Tabatha

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Was there a point when you realized I'm good at this?

I know I'm good at this.

This is by calling.

It ain't a whole lot of money.

You know, we don't do it for the income, we do it for the outcome.

My name is Tabitha Trammell.

I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia.

As a teenager, Tabitha took care of her eight brothers and sisters.

So, where were you in the lineup?

I am the oldest.

Oh, wow.

So you had you had babies all around you.

Yes, stair steps.

All of us are a year apart, and I had to help raise them.

So

I was held accountable for their actions.

Tabitha says that when she was 15, she started skipping class.

And she also started dating someone from school.

He was in the band and I was in the orchestra and we had snuck off campus a couple of times.

And then when I was at home, I just noticed I was feeling real sick.

And then I used to mark my period on a certain time of the month.

I keep up with the calendar, you know.

And I noticed it didn't come.

I missed a month.

And I was so nervous.

I didn't tell nobody but my best girlfriend.

Compared to today, I was really skinny.

And we had a lot of goodwill clothes because we was very poor and a lot of people used to give us donate us clothes and stuff so that worked to my advantage because I used to put on big shirts and stuff

and what were you thinking were you were you thinking at 15 I don't know what to do here I I don't know how to I mean I guess you didn't know what it was like to have little babies around but I was terrified because We grew up in a very religious family.

We was Jehovah's Witness.

And you know,

when something of that nature, a magnitude happened, you will be isolated from the church and people are not supposed to speak to you.

They call it disassociated.

Each month went by.

I was just scared.

My mother came to me one day and said, one of the ladies that went to what they called the church, the kingdom hall, said, she is gaining a lot of weight.

So her face is just as full.

Is she she okay?

That's what my mother said.

She said.

And then my stepdad, he told my mother, you need to take her down to, you know, Grady Hospital and have a pregnancy test for her.

Oh, my God.

I was thinking about running away, killing myself.

It was just, I just didn't know.

It was all kind of thoughts running through my head.

And you went down and had the pregnancy test?

My mother took me.

Got to remember, I was 15.

So she took me down there and I was like four months pregnant.

Tabitha says that her mother disowned her and Tabitha went to stay with her grandmother.

She had a one-bedroom apartment.

Me and her shed.

It was in a senior high-rise, but my uncle lived down the

hallway in another unit.

And

they introduced me to selling marijuana.

You were selling it with your uncle?

I was getting it from my uncle, but I found my own people to sell it to.

But he knew he was giving it to me, and I was bringing him money back for it.

So you might as well say that.

One day, when she was about six months pregnant, she was hanging out near a corner store.

And

it was a lady,

she was still like a regular young girl to me.

And

she had been hanging around, talking and

laughing and playing around with the guys.

And then she walked up to me, you know, sitting out drinking a Coca-Cola or whatever.

And she said um do you have anything i said what you need she said um some smoke and so i made a sale to her and come to find out after she walked off probably if she was gone about 10 minutes and came back down now and got me she was an undercover agent so i made a sale to undercover

so

they took me down to the um

Atlanta pre-trial detention center.

Back then, it was on Decatur Street.

And they booked me in, and I had to call my grandmother.

I was the youngest person in there.

And you were six months pregnant?

Yes.

Did any of the other women say to you,

you're young, you're pregnant?

Did anyone try to take care of you?

They didn't say it like that.

They said, girl, what you don't got yourself?

You're a schoolgirl.

That's what they said.

But they didn't say it.

They said it in a, not in a bad way, but like,

you just don't from your appearance this ain't you you know and

some of the older ladies told me said this ain't the route you're starting off wrong sweetheart

tabitha was released to her grandmother within a day a few months later she gave birth to her daughter after the baby was born i had all kind of thoughts like i'm not ready for this

um

But my mother stepped up and she was helping me.

I went back home with her for a while.

And I thought, since I had a baby,

I was grown then.

Started backselling and smoking also.

And

I got rearrested to,

let's see.

My baby was probably seven days old.

And at that time, since it was my second offense,

I stayed in them 60 old days.

I was crying.

I had these emotions going on.

I didn't know at the time it was postpartum.

I was bleeding all over myself and I was asking for extra pads.

And

the guards was being rude because I kept ringing the bell.

And I guess now I could see I was annoyed because I kept ringing the bell because I kept messing my clothes up.

And it was the older ladies that comforted me and talked to me.

Tabitha says that every every time pads were distributed, the other women would line up to get them, whether they needed them or not, and give them to Tabitha.

I'll never forget it.

My roommate was an older lady.

She was probably,

I'm going to say probably about 50.

She had old shirts.

She told up to make extra period products for me.

She said, you better get up and get ready to shower.

And I always remember, she gave me some paper and she said, just write down some different things.

She didn't call it journaling.

She said, just write down.

