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Shamari DeVoe

Source: DJDM/WENN.com / WENN

Shamari DeVoe may be the former member of popular R&B trio Blaque, and the wife of Ronnie DeVoe from legendary group New Edition, but she struggled just as many everyday Black women have, to have her medical concerns taken seriously while pregnant. She, like about 50,000 women in this country, suffered from pregnancy complications while carrying sons Ronald and Roman in 2017. In an interview with our sister site, HelloBeautiful, she said when she was first approached about being on Real Housewives of Atlanta, she had to bail on the idea because she was on bed rest trying to ensure the safety of her twins.

“[Producers] reached out to me when I was pregnant last year about joining the cast and because I was pregnant and I was on bed rest, I had to decline,” she said. “I had to make sure that my babies baked as long as possible because my oldest son, he wasn’t growing as fast as his [brother], so they wanted to make sure that I was being watched 24 hours.”

But before she was ordered to stay put by her doctor, Shamari was trying to convince him that she could feel something was wrong with her cervix. He initially didn’t believe her, but she advocated for herself to get him to look into her concerns.

“I told him and at one point he was like, ‘Your cervix is fine.’ And then I was like, ‘No, I want you to check it.’ And he checked and he was like, ‘Oh my God, it really is opening,'” she shared. “I had to go in once every two weeks and then, finally, one doctor visit, they were like, ‘Oh no, you have to go straight to the hospital and be on bed rest for the duration of your pregnancy.’”

She added, “My cervix started to open and they had to make sure to keep the pressure off of my cervix, in addition to Ronald not growing as fast as his brother.”

Despite being on bed rest in the hospital for a while, she made the best of things thanks to support from her husband and creative friends.

“I did a full blown maternity shoot in the hospital,” she said. “It looked like I was lying in like a king size bed. Like if you go to my Instagram page, you’ll see my maternity shoot. That was all in the hospital.”

You can read more about her experience delivering her twins, as well as how she maintains her marriage since their arrival by going to HelloBeautiful.com.

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