Elizabeth Harvin had a relatively uneventful pregnancy and when the day came, she gave birth to a baby boy without any complications. Then she started hemorrhaging three days postpartum. 

She called her obstetrician who told her not to come in, that bleeding is normal, and to continue monitoring the situation at home. 

The same day, her son had a medical emergency. Harvin took him to his pediatrician where he underwent testing that determined his bilirubin levels were too high, and he had a severe case of jaundice. At 9:30 a.m., the pediatrician sent them home to wait for the hospital to call when a room became available in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). Harvin received the call his room was ready at 4 p.m. 

Meanwhile, Harvin had continued to bleed and grow weaker. Her mother-in-law, a nurse, monitored her at home, but after Harvin checked her son into the PICU, she checked herself into the ER. 

“I kept telling them that this was a serious event, that it wasn’t normal postpartum. They kept looking at me like I was overreacting and saying ‘you snapped back so well’ and ‘you don’t look like anything’s wrong’,” Harvin said. “I couldn’t understand why. I’ve traveled, met all kinds of people. I know how to navigate different spaces and communicate well, so when I found myself in a life-or-death situation and no one was listening to me, I knew something was wrong.

“I’m telling the nurses that I’ve been bleeding all day and there are these huge clots ranging in size from a quarter to a grapefruit,” Harvin said. “I literally gave birth to a clot the size of a grapefruit and handed it to the ER nurse and I said, ‘This is what I’m talking about.’ That’s when she panicked.” 

They took her vitals and her labs came back showing that her hemoglobin was dangerously low. The nurses told Harvin they didn’t know how she was still conscious. 

“I don’t remember anything after that.” 

A systemic pattern

Unfortunately, Harvin’s situation is an all-too-common case. 

The U.S. maternal mortality rate is the highest in the world among high-income counties, and Black women, regardless of socioeconomic status or education, are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women. 

In talking with a neighbor, Harvin learned about Kira Johnson–a name that has frequented headlines since 2016 when Johnson died after a botched cesarean section (C-section). 

“A year and a few months before I had my son, Kira was hemorrhaging postpartum and told the doctors that something was wrong. An emergency CT was ordered but never conducted,” Harvin said. 

Ten hours later, Kira was unresponsive and rushed into emergency surgery, where it was discovered her bladder had been nicked during the C-section and she had been bleeding internally ever since. She died on the table. 

Harvin’s neighbor was Kira Johnson’s aunt. 

Inspired to get involved in birth advocacy and research, Harvin enrolled at Wayne State University, her mother’s and grandmother’s alma mater, to pursue a master’s in linguistics.  

“I thought I could take my love of language and do some good,” Harvin said. 

For her thesis, she analyzed 40 birth narrative case studies to examine the discourse between providers and birthers as well as the linguistic structures that shape the power dynamics in birthing spaces. What she found is that “providers often use language that asserts institutional dominance, diminish patient agency, and silence patient voices, thereby maintaining control over the birth process.”

Harvin acknowledged that provider-patient communication is, in part, shaped by the business of medicine and birthing. 

“Maybe you’re a scared new mother experiencing what you think are contractions. Once you check into triage, you have about 24 hours before interventions to speed up the process are encouraged. Providers get paid more when they perform cesareans and, compared to vaginal birthing, more medicine gets prescribed.”

Not that interventions are never needed, she said, but they can be overused, and suddenly, a process that is really meant to be more natural, becomes a battle over the body. That’s when complications in the birthing room arise. 

What’s necessary, she said, is a happy medium, where birthing patients–who are experts when it comes to their own bodies–can be respected and heard. 

She hopes her research can act as a catalyst for that kind of change.  

In February, Harvin presented her research with 200 other Wayne State scholars at the 2025 Graduate Research Symposium. 

She is slated to graduate with her master’s in May, then will go on to obtain licenses in midwifery and nursing. Currently, Harvin is a doula with her own practice, a consulting teacher at Birth Detroit, and for the last two years, has been on the board of the Detroit Midwifery School with plans to open a traditional midwifery school in the city in 2026. 

“I plan to continue my research on this pathway to continue exploring the importance of language and linguistic structures used to frame perinatal spaces and to reduce harm and find solutions to the maternal mortality crisis.”