She said, I like to write.

I like to draw.

She had some pretty pictures she had drawn.

She said, they keep me from being upset or nervous.

But when she supported me like that, I never forget when I took that shower, I came back and I rested so good.

Tabitha says that when she got home, she started seeing someone she met at a house party.

And when her daughter was about nine months old, she found out she was pregnant again.

And I was back and forth in county jail,

diversion programs, rehab programs because of my drug use and drug selling.

You know, I remember one time I was asking for something.

I was asking for more pads and I was asking for an extra sandwich.

I was just feeling real bad.

I didn't have any money to order extra stuff off the store at the time.

My mother was on limited income and she sent me $20 a month.

So you had to make a choice.

Are you going to make the call home to try to talk to your children?

Are you going to get your sanitary items?

You know, that was $20 had to last me for a whole month.

She remembers that one time she rang the buzzer to ask the guard for something to eat and the guard told her, this isn't the Ritz-Carlton.

She says she was threatened with solitary confinement when she complained about pain or or asked to see a doctor, and that she was placed in solitary dozens of times.

She says she cried all the time.

And which I didn't know why I was crying.

If I look at it now, if I'd abundant with my children, I would have cried lesser

if I was more

into the pregnancy because I had detached mentally from the pregnancy.

I really detached myself, but I cried a lot.

One minute I think I'm level, and the next minute I start crying for no reason.

One day, she was waiting to be picked up from Fulton County Jail to be transported to prison, and she started talking to some of the other women who were waiting with her.

Some older ladies, again,

they always take care the younger people the best that they know how.

They was telling me about this rehab facility that's Christ Center.

I loved reading the Bible because that's how I was raised.

So that was in the back of my mind.

She says that when she got out of prison, she wasn't doing well.

She'd been in and out of jails and prisons for decades.

And I thought back to that day the lady was talking to me about this place.

So I thought about it.

And then I said, wow, I'm going to live like a normal person.

So I called them.

It was on a Thursday.

At 4.30, I got a call back and say, hey, can you be here on Monday?

I went on that Monday, and that's been going on October the 5th for this year, be 15 years.

Tabitha went on to join a program that helped formerly incarcerated women find jobs.

She was 50 years old.

And she heard about a class to train as a doula.

someone who works with pregnant women and new mothers.

It's non-medical.

It's a

support person as a doula.

It's a person that can listen to you to help you find your voice.

I didn't have that when I was pregnant.

So I decided, I said, oh, I think I want to do that.

I wanted to help somebody else that

didn't get the support like I didn't get it.

And, you know, I can live.

a good pregnancy through somebody else by assisting them.

She's been working as a doula for seven years.

Most of her clients are incarcerated.

I'm Phoebe Judge.

This is Criminal.

We'll be right back.

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Tabitha Trammell says that when she asks women if they know what a doula is, most of them think it's someone who delivers babies.

But it's a support person, not to take the place of a doctor or a nurse or a husband.

It's a person that's just for me to support me and to help me navigate

to see if I want this treatment like this,

give me the voice to say that I want a second opinion.

That's what a duel is.

It's a support person that helps you be in control of your labor.

It's a person that

makes it possible for your care to be self-directed.

You are in control.

You know, a lot of times when you're in certain situations, you lose control.

other people be in control and that's a bad feeling

And certainly when you're in jail, you have no control.

No control.

Do you remember the first incarcerated woman that you saw

that you were going to work with?

She called me

from Gwinnett County Jail

and

it was during COVID and a lot, you know, you couldn't go into the jails then.

And, you know, she wanted to know because she was on a special diet

and I had to give her guidance on the store list on certain things that we had to make do with what we had.

I told her, I said, hey, the potato chips and stuff like that.

I said, we got to work with what we got.

You should eat more tuna and stuff that's healthy, like nuts and different things and get you an extra jar of peanut butter off the store too.

You know, get you your pickles.

and stuff.

That's the closest thing you're going to get to something on that store like for as a vegetable.

So it's all about working with what you got.

I was there to support her and then have her look at it through a different lens.

The fruit might not be fresh, but you still get you some pre-packaged fruit off, you know, like fruit cocktail, whatever.

Okay, it's high in sugar.

I told her, pull the syrup off.

It's just different ways how I was there to navigate her to help her deal with what she had and not be discouraged.

Were you nervous that first client that you had?

I was nervous, but I was invested because I look at it.

I treated her how I wanted to be treated when I was in that dark place.

Was she saying things to you that you remembered so clearly from your own experience?

She said a lot of things I identified with.

Her family disowned her.

She didn't have no support.

She used to be in her church choir.

And, you know, same thing.

She could didn't go back to church it was just a lot i identified a lot with her and i told her i went down that same road i said but i'm here today to tell you today

you have me as a support person

i am here as a friend and as a friend i'm gonna tell you to navigate this prison system but navigate it with respect We talk about making things better.

