The healthcare system really let me down during the birth of my first child. That experience taught me the importance of access to quality care. Many days, y’all see me post pictures of my happy smiling chub. But things weren’t always this way.



Right before he was born, we found out he had severe hydronephrosis. The doctors believed he had one completely nonfunctioning kidney and another hardly functioning one.





“Black children have the highest infant mortality rate with 11 deaths per 1000 births , according to Infant Mortality Statistics collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2013. That is a very high figure when compared to the Asian American rate of 4 per 1,000 and the non-Hispanic White rate of 5 per 1,000. While that data was collected in 2013, one cannot help but wonder if anything has changed.”