Carol’s Daughter’s Lisa Price Is Improving The Black Birthing Experience With Love Delivered

Like many Black birthing people, Carol’s Daughter founder Lisa Price unfortunately didn’t have great birth experiences. “I didn’t have birth experiences that nearly took my life, but they definitely weren’t pleasant and they didn’t go as planned,” she shares with ESSENCE. And with Black women three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than White women, and with 60% of those deaths considered preventable, having a maternal health advocate can quite literally save your life.

This is why Price partnered with doula and Mama Glow founder, Latham Thomas, on their new Black birthing program Love Delivered. First planting the seeds in 2020, “I started leaving audio messages for Latham telling her I really want to do something like this,” Price says. “We kept talking to each other and then by 2021, we were ready to give birth to that baby: Love Delivered.” Created to empower, support, and equip Black birthing people, the program builds a community to advocate for their health from pre-natal to pregnancy and postpartum.

In less than five years, Love Delivered has hit major milestones including funding more than 120 births through the Mama Glow Foundation and engaging half a million people through events, doula support grants, and educational programs. “Everything Black unfortunately requires extra amplification, extra advocacy, extra noise, an extra auntie and uncle in the room,” she says. “When I gave birth to my first child, I had a very very long labor,” she shares, with a “cold and impersonal” delivery for her second. 

“If I were younger and giving birth today, I would definitely have a different plan and I would have more faith in what it is that I need and to advocate for myself,” she says. Other than gender reveals, nesting, and baby showers, Price offers support on what to expect after birth as well. “I think people have an undue amount of pressure to return to something called normal,” she says. “I don’t think that there’s enough conversation with other mothers about what postpartum really is and what it feels like.” 

Now in their fourth year, Love Delivered released a new cohort of doula grants to support Black birthing families in partnership with CVS Health and the Mama Glow Foundation. Continuing to develop a village for Black mothers, “families in NYC, Miami, Los Angeles, Atlanta and New Orleans and DC who are pregnant or recently postpartum can apply to receive doula services through the grant program,” she says. In addition to partnering with supermodel Chanel Iman to amplify the initiative on social media, Price hopes to inspire others to take action and advocate for Black birthing people. 

“There are assumptions that are made that we don’t need X, Y and Z. We’re ok, we’re tough, we’re strong and it’s just not true,” she says. “If we don’t advocate things will never change because the other side of systemic racism is we don’t expect more for ourselves because we’re taught so often to make do with what we have.” Building Love Delivered as a platform for Black birthers to ask for more, “there’s so many things that we could advocate for. This is one that is very natural to me.”