Work with the circumstances and try to get the best outcomes.

See, the main thing is to keep them encouraged and engaged.

And I told her to keep her a journal.

That's what keep me going today.

Even in

dealing with the guards, I say, and your hormones, don't go up there and be nasty to them.

Anything you want to say, put it in your journal.

That's what you do.

Put the feelings out in the journal because right now you need a good relationship with the guards.

So you can get things that you need.

You know, it's a give and take.

You're having to navigate being incarcerated at the same time as navigating trying to birth a healthy child absolutely it's double the stress it's double the stress and i told her being stressed those hormones go to your baby and i told her about you know they take you to the library like once a week i said what you do you start giving you some literature on pregnancy and children, childbirth, and what you can do about your feet swelling.

I told her, lower your sodium intake, leave those potato chips alone.

Well, how do you know I mean potato chips?

Because your feet are swelling.

And some stuff I know too.

You know, it's just being that a supporter, and she felt like somebody cared, even if I was a little,

I'm not going to use the word streak, but a little pushy.

But it was a good push because the final thing that we both, we wanted to be a healthy child up under the circumstances.

Tabitha meets with many of her clients over the phone.

She says it can be hard to get clearance for a visit.

She says a lot of the women who reach out to her have heard from someone else that they should call Tabitha, that she can help them.

So when you first speak with a woman that you've been connected with,

what do you tell them?

I let them know first I'm not here to judge.

Because a lot of times the first thing they'll say, well, you don't understand.

Yes, I do.

Been that, done that.

She always tells her clients her story when she starts working with them.

Reassure them, you just got to stay focused.

Is it going to be easy?

No.

To make it easy, you got to be persistent.

And I get them to understand that and get them to do a lot of meditation.

Walk around the day room.

Put your headphone on.

Put your headphones on.

Do some breathing exercises.

Sometimes you have to leave your body and just think of a place, a comfort zone, and go to that place whenever you feel stressed or overwhelmed.

I had to teach them those different techniques.

But the main thing is to get them not to lay in the bed all day.

Keep them active and motivated.

What they look like.

When they give you that one hour

of a yard time take advantage of it even if you don't feel like walking around go sit in the sun and just that'll change the way your hormones are flowing it'll help those happy hormones flow in you just being out there in that sunlight we just got to take advantage of things that we do have and know how to work it to our advantage

The institutional beds can be uncomfortable for pregnant women, but Tabitha tells her clients that they can usually get an extra mattress if they do more work around their dorm and ask the right guards.

And I tell them, be nice.

If you need extra socks, which you do because your feet be cold, be nice.

You can't go up there demanding anything.

You know, we understand that sometimes they don't treat you right, but some things to get what we need, we just have to step back.

and see the full picture.

The full picture is to deliver a healthy, stress-free baby.

But you can't go there like a lot of them

beat on that buzzer and demand it.

I say, I'm the buzzer queen that don't get you nothing but solitary confinement.

We'll be right back.

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Last year, Tabitha Trammell testified at a Senate Human Rights Subcommittee hearing on pregnancy in Georgia's jails and prisons.

She talked about her own experience being incarcerated 40 years ago and also what she'd heard from other women.

And this, you know, it hadn't changed since I've been there and I had to testify to those facts.

Another woman named Tiana Hill testified with Tabitha.

She described the seven months she spent at the Clayton County Jail in 2019.

She said that when she arrived, she informed the staff that she was pregnant.

She had taken a test at home.

The staff gave her a test and told her she wasn't.

She says she repeatedly told them that she really was pregnant, but she didn't receive any prenatal care.

A few months later, she went into early labor in her cell, but no one believed her.

Finally, she was taken to the jail infirmary and given a pregnancy test, which was positive.

She said the staff started making jokes about her size and told her not to push.

She gave birth to her son in full view of anyone who passed by the infirmary.

She said other people in the jail, including men, were watching her, quote, like people were looking at a concert.

After paramedics arrived and took them to the hospital, Tiana was allowed to see her son in the NICU while she was handcuffed to a wheelchair.

He died five days later.

Tiana was put in solitary confinement on suicide watch.

She said she still doesn't know how her son died or where his remains are.

They tell you a lot of women stay delivering their cells and stuff because they don't respect the fact that you say that you're in labor.

A person knows their body.

And they ignore you.

Several ladies don't have their babies in their cells and ignored.

And a lot of ladies have testified too that

they had to stand and

get examined in front of men guards and stuff.

It's no

respect.

A lot of times they've been in restraints, shackled.

Georgia has banned the use of restraints on pregnant women after the first trimester since 2019.

But there have been multiple reports of women in their second and third trimesters wearing handcuffs.

And there are fewer restrictions on using restraints on women after they've given birth.

