Pregnancy is both a beautiful and scary thing. Women need access to books and other educational resources in addition to having a trained medical team who can reassure them. When one is in prison, this is not always the case.
Twenty-eight-year-old Hayley Rider gave birth behind bars and shared her story with Today. She is just one of 58,000 pregnant people who are imprisoned, according to a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine's Pregnancy in Prison Statistics (PIPS) study. Her hope is by sharing her story, it will shine a light on a broken system and inspire change.
Hayley was sentenced to two years in prison for a nonviolent drug offense. She did not know she was pregnant until she started serving her sentence. A routine medical exam discovered her condition, but did not inform Hayley of it. Instead she was simply moved to another facility.
Hayley was not given access to information during her pregnancy. "You want to know that everything is fine and going well," she explained "I didn't have that reassurance in prison." She also struggled with the poor quality of prison food and the sleeping conditions. Inmates do not get pillows and sleep on sleeping mats that are only 3 ½ inches thick. Pregnant inmates are issued a second sleeping mat, but it is not enough.
More from LittleThings: Program Allows Mothers In Prison To Live With Their Babies
One of the hardest things about being pregnant in prison was knowing that she would eventually have her baby taken away from her. She was not allowed to have anyone in the delivery room with her except the medical staff and an armed guard. Milestone moments were bittersweet. "Meeting your child for the first time is a once-in-a-lifetime feeling. Having a baby while incarcerated completely takes that away from you," she explains. "I couldn't even think about her small face or hands or her skin or how good she felt in my arms — I knew they would be coming in to make me hand her over."
After a week, her partner eventually was allowed to pick up their daughter but there was a week of time Hayley had no idea where she was.
Today Hayley works for Motherhood Beyond Bars, the same program that once helped her. "To be able to give back is great," she stated. "There's a lot of damage being done and there's a lot of reform to be made, and it's not happening."
