CHICAGO -- Taylor King held her 21-month-old son, Sterling King, as he napped underneath a tent in Chicago's Jackson Park on Saturday as she remembered what it was like to have to drive 40 minutes from her home on the South Side of Chicago to her birthing center where Sterling was born in 2020.
King made the 40-minute drive three times that day while in labor after being told she wasn’t dilated enough yet and had to go home then come back.
What made the experience as a first-time mom easier, she said, was having a support system and resources available to her that were rooted in the Black community, like the Chicago South Side Birth Center and its founder and lead steward, Jeanine Valrie Logan, who was King’s midwife.
