Coronation Street‘s Dee-Dee Bailey takes on a brave fight for justice next week after serious complications during the birth of her baby girl.

The lives of Dee-Dee and her daughter hang in the balance at the hospital after she’s diagnosed with pre-eclampsia.

Dee-Dee’s big new storyline airs in next Monday’s episode (March 31) as she goes into labour and experiences extreme pain. Despite this, her concerns are initially dismissed and she’s sent home from the hospital.

When Dee-Dee’s waters break back at the flat, she returns to the wards but faces a series of further delays to treatment. It’s only later that Dee-Dee is rushed in for an emergency delivery, with the situation now critical.

Dee-Dee suffers a huge haemorrhage during her traumatic day and has to undergo a hysterectomy. When she later reflects on her upsetting experience, Dee-Dee starts to wonder whether the poor treatment she received and the mistakes made were linked to her ethnicity.

Coronation Street has been working on this storyline with three organisations – Birthrights, Motivational Mums Club and Five X More.

An official report published in October last year showed that Black women are three times more likely to die than white women in childbirth. Meanwhile, in 2021 and 2022, Birthrights carried out a year-long inquiry into racial injustice in maternity care.

Channique Sterling-Brown, who plays Dee-Dee, recently caught up with us to talk about the important new storyline.

What can you tell us about the scenes where Dee-Dee’s concerns get dismissed at the hospital?

“I think the story we’re trying to tell is one of truth. There is no malice in any of Dee-Dee’s treatment, but it is the case of an overstretched and understaffed ward that she ends up on. She’s not being fully heard, potentially because of assumptions that are being made.

“Dee-Dee is also maybe in a little bit of denial, because I don’t think she’s probably ready to have the baby quite yet. Her pain is quite dismissed and she suddenly finds herself in quite a severe situation.”

What happens when the doctor finally gets involved?

“Dee-Dee gets diagnosed with pre-eclampsia, which is really interesting. I really looked into it, because I hadn’t heard about it before we started filming this storyline. The condition can rapidly deteriorate and it can be potentially fatal to the mother and baby.

“Afterwards, everything is all systems go in terms of getting the baby out as quickly and safely as possible. But it’s really frightening how quickly that develops. If someone had intervened a bit sooner and picked up on these symptoms, there wouldn’t need to be such drastic measures taken.”

As a result of these complications, Dee-Dee has to undergo an emergency hysterectomy. By this point, she’s agreed to give up her baby to her brother James, but how does she feel about that now?

“I don’t think anyone could process everything that happens during that 24-hour period for Dee-Dee. In her mind, she’s still very logical about the fact that she can’t carry any more children, but that doesn’t mean her feelings change about the paternity of this baby and what this baby potentially represents.

“Dee-Dee knows that and she feels it would be really unfair and unkind to the baby to keep her for that reason – it’s like she would be a ‘safety baby’, so to speak. I think that’s how Dee-Dee is looking at it.

“Also, I don’t think Dee-Dee wants to break her brother’s heart at this point either. James is 100% sold on becoming a parent and she was behind it.

“She’d come to that decision, so I really feel like she is trying to put her logical brain before her emotional brain. You never know how you could feel in the future, but she’s trying to do what feels like the right thing in the moment.”

James leaves for America, so Dee-Dee is faced with having to go home and the baby being there. How will she cope with that?

“I don’t think she will! It’ll be really interesting. You’re going to see that turmoil for Dee-Dee – she’s torn and completely broken again. We thought it couldn’t get any worse for her, but it does.

“Dee-Dee is running on empty and is then faced with having to look at her own child. She really thought that she’d done the right thing and she wouldn’t be immediately confronted with the baby, but now she is.

“It really is a huge thing for her to wrap her head around. I think she is going to struggle with that.”

Later, Dee-Dee tells Alya and Sarah that she wants to pursue a case for gross negligence against the hospital. How did you feel about Corrie exploring this issue?

“It’s a story that’s been floated to me a couple of times over the last few years, but it was finding the right circumstances to play it in. I think it’s just really important to spark conversations.

“Having heard some of these stats, the imbalance is shocking. The biggest thing when people hear these stats is they just assume it must be global, but no, we’re talking about right here in the UK.

“I was talking to one of the producers at Corrie about it, probably last year, just in passing. I remember saying: ‘If Beyoncé and Serena Williams are two of the richest, most famous Black women in the world and they had terrible birthing experiences, that’s such a bigger problem. That’s not just some malicious person that is inherently racist, it’s a huge, systemic issue and unless we’re talking about it, there’s no way to fix it’.

“It’s felt like a huge responsibility to honour women who are affected by this, and also to honour our healthcare workers who are extremely overstretched, because there are elements of that at play which we hopefully sensitively address.

“We were talking about some of the stats and how the gap is closing between Black women’s mortality rates and white women’s mortality rates but it’s not because Black women are being treated better, it’s because white women are dying at higher rates too.

“So what is it about maternity care in the UK at the minute that is literally costing mothers their lives? It’s a huge issue and it affects us all – it just adversely affects some of us more. So to be talking about it is beneficial in a lot of ways.”

What research have you done?

“We’ve worked with some brilliant organisations and charities. We worked with Birthrights, the Motivational Mums Club and Five X More – they were really great at advising on this story.

“I got to speak to a woman who had a real lived experience of this and her story is not dissimilar to what happens to Dee-Dee. So it was just finding the truth in that as well.

“One thing we were all really aware of, and we all really didn’t want, is for people to feel alienated and like they were being preached at.

“Hopefully Dee-Dee as a character has been really well-received by the public – it’s like she’s your mate. We wanted to tell the story like: ‘Imagine this was happening to your friend?’ And then explore how you go on the journey and process that.

“It was really great to hear some lived experiences but also really emotional. Some of the conversations have been really hard, but really helpful to hear what some women went through.”

𝐏𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 “𝑭𝒂𝒏𝒑𝒂𝒈𝒆 & 𝑾𝒆𝒃𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒆: 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠𝑛𝑒𝑤𝑠.𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑜” 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐮𝐬 𝐭𝐨𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧-𝐝𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐡 𝐜𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐢𝐞𝐬