These women didn't suffer racial slurs in maternity care - it was something more insidious

"I was told by the midwife to shut up," says Tenisha, "and then she put her hand over my mouth..." Shakira asked if alternative medication to morphine was possible after her C-section.

"The nurse got angry," she says. "She threw the morphine away, and I was then left alone for hours." And when Kadi was recovering from a fourth-degree vaginal tear, she lay alone in her hospital bed crying her eyes out.

She accuses staff of showing no compassion as she screamed in pain. "The nurses just walked past me and literally ignored me," she says.

Stories from three separate women who were cared for in three different hospitals, but they all shared a similar experience - their pain was ignored, their concerns were dismissed, and they believe their race played a part in the treatment they received. The government says tackling disparities in maternity care is a priority, calling the fact that black women are twice as likely to die during childbirth an "absolute outrage".

But behind the statistics are real women, living with the consequences. So what does it actually feel like to be a black woman navigating maternity care in this country, when race is so intrinsically linked to risk? "I haven't felt supported, I haven't felt safe, I haven't felt like my pain was taken seriously," says Tenisha Howell, 33, who has five children.

"I have a lot of experiences that I can draw from, and it's sad to say that a lot of them have been quite negative," she says. Tenisha says her most recent birth was "probably one of the most traumatic experiences" she has ever had.

She was screaming in agonising pain as the gas and air she was given was beginning to wear off. The response from her midwife? "She told me to shut up multiple times and then she put her hand over my mouth to basically say, 'be quiet'," Tenisha explains.

"That was very disheartening. It was very sad." When Shakira Akabusi, 38, gave birth to her second son, she was "down on all fours, clinging to the wall, asking for medication".

But she says she was "denied repeatedly, ignored.