I'm Not Just Studying This. I Survived It.

When No One Believed Me, I Built the Archive Myself

I want you to know something before you follow this page, read a single article, or share a single post: I’m not doing this because it’s trendy. I’m not here because maternal health is a hot topic or because I read the right book. I’m here because I almost died—and no one listened.

From the beginning of my pregnancy with Hendrix, I was bleeding. But I was also the breadwinner in a house I didn’t build, trying to hold together a family I had inherited. I was going through a separation from a narcissist. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was being financially abused. I was crying myself to sleep most nights. I was trying to run a business, hold my life together, and survive a pregnancy that had already been flagged as high-risk.

Multiple times, my doctor placed me on bed rest, but rest was not an option. Bills didn’t stop coming, and no one else stepped up to help.

On New Year’s Eve, I woke up in a puddle of fluid that had soaked through my queen-sized mattress. I knew something was wrong. I drove myself to the hospital alone. The first thing the nurse in labor and delivery asked me was if I was on drugs. I had never done drugs a day in my life. I started crying. It felt like a nightmare I had somehow always expected.

They didn’t have a proper NICU at that hospital. If my baby had come then, he would have been helicoptered out—away from me. They sent me to another hospital in an ambulance, the first I had ever ridden in.

But even there, no one could tell me what was happening. They threw out guesses: blood pressure, calcium deficiency, and anemia. None of it was true. I knew the truth. I said it out loud. Over and over again. I told them I was stressed. I told them I was in an abusive marriage. I told them I was not eating, I was not sleeping, and I was not safe. But no one heard me. No one wanted to listen to me.

Instead, I was treated like a chart. Like a mystery. Like someone who wasn’t being honest about what was happening to her body.

I had a restraining order against my husband, and he violated it constantly. He was continually violating my restraining order, yelling at me over the phone, manipulating me online, and isolating me in a hospital room where strangers came to vent about their problems. I was barely allowed to shower. I wasn’t allowed to walk more than five minutes a day. Steroid injections prepared Hendrix's lungs, while constant IV switches bruised my arms. I developed restless leg syndrome. I was hungry. I was tired. And I was alone.

He was stealing money from my clients while I lay in that hospital bed. People were trying to decide whose side they were on while I was trying to survive another 24 hours.

And then I gave birth.

Sixty-one days later.

I could barely walk. The doula they gave me was unhelpful. The nurse told me, with a sharp tone and zero empathy, that I could not have my placenta. They took my child and didn’t even tell me where he was. I found out he was in the NICU by asking. They wheeled me to him, and I stayed by his side daily for a month.

Today, he’s five. He has autism, ADHD, ODD, and savant syndrome. He is brilliant and beautiful. And he is my miracle.

But I’m not just raising him. I’m building a lab.

I am not only here to understand why mothers are still dying; I also want to know why I almost died. Why did no one acknowledge stress as a cause? Why is no one connecting abuse, trauma, silence, and physical collapse? Could we explore why the initial assumption was that I might not be truthful? Or unstable. Or on drugs.

Why did no one believe me? Until I have citations and data to support my claims, no one will believe me, both then and now.

So I started building the archive myself. I started turning memory into evidence. I started tracking the neurological effects of birth trauma, the legal blind spots in perinatal care, and the silence that gets passed down from generation to generation.

I started REMIND Lab because I didn’t want anyone to look back on their birth story and feel as erased as I did.

I’m not just an advocate. I’m a subject in my research. If you've survived something the medical system ignored, I want to hear from you.

I am collecting stories for this lab. Your story matters. Your memory deserves documentation.

If you want to share, please DM me @becomingdrzsanine or email me at blackcognitiverebirth@gmail.com. We will protect your name and your truth.

Because what they forgot, we will remind them.

This is not content. This is a correction. This is REMIND Lab. And I’m still remembering.