The earliest intervention: How to stop the achievement gap from starting?
CHICAGO—Her first baby, a boy she planned to call Jaidan, arrived stillborn on June 25, 2009, the same day Michael Jackson died. More than three years later, when a second chance at motherhood finally came her way, Dwana Harris was determined to do everything right.So last fall, Harris was intrigued when she unexpectedly met a woman bearing information about healthy child development in the living room of a cousin with a newborn. Soon the woman was visiting her, too, in the meticulously clean one-bedroom apartment that she and her boyfriend share in a South Side public housing tower near Lake Michigan.
After having a stillborn baby in 2009, Dwana Harris wanted to do everything right when a second chance at motherhood came her way. (Photo by Kim Palmer)
Harris, 28, had questions about what to ask at doctor’s appointments, what to eat and generally what to do to keep her unborn daughter on track. Her home visitor, Tammie Haltom, and a birthing coach named Sonia Collins