Ex-inmate who discovered she was pregnant after being incarcerated reveals what it was REALLY like to give birth behind bars – from staff refusing to give her a due date to going through labor with an armed guard beside her
- Hayley Rider, 28, found out she was pregnant during her two-year sentence
- She wasn’t allowed to contact any friends or family so she had to deliver alone
- Afterwards, she was given no information about what would happen to her baby
A former inmate who discovered that she was pregnant while incarcerated has opened up about what it was really like to give birth behind bars.
Hayley Rider, 28, from Atlanta, Georgia, revealed that she was not allowed to know her own due date and that an armed guard had to stand by her hospital bed during labor.
She had just begun her two-year sentence at Lee Arrendale State Prison for a nonviolent drug offense in January 2021 when a doctor discovered that she was pregnant during a routine medical exam.
But instead of telling Hayley, who was already a mother-of-two, that she was expecting, she said she was simply instructed that she would be switching to a different prison and was transferred to a smaller facility in Georgia.
While she was eventually informed that she was pregnant, Hayley said she was given very little information and that she never even received ‘reassurance’ from a doctor that ‘everything was fine and going well.’
Former inmate Hayley Rider, 28, from Atlanta, Georgia, opened up about what it was like to give birth behind bars – revealing an armed guard had to stand by her hospital bed during labor
She said she ‘had no access to anything’ except for a single dictionary so she could look up pregnancy-related terms and wasn’t even allowed to know her due date until she was 22 weeks along.
In addition, the terrible living conditions in prison made her pregnancy even harder. Convicts slept on metal, twin-sized beds with a 3.5-inch thick mattress, fitted sheet, and blanket. They were not allowed to use pillows.
While Hayley said she was given an extra mattress while she was expecting, she ‘didn’t sleep much.’ In addition, the food was also not fit for a pregnant woman.
‘Everyone knows prison food sucks, but it’s particularly bad when you’re pregnant. It wasn’t any type of pregnancy diet that I would wish on anyone,’ she told the Today show during a recent interview.
Hayley said the hardest part, however, was the ‘isolation and punishment,’ adding: ‘It was a dark time.’
When the expectant mother went into labor, she explained that she didn’t want to alert the guards right away because she knew her baby would be taken away from her soon after it was born.
‘Going into labor meant saying goodbye,’ she said. ‘I wanted this last night with my baby.’
The next morning she was transported to the hospital in a prison van. She wasn’t allowed to call any friends or family, including the father of the baby, which meant she had to deliver completely alone.
Hayley had just begun her two-year sentence at Lee Arrendale State Prison (seen) for a nonviolent drug offense in January 2021 when she found out she was expecting
Hayley was in labor for nearly 17 hours and the whole time an ‘armed guard’ had to stand at the end of her bed with a ‘360 view of everything.’
‘I was alone, besides the armed officer. I had never seen her in my life, but she saw the birth of my baby,’ she revealed.
‘[Thankfully] the nurses treated me kindly – not as an inmate – and I didn’t have to be handcuffed.’
After welcoming her healthy baby girl, Hayley said she was allowed to hold the newborn, but the moment was overshadowed by her realization that the child would be ‘taken away from her’ any moment.
The facility’s policy allows convicted new mothers a total of two hours with their babies after childbirth, according to Today.
‘Meeting your child for the first time is a once-in-a-lifetime feeling. But having a baby while incarcerated completely takes that away from you,’ Hayley said.
‘I couldn’t even think about her small face or hands or her skin or how good she felt in my arms – I knew they would be coming in to make me hand her over.’
She stayed in the hospital for three days afterwards and was allowed to spent three hours with her daughter each day.
But saying goodbye was absolutely heartbreaking for the new mother – especially because she had no idea what would happen to her.
‘They made me put her in a bassinet and wheeled her away down the hallway,’ she remembered.
‘I asked where she was going and who was going to be in charge of her, but they said I wasn’t allowed to know.’
Hayley (seen in 2015) welcomed a baby girl while she was incarcerated and she called the days following the birth the ‘most traumatic’ and ‘darkest days of her life’
She was then transported back to Lee Arrendale State Prison, and she called the days following the birth the ‘most traumatic’ and ‘darkest days of her life.’
‘My womb hurt. I was pushing my breast milk down a fungus-infected sink. I was devastated,’ she said.
‘I didn’t have the supplies that I needed. It was unsanitary. It was gross. It was the most traumatic, darkest days of my life.
‘It was as bad as you think it sounds, being three days postpartum and sharing a bathroom with up to 75 people during the day and 25 people at night.’
Hayley said she didn’t tell her fellow inmates that she had just given birth because it would be ‘perceived as a sign of weakness’ and likely ‘put her in danger.’
Thankfully, with the help of a non-profit organization called Motherhood Beyond Bars, she was encouraged to get in contact with her parole board and petitioned an early release.
It was granted and after serving a total of 10 months behind bars, she was sent home.
After her release, she found out that her newborn daughter had been given to her partner, Patrick.
She admitted that while coming home and learning to be a mother-of-three was ‘a lot work,’ Hayley said ‘things [were] going really well’ now.
The family bought their first home last summer and she now works as a program assistant for Motherhood Beyond Bars. She’s also two years’ sober.
‘To be able to give back is great,’ she concluded. ‘There’s a lot of damage being done and there’s a lot of reform to be made, and it’s not happening.’
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