Another inmate, the complaint says, told her she wouldn’t leave her side.
Later that morning, a guard took McElroy to the jail’s medical clinic. Although McElroy was going into preterm labor, according to the lawsuit, the on-call nurse didn’t send her to the hospital. Instead, the suit alleges, McElroy was given a diaper and a clean jumpsuit and sent back to her pod to rest.
Over the course of the day, McElroy struggled to walk, according to the complaint. As her contractions intensified during the night, she screamed. When the contractions were about three minutes apart, an inmate asked a guard to call 911, the lawsuit says.
The suit alleges that a supervisor instructed a guard not to intervene because “the jail could be held accountable if anything happened to Tiffany or her baby.”
McElroy began to worry her child would become stuck in her birth canal. A pod mate told her it was time to push.
McElroy said she remembers the women in her cell kissing her and encouraging her as they delivered her limp, blue baby.
Youngblood told NBC News you could hear McElroy screaming in pain throughout the jail.
“I still dream about it,” she said. “I still ask myself: ‘What can I do? What could you do to be different? What could I have done if that baby had died?’”
During and after the birth, the complaint says, staff members berated other inmates for assisting McElroy. One guard, the lawsuit says, used a disability slur and chastised an inmate as “stupid” for helping. The complaint also alleges that a guard threatened to “tase” another inmate if she didn’t return to her bay. The jail later punished the women for helping, the suit alleges.
McElroy said she was unable to deliver her placenta. She said she was in shock as paramedics placed her on a stretcher and took her to the hospital.
Her daughter was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit, while McElroy remained in the hospital for three days. McElroy, the lawsuit says, was diagnosed with anemia from blood loss while she was giving birth.
“At the end of the day, I felt like I was made to give birth like an animal,” McElroy said.
Thompson, of Pregnancy Justice, called McElroy’s experience “particularly egregious.”
“No one should be forced to either go through that scenario as someone who is laboring, and no one should be forced to become a midwife out of necessity like this,” she said, referring to the pod mates who helped McElroy.
The women are the reason McElroy believes she and her daughter survived. She said she remains in touch with some of them.
“I pray that they get everything in life that they deserve as a person, because they didn’t have to do anything that they did for me,” she said.
NBC News couldn’t reach the women for comment.
McElroy’s daughter is now just shy of 2 years old. McElroy said she’s a happy toddler, joking that she has a “diva” temperament. The child’s paternal grandmother, whom McElroy is close with, has temporary custody.
Since she was released, McElroy said, she has begun a new chapter, working in the hospitality industry. But at times, she said, she’s still haunted by the way her youngest daughter entered the world.
