Every Mother Counts

Christy Turlington is a force to be reckoned with. After a serious health scare following the birth of her daughter, Grace, she became immersed in maternal health issues on a global scale, and founded Every Mother Counts to raise awareness about the issue of maternal mortality. Earlier this week, Turlington served on a panel at the Mom+Social conference hosted by the United Nations Foundation here in New York. We were lucky enough to chat with the model, mom, and fierce advocate for mothers across the world.

POPSUGAR Moms: This year, Every Mother Counts has shifted its campaign focus from “No Mother’s Day” to “Know Mother’s Day.” Can you tell us a bit about the new push and what the focus this year is?

Christy Turlington: It’s really always been about creating more awareness, because that’s our biggest goal: to spread the information. Once you learn what’s happening, learn the statistics, you kind of can’t help but want to engage and get involved. So we’re trying to move the dial in that sense. More action, more efforts, and more collective energy around this issue that touches so many people.

This time of year, women are being marketed to at such a ridiculous rate. There’s roughly 15 billion dollars being spent on moms around Mother’s Day in the US alone. What that could do for global health would be just tremendous.

Click to read more about Christy's fight for global maternal health, how she controls her kids' access to social media, and what the Turlington-Burns clan is up to for Mother's Day!

In the two years since Christy Turlington debuted her moving documentary about maternal death, No Woman No Cry, the global maternal death rate has almost been cut in half. While Turlington does not claim sole credit for reducing that rate, her Every Mother Counts advocacy group has raised significant awareness of the issue as more people are paying attention to its mission than ever before.

One group that is listening are the designers behind Ergobaby, the popular baby carrier. To kick off its Guest Designer Series, Ergo is collaborating with Every Mother Counts to introduce four new products in November. The print carrier ($165), a solid carrier ($145), the "not-just-a-diaperbag" ($150), and a hip and shoulder bag ($75) will feature a new "Umbra" pattern designed by a small-business woman in Togo who uses a batik method to create her unique design. A portion of the sale of each item in the collection — which will be available on Ergobaby's website — will go back to Turlington's organization to help raise awareness of maternal mortality and improve the lives of girls worldwide. I chatted with the model mama about the new collaboration, sharing her experiences with her kids — Grace, 9, and Finn, 6 — and disconnecting from our wired world.

LilSugar: How did the relationship come about?
Christy Turlington: Well, Amy [Swift] used to work with me a long time ago when I started my brands Nuala and Sundari. She was doing some consultancy work with Ergo and . . . they were trying to figure out to do a guest designer series and trying to link themselves with an organization. So she made an introduction. For us, we were just thrilled to have somebody come to us, because we just are tiny. Especially something like this that really is about educating and supporting moms and husbands too. It's such a unique thing we have in our culture. All the African men that I know, they look at men and fathers carrying babies and they're like, "Oh my god. I don't know it will ever be in our lifetime. Why would you ever?"

LS: Why partner with a baby carrier company?
CT: A lot of people don't know that sort of face-to-face, skin-to-skin thing. In low resource settings, educating moms, it's such an interesting thing. It's so natural to carry a baby in many developing countries, but sometimes — like with a preemie or a very weak, new baby — they don't know that something as simple as putting skin-to-skin is like an incubator and if you don't have electricity, that is called kangaroo care, [and it] can keep a baby alive.

LS: What impact is Every Mother Counts having on the maternal death rate?
CT: When I first learned about the statistics, there were 530,000 women dying per year, globally, and two years later the number was 353,000, and then the next year [it dropped more]. Part of that is just better accounting like we're paying more attention to girls and women all over the world right now, which is fantastic and that's a big part of what will help get this problem taken care of, because it's a matter of prioritizing women and girls. Now that we're starting to count — I still think the number is higher than that, honestly, it's almost an impossible thing to count — it shows that there is a steady decline. There's something to it and we have to keep the fire on it, really. [There] really should be very few cases that this happens.

Keep reading for Turlington's experience bringing her kids to Africa and why she wants them to just disconnect from technology.

Did you know that a woman dies every 90 seconds from pregnancy complications and 90 percent of those deaths are preventable? It's serious stuff, and an issue that's become Christy Turlington's life passion. Today Turlington, supermodel, wife to Edward Burns, mom to Grace and Finn, and founder of Every Mother Counts, an advocacy group that's working to reduce the global maternal mortality rate, launched a new campaign called No Mothers Day. For the video above, Turlington enlisted the help of famous moms including Jennifer Connelly, Debra Messing, Ann Curry, Kelly Rutherford, and Blythe Danner, along with a host of real moms, to support the cause, which asks moms to "disappear" on Mother's Day. "This Mothers Day I am honoring all moms by going silent," Turlington told us. "The . . . public service announcement features moms encouraging other moms to join in solidarity by disappearing May 13, Mother’s Day. No Mothers Day is a powerful social issue campaign designed to raise awareness about the hundreds of thousands of girls and women around the world who die each year from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth."

Keep reading for the rest of our interview with the simply amazing Turlington