Mamas At Work: Tatyana Ali Is Quilting For A Cause

It’s Black Maternal Health Week. Here’s everything you should know to protect yourself and those you love.

When beloved actress Tatyana Ali gave birth to her first child in 2016, she received a few special treatments because she is a public figure. A cozy room that offered privacy, for example. But beyond that, her experience was far from luxurious. In fact, it echoed the troubling realities that far too many Black women face during childbirth in hospitals across the country.

When it was time to deliver Edward, Ali recalls the experience being a “circus” where her voice was shushed by the birth team, including the doula her obstetrician had secured for her through the hospital. She was even physically pinned down at one point.

“I had a very healthy pregnancy, and that all changed when we got to the hospital. I was restrained, and our birth plan wasn’t followed,” she says. “No one cared what I had to say. No one cared what I felt physically. When I knew with every fiber of my being that I needed to move, they pinned me down. I found it amazing that they thought they wanted my child to be safer than I did. Why don’t you trust me?”

Ali experienced the bias that Black pregnant women in America face, that’s led to our community having the highest maternal mortality rate of any group of women in the U.S. for years now. Following the ordeal, her son ended up having to stay in the NICU for a few days, and she and husband Vaughn Rasberry found themselves dealing with PTSD that followed them even as they prepared to welcome a second child years later. She went searching for community, and found the Black Mamas Matter Alliance. Ali attended what was only their second annual conference, and it would lead her to the information and people who would make her second birthing experience in 2019 the one she’d always wanted.

“I found myself in a room of Black and brown midwives and doulas and activists, pregnant and all. I just dove in to learn as much as I could,” she says of the gathering. “I found my midwife in that community, and I never have experienced healthcare like that before in my life. The expertise, the love, the listening.

She treated me as a whole person,” Ali adds of the midwife she had at the time. “She prayed at my feet when I got scared. That’s what I mean when I say I’ve never experienced healthcare like that. Somebody with loving hands in pregnancy and in birth, it’s such an incredible experience that it’s sacred. That’s how it should be treated.”

Inspired, she wanted other women to have the same outcome. And so, in addition to her burgeoning advocacy work, she started quilting.

“I sew, my grandma, sewed, my dad sews. I work on his sewing machine that he’s given me. I sewed my first quilt for Alejandro, my youngest, and my husband and I, we sewed blessings into it for him. And it was really this expression of this joy and expectancy I was feeling,” she says. “I had been doing the advocacy work while pregnant. I had been meeting mom groups. I was given a piece of Ankara [fabric] by one of those mom groups and that became part of that quilt. I got so many compliments on that quilt. People wanted to know where it came from, who made it, why did I make it. It became an entry point into me sharing my experience and also what I was learning. So this last Black Maternal Health Week, I decided to make quilts like that one. Actually, each pattern that I’ve designed of the quilts is a blessing, including one of the blessings that I put in my son’s quilt. So the first pattern is a blessing of abundance. The second is joy. We have a peace pattern. Those quilts sold out in a few days.”

Baby Yams was born, a line of beautiful quilts with a portion of the proceeds going toward grants for Black and indigenous midwives and doulas to be able to offer their services to more women in this country. The name is a play on the cute, chunky thighs of babies that are reminiscent of a yam, the starchy tuber’s importance within the diaspora, as well as the traditions of midwifery and doula work that go way back.

“[Baby Yams] is a celebration of the diaspora, these very, very deep roots that we have,” she says. “And with the midwifery and the doula care, a lot of that is the reviving of ways of care that were purposefully dismantled.”

She’s looking to ensure that care continues in the effort to save lives. In addition to that, she’s still acting, recently having a recurring role on the ABC hit Abbott Elementary, all while balancing being a mom of two young boys, volunteering at their school, and being “one of those library moms” and PTA parents. She leans on her support system to get it all done.

“I have multiple tribes. I’m part of tribes in different places that sometimes we can only get on a FaceTime, and I have my mom group in my community where I live. I’m lucky that I have family, but you have to seek that out,” she says. “And then I just try to balance, and I do sacrifice some things. There’s some things that I can’t necessarily go 300% on and hustle like I did in my Twenties, because my sons come first.”

But that doesn’t mean the things she’s passionate about come last. She says her sons watch her and are inspired by the hustle she still has while being a mom.

“As a woman, you have a purpose. Our work has meaning to us. And that’s a part of what you get to share with your children. Even with Baby Yams, my kids go with me to the post office to mail out the blankets, and they’re helping out. They’re talking about starting their own businesses at five and eight. ‘Maybe I should do a lemonade stand,’ or ‘Maybe I could sell my Legos.’ So it brings something to the home, our work.”

She’s also making time to go viral. The star reunited with her famous Fresh Prince of Bel-Air cousin, Will Smith, as they all keep tabs on one another to this day. They then linked up with rapper and It girl Doechii to do the “Anxiety” dance trend on TikTok.

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