Kelly Rowland Watched Over Friend Giving Birth to Ensure Hospital Wasn’t ‘Careless with Her Life’ (Exclusive)

Kelly Rowland is there for her friends in every possible way.

The hit singer and Mea Culpa star, 43, recently partnered with BirthFUND, Elaine Welteroth's new initiative to raise funds to help pregnant women receive midwife care in the wake of heartbreaking statistics surrounding maternal mortality in the United States.

Ahead of Mother's Day, Rowland tells PEOPLE it's an issue that was top of mind recently as she helped tend to a pregnant friend.

"I just actually watched another girlfriend of mine give birth, and I saw the way a hospital was with her and how she really had to advocate for herself," she says. "I remember going in there, and I was asking questions. I was probably doing the most, but I didn't care because I love her."

It's support that Rowland says sprung out of fear, due to the recent spate of women, especially women of color, dying in hospitals during childbirth.

"If they were about to be careless with her life, I couldn't sit there and watch, you know what I mean? As women and as Black women, we've got to figure this stuff out," she says.

According to the National Institute of Health, “Black women in the United States (U.S.) disproportionately experience adverse pregnancy outcomes, including maternal mortality, compared to women of other racial and ethnic groups.”

A 2021 study by the CDC found that “the maternal mortality rate for non-Hispanic Black women was 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, 2.6 times the rate for non-Hispanic White women.” 

For Rowland, who gave birth to both her sons, Titan, 9, and Noah, 3, at a hospital with the help of her husband, Tim Weatherspoon, and a doula, she's grateful she had a positive experience.

"I had a doula in the hospital because the sound of the hospital just made me nervous," she recalls. "And the last time I was in the hospital [prior] I'd lost my mother, so I just wanted the hospital experience to be something different. My husband was there just in case something were to happen."

Both times she gave birth, "I had a really smooth delivery," she says, "and I had an opportunity to have a really peaceful birth. And I feel like every woman should experience that. You shouldn't attach the word trauma to birth."

With her youngest son Noah, who was born at the height of the COVID pandemic, "I had a FaceTime party," she says. "It was just myself, Tim and family on FaceTime." But for Titan, "girl, everybody was in the room."

Rowland feels strongly that having additional support like that of a midwife, a service that is not currently covered by most healthcare providers, can help achieve better outcomes for birthing mothers.

"The fact that [Welteroth] mentioned community to me, the fact that she mentioned other women to me, that there were fathers that were concerned and wanted to be involved," she says of BirthFUND. "I was like, 'Well, where do I start?' What we want to do is shift the conversation into something that is way, way more positive than what we're seeing on the news everywhere, period."

For more information, visit TheBirthFund.com.