person, it’s not the safest place to be in hospital in childbirth. All these things I’ve thought about for a long time. We’re also having a doula, which I’m really excited about.”
In the UK, Black women are nearly four times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than white women, according to a report published by MBRRACE-UK (Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK) in 2022.
The study found that there was a slight drop in the maternal mortality rate for Black women between 2018 and 2020. It also found that Asian women are around twice as likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than white women.
In a 2021 response, the government said it was “committed to reducing disparities in health outcomes and experience of care”.
Brown, who is engaged to fiancé Mark O’Connor, said she asked for advice on a home birth from The Only Way Is Essex (Towie) star Sam Faiers, who she called the “queen of home birthing”.
Montana Brown and Mark O'Connor attend the UK Premiere of "The Little Mermaid" at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on May 15, 2023— (Getty Images)
“It’s just fantastic… She’s helping me feel really set in my decision,” she said.
Replying to a fan who asked if she felt afraid of giving birth, Brown said had the “most positive mindset ever”, and would continue to do so even if she had to have a “C-section, an epidural, or wound up in hospital”.
The reality star and her fiancé welcomed baby Jude on 23 June. Last week, she opened up about the struggle to get pregnant despite being in her twenties and said she was surprised it took her so long to conceive.
Speaking on the Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast, Brown told host Giovanna Fletcher that she thought “something was wrong” with her when she and O’Connor first started trying for a baby.
“I thought, ‘We’re young, this is going to be really easy’… For the first four months, we’d used ovulation sticks, and then I’d do a pregnancy test and it’d be negative,” she recalled.
After both she and her partner went to check their fertility, they discovered she had “no oestrogen and no testosterone”, which made her realise that people “can be young, fit and healthy, and still really, really struggle to conceive”.
Announcing her son’s birth, Brown shared a black-and-white photograph of the newborn being cradled against her chest on Instagram and wrote: “Welcome to the world Jude Isaiah O’Connor. We’re so smitten with you little man.”
The couple announced their engagement in April, after O’Connor proposed to her in Bermuda. They first met in 2020.
Brown featured in series three of Love Island and was coupled up with Alex Beattie at the end. They broke up shortly after leaving the villa.