How much time

are women given with their children after?

It depends on a different institution.

And usually, the ladies that I have worked with, they say it's 24 hours.

The first 24 hours, that's it with the baby.

That must be an incredibly hard time to know you've got this ticking clock and

yes

and it was hard for me to try to get in that space also to try to comfort them and

my job as best i could as best as i can do it was to try to keep them comforted through that time

I try to get them to breastfeed the baby, even if they're not going to breastfeed.

A lot of them say they don't want to breastfeed because the baby's going to be gone anyway, which I can understand that to a certain extent.

But like I told them, instead of laying down, we know you're tired, you're going to be on bed rest when you go back to the prison.

Every time that baby's feeding, get up, go to that nursery, or have them push the baby here for that first 24 hours and feed that baby.

Talk to that baby.

Rub that baby's hand.

Touch bonding.

Put that baby on your chest.

Let that baby feel your heartbeat.

That baby know your heartbeat because that baby been with you nine months.

Give that baby a sense of security.

And it also gives you something to go back to that prison and you can recreate that scenario in your mind.

See, prison is about a mind thing.

You're always looking forward to the day you get out.

It's all about using your imagination.

So you feeling that baby

heartbeat and that baby land and thinking about how that baby breath felt on you and how you just rubbed that baby, you can keep revisiting that and it gives you a sense of comfort.

And I have told a lot of them that and they have did it and they say, yeah, so we have to go back to that space.

And we also try to make sure.

that they ask the nurse to get a picture of that baby.

You know, if she had to take it on their phone and print it off as a piece of paper or whatever,

I highly recommend that.

So when you're in that prison during that time, you look at that picture.

This is what I'm working toward.

It gives you a sense of empowerment.

Give them one of your shirts.

You take off your shirt.

Sit in there with that baby.

That baby will have your smell.

You can get one of the baby's t-shirts.

Get one of the baby's blankets with the baby smell on it.

and

name your baby take ownership name your baby be present in whatever they're doing at the hospital at that time get up and walk around because you can always even if the baby's sleeping go peep through the glass

and just watch your baby

i said because it's gonna be many days that vision is gonna take you through a lot of days

do you think that things would have been different for you if you had had someone counseling you,

telling you to give a shirt?

Or

do you think it would have changed things for you?

When I had my children, it was

shame and guilt.

So I detached.

So me being able to provide that support and to encourage them, it made me feel whole as a person again.

Because

pregnancy,

like I see a lot of the ladies, I like to go online and look at the pregnancy pictures the ladies take with their stomachs being exposed and stuff.

I think that is so cute.

I couldn't have never did that.

Remember, I had on those big

secondhand clothes that hid that pregnancy almost six months.

And I want all my ladies to know there's nothing wrong with being pregnant and to take care of yourself.

I tell the mothers, read positive stuff.

It's almost like like an internal vision board.

I do that a lot now.

Make plans and I see it in my mind and put it together.

It might not be in my reach right now, but I'm always, I'm a dreamer.

And I tell them, that's another thing you have to use to get by when you're in prison.

Make plans.

Tabitha says that a lot of her clients' children end up in foster care, and they don't have access to much information about where they are or how they're doing.

So Tabitha helps them navigate the system.

She also started a program for older incarcerated women whose adult children have died.

I let them know, you still, we can't go back in time, but you can be the best grandmother.

And that's what I try to be.

She says she keeps in touch with most of the women she's worked with.

They still call me for advice.

I still

send them shipments.

I have them meet me and give them products for their new children.

I keep an open relationship and they always refer back to me.

And do you get to hear when sometimes a mother and a child have been reunited?

Yes.

I had one before.

She didn't get full custody, but the thought of her, she was so happy.

to get every other weekend visitations.

That was a start because in the beginning, she didn't have no contact at all.

And I told her, I said, when you get ready for your visitation, I need you to get a good night's rest.

Wear that child out.

Make memories.

Always bring a little trinket, little gift, coloring book.

And each visit, you start a

put, you take a picture and put it in your scrapbook.

On nights when it's raining, when you're feeling down, look back at that scrapbook.

Look how far you don't came.

Look where you're you're at do the comparison with that and you'll see the progress and that'll help keep you going

so you get to see some of these kids grow up yeah

and they call me granny too because they hear my grandchildren call me granny

tabitha has six grandchildren and one more on the way oh man

i can walk on water

They love Granny.

I can do no wrong.

Those little people, when they see me, they smile like they're shooting a two-pace commercial.

Last December, after hearing testimonies from Tabitha and the other women at the Human Rights Subcommittee hearing, Georgia Senator John Ossoff introduced a bill that would require jails and prisons across the country to report on the number of pregnant women in custody, the care they receive, and the outcomes of their pregnancies.

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This is Criminal.