Muncie mother: Ethnicity played role in heartbreaking pregnancy

Editor's Note: The following is part of a class project originally initiated in the classroom of Ball State University professor Adam Kuban in fall 2021. Kuban continued the project this spring semester, challenging his students to find sustainability efforts in the Muncie area and pitch their ideas to Deanna Watson, editor of The Star Press, Journal & Courier and Pal-Item. Throughout the spring and into summer, stories related to health care have been featured.

MUNCIE, Ind. – Muncie resident Molly McGuire described her first pregnancy as “a perfect storm.”

After her “horrific pregnancy experience,” she started to do more research and learned how her ethnicity may have played a role. McGuire is Native American and found a handful of data of infant-mortality rates due to ethnicities.

“I had all kinds of signs and symptoms starting from the very beginning. If somebody had just taken me seriously and also looked at my background — my race, my family history of other native women in my family when it came to their adverse pregnancy outcomes,” McGuire said.

According to the OMH U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, “American Indian/ Alaska Natives have almost twice the infant mortality rate as non-Hispanic whites.”

Karrie Osborne, RN and a professor at Ball State University, has been teaching for 10 years and explained how the nursing program is preparing future health professionals by working with people of different races and ethnicities.

Osborne said minority students in the nursing programs have brought up their concerns in the teaching in the classroom. For example, students of color have noticed how the textbook will show examples of white or light skins for skin assessments. Students were concerned with the limited examples of working with different skin colors, especially brown or dark skin. The students' concerns helped guide Osborne to provide more resources as she taught her classes such as online examples of darker skin assessments.

Osborne said she and her other staff members are listening to minority students, having them [students] share their personal experiences when dealing with health care.

That’s not what happened when McGuire met with her doctors.

When McGuire’s gynecologist prescribed her Clomid, an oral medication used to treat infertility in women, McGuire said she started having abnormal bleeding. She said she felt a little concerned, but her doctors explained how the bleeding is common during pregnancies.

“I felt dismissed at that point in time, [but] I still stayed with them, and then, as I got into my third trimester, things just got worse way fast,” McGuire said.

She explained how she gained five pounds and was swollen throughout her body within a week. Then she noticed that her baby wasn’t moving as much.

“Every time I’d call, it was like, ‘Well, you and the baby’s gotten bigger. Bigger babies don’t move around. A lot of swelling is common in pregnancy,’” McGuire said.

After taking a gestational diabetes test at the recommendation of her doctor, returning with positive results, she was told she needed to take an educational class to gain a better understanding of what diabetes she’ll be having. She was sitting in the class and listening to the nurse explain a list of symptoms of when to call your doctor — symptoms that raise red flags and recommend patients to seek medical attention.

“There was a list of the top 10, and I just burst out into tears because I had all 10 of them, and then I explained to her how I hadn’t felt my baby moving for days,” McGuire said. “I’d been to the doctor’s office, and I felt like they didn’t take me seriously.”

Dr. Ronald Wyatt, vice president and senior fellow of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, explains the science of patient safety, noting that no one should be harmed during the process of receiving health care.

“When you care for people, you should exceed their expectations. The industry definition says you should meet the expectations of the customers, but in [improving]  health care, I’d say that quality means we exceed those expectations,” Wyatt said.

An article from “Medical Regulation,” defines patient safety as “health care professions that apply safety science methods toward the goal of achieving a trustworthy system of health care delivery.”

Once McGuire shared her story with the nurse, she was taken to another doctor who was familiar with her situation. They took her into labor to remove the baby once they couldn’t find the heartbeat and determined the infant had died.

McGuire now encourages everyone to advocate for themselves.

“Now, I know doctors are human, and I know [it’s] true they don’t know everything, but I put my life in this person’s hands, and I was paying them to make the decision for myself because that’s not my area of expertise,” McGuire said, “but my area of expertise is my body.”

This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Muncie mother: Stillbirth came after few listened to her worries