Actress Tatyana Ali has opened up about the "traumatic" birth of her first child, revealing that medical staff pushed her son back inside her after he was already crowning.
During an appearance on the Pod Meets World podcast with Danielle Fishel, the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star shared the harrowing experience she endured while giving birth to son Edward in 2016.
"I'll be real with you: They pushed him back inside me," Ali said. "My baby was all the way crowned."
The 47-year-old mother of two clarified that the maneuver was "not a real procedure" and noted that her medical records show Edward moving from the lowest station to the highest without explanation. "It's an incredibly dangerous thing that they did. They could have snapped his neck," she added. "But this is after hours of them holding me down, not allowing me to move."
Ali said her birth plan "wasn't followed" despite a healthy pregnancy. After delivery, Edward spent time in the NICU due to complications she attributes to the traumatic birth. A pediatric urologist later told Ali that the baby's difficulty urinating was likely caused by the trauma during delivery.
Ali has turned her experience into advocacy, noting that such mistreatment is "very commonplace," especially for women of color. "Black women are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth," she emphasized.
Now, Ali sees sharing her story as a mission. "I'm supposed to say something because all the people I'm talking to, no one puts a mic in their face," she said. "It kind of just was like, 'God, I'm going to take all the things you give me—the good and the bad—and do something with it.'"