Tatyana Ali says doctors pushed her son back inside her during the 2016 birth of Edward, a delivery she described as traumatic and dangerous. The 47-year-old actress said she was held down while giving birth to her first child with husband Vaughn Rasberry.
Speaking on an April 27 episode of Pod Meets World, Ali said, “I mean, I'll be real with you: They pushed him back inside me,” and added, “My baby was all the way crowned.” She said the maneuver was “not a real procedure,” and said her records show Edward went from the lowest station to the highest station without explanation. “It’s an incredibly dangerous thing that they did,” she said. “They could have snapped his neck.”
Ali said the doctors held her down for hours and did not allow her to move, even though she had a really healthy pregnancy and had a birth plan that was not followed once she got to the hospital. She said, “All of that changed once we got into the hospital.” Edward later spent time in the neonatal intensive care unit after the birth.
The actress said the effects were still visible after delivery. Edward could not pee on his own for about five or six days, she said, and a pediatric urologist told her, “I saw what happened during your birth, the things that resulted in this emergency C-section. I think the traumatic nature of his birth is what is causing this.” Ali connected her experience to maternal health concerns for Black women, saying, “Black women are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth.”
Ali said she felt pressure to speak because many of the people she has been talking to do not get the same attention. “It's been happening for a very long time,” she said. “I'm supposed to say something because all the people I'm talking to, no one puts a mic in their face.” Edward is now 9, and Ali is also the mother of Alejandro, who is 6. Her account lands today as another public reminder of the uneven risks Black women say they face in childbirth, and of how little can go right when a birth plan gives way to a hospital emergency.