Imagine you are a Caucasian young woman, at the doctor’s office and you have just learned you are expecting your first child! A myriad of thoughts and emotions flood your mind. What will the sex of my baby be? Will it be healthy and who will it resemble – me or the father, who is African American?

While you sit in the laboratory waiting room to have your prenatal testing, a news anchor shares this information,

In a 2001 study, participants were shown a picture of a white face or a black face followed immediately by a picture of a weapon or a tool. They were asked to identify the object as quickly as possible. Study participants more often identified weapons correctly after they saw a black face, and more accurately identified tools after seeing an image of a white face. What’s more, “they falsely claimed to see a gun more often when the face was black than when it was white.”

Next, you reach for your phone and search the web for details surrounding the recent news relating to the killing of the unarmed African American young man, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, MO.

Fear, instead of joy, now encompasses your mind as you compassionately cradle your abdomen with anxiety for the future life of your unborn child if the child does in fact more closely resemble the father!

Continuing this quest for answers in a means to prepare for raising and protecting a black child in America you read:

A 2005 study by University of Colorado neuroscientists bolsters these findings. The scientists measured threat perception and response in the brains of 40 students to targets in a video game, some of whom were carrying pistols while others carried wallets or cellphones. The study authors predicted that because there is a cultural perception that African-Americans are “more threatening,” participants’ “shoot response” would come more naturally. Indeed that’s how it panned out. The study found that the students shot black targets with guns more quickly than white targets with guns, and took longer to decide not to shoot unarmed blacks than unarmed whites.

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Leaving the doctor’s visit, you immediately head home to share the news with the father! As you stick the key in the door, you think: What do I tell him first? Should I share with him the saddening news of the study – or should I ask him how are we going to continue living in America in hopes of protecting our biracial child, who will hopefully one day grow up and  be able to walk the neighborhood safely with friends!

We know that the stress we experience in our lives impacts the quality of our health. While pregnancy can be one of the happiest times in a woman’s life, it can also be a stressful time. And, if a woman has experienced chronic stress at unhealthy levels before her pregnancy, that stress may impact her health throughout the pregnancy and in the long term, as well as the health of her child.

Research shows that chronic stress – like the experience of racism – impacts birth outcomes and the health of an individual over the course of their lives:

The body’s response to chronic stress, it seems, can also harm a fetus by subjecting it to the same negative biological conditions of chronic stress, which are different than responses to individual stressing events. The ongoing exposure to large quantities of stress hormones is thought to be a leading cause in disparate pregnancy outcomes, as stress is known to be a complicating factor for pregnancy.

We do our best to take care of ourselves and our loved ones. And often, outside forces continue to impact our health – whether those outside forces be the quality of the air we breathe, the affordability of health care services, or racism embedded in systems and institutions throughout our American society.

While we cannot fix racism, at the YWCA, we have some services that can be helpful. If you are expecting a baby and could use support accessing services and resources, call Pat Hampton in the YWCA Healthy Birth Outcomes program at 206.436.8667. If you’d find it helpful to talk to someone about the stress or anxiety you’re feeling, call 425.922.6192 to talk to a counselor in our Community Mental Health program. We’re here for you.