Tempestuous Woman

Moving!

2010-02-21T22:07:00.001-08:00

My husband bought me my own domain name for valentines day! So I will be moving to this new location and primarily posting there. Please join me!

http://thoughtfulmomma.com/

On Vaccines and Science

2010-02-16T09:56:00.001-08:00

This is a rant, you are warned, lol.

I have been reading lots of blogs (as always) and I keep coming across articles that really get under my skin.

*deep breath* I have been posting articles about vaccines for years, reading, studying, learning, researching. I ask questions and I have been a non-vaxer for most of my mom-hood. That said: I AM A VACCINATING MOM.

And you know what? I'm STILL going to keep posting the articles, the questions and the criticisms. I'm really getting tired of the snotty, nose in the air "It's science" posts. People, listen: I'm not stupid, inarticulate, paranoid, hysterical or religiously driven and neither are most of the non-vax or delayed-vax parents I know!

You fully support vaccines and are a die-hard believer in their safety and efficacy? Great, bully for you. They will NEVER get better, be more effective and less dangerous if everyone thought like that, though. So I will continue to be critical, mistrustful and questioning. I will NOT settle for what we have now. Continue bitching all you want about the people that "don't respect/understand/trust science". The FACTS are that the science is NEW. Scientifically, we must acknowledge that there are huge, gaping holes in our knowledge! The fact that vaccines may, in fact, be one of the biggest breakthroughs in scientific history does NOT negate that fact that it's currently still in a very experimental state. Those of us that question, demand answers and seek to protect our children as best as we can are NOT idiots! It's unfortunate that so many of the actual hystericals are so loud and of course, made even louder by the media. That said, snootily poo-pooing a huge list of concerns (NOT AUTISM) because one element has chosen a ridiculous flag to rally around is just plain irresponsible. The concerns are real, there for a reason and need to be addressed.

I vaccinate. I'm not 100% comfortable with it and I NEVER WILL BE until the long list of issues is fully taken care of. IMO, NONE of us SHOULD be. Progress is never made by people settling for what's "good enough". Peh.

Oh and one more thing. Please, PLEASE quit insisting that non-vaxers and delayed-vaxers put the population at risk. Until vaccines are 100% effective, this is a RETARDED argument. It makes NO sense to single out the small population of non-vaxers and blame THEM when the realities are that vaccines are anywhere from 50% up effective. We don't KNOW who is still not immune, even after vaccinations. Many upon many more people and children are vaccinated than not which means that the "risk" people in the vaxed camp far outweigh the "risk" people in the NOT vaxed camp. Simple, yes, but still true. If people are going to post snotty articles about idiots that don't respect "science" the they really ought to think about all the angels of their argument.

Incidentally this post isn't directed at anyone specific, I don't even know or regularly read the people that posted most of the things I'm blabbering about. I'm just sick to death of the general mentality being that people like me are paranoid morons. I'm not saying the paranoid morons don't exist! I'm just saying MOST of us are NOT them. There are just as many paranoid idiots running around on the "other side of the fence" UGH!!!

Shanghai: How to play

2010-02-16T09:13:00.000-08:00

I love playing cards and this game, Shanghai, is easily my favorite. My father taught me how to play this game when I was 10 or 11yrs old. He and my mother still play this game and have played it pretty much for as long as I can remember. I've taught all of my friends how to play (and subsequently had my arse kicked repeatedly) so I thought it might be fun to share it with all of you!

Ok! For starters, you need three full decks of cards, including all the jokers!

If the game includes more than 5 people, you must add another deck of cards (or it won't work).

The object of the game is to complete the six hands with the least amount of points.

Basic gameplay:

Players are each dealt 11 cards. A players turn begins with them drawing a card. They may choose to draw this card from either the discard pile or the deck. Their turns ends when they discard a card. When the objective of the hand is reached, the player has the option of "going down on the board". They canNOT do this unless they have reached that hand's objective (For example: The 2nd hand of the game has the objective of 1set 1run. A player cannot go on the board with only 1 set, they must have both a set AND a run to go down). A player wins the hand by getting rid of all of their cards (and she must play to go out, she cannot discard her last card but I'll get back to that). Cards are gotten rid of by playing them on the board or discarding them.

At the end of a hand, all players with cards still left in their hands must add up the points and they are recorded. After the six hands are completed, the player with the *least* total points (from all six hands) has won the game.

Now for details.

Points: Each card has an assigned point value based on it's face.
2-8= 5pts
9-King- 10 pts
Aces- 20pts
Jokers- 50pts

Cards:
Aces are always high and there is no "around the world" on the board.

Jokers are wild cards and can be anything. Players cannot create a set out of three jokers and all runs must have at least two face cards (no runs that are three jokers and a 2, for example).

Hands:
1 set 1 run
2 sets
3 sets
2 sets 1 run
2 runs 1 set
3 runs

Objective details:

Sets: A set is made up of 3 or more cards that have the same face value. Suits do not have to match, though.

Runs: Runs are made up of 4 or more cards of the same suit.

Buying: Obviously, during gameplay, cards are going to come up that players want but can't have because it's not their turn. This is where buying comes in. Players may "buy" the card they want, at the cost of drawing 2 extra cards along with it, as long as no one else that comes before them in the rotation wants to buy it first. Players can only buy twice per hand (if they do so, they'll know it as they will have 17cards in their hand, 14 if they've only bought once). Buying is no longer an option once a player has reached objective and is on the board.

Going out: Now, in order for a hand to be completed, obviously, someone has to go out. In order to do this, the player must have gotten rid of all of the cards in their hand, either by playing them on their own board or on the cards of other players. Players may NOT discard out. The final card must be played on the board.

Which brings us to the three different ways to go out. There is "playing out", as is mentioned above, going out "all at once" which is where the player reaches objective, puts it down on the board and then plays all of the rest of her cards all at once around the board, and of course, there is "Shanghai". It's only a Shanghai if the player puts all of the cards in her hand down on her own board (I.e: all 11-17 cards are part of the hand objective). Shanghai doesn't award anything special except the looks of surprise and dismay on your friend's faces and possibly catching another player with a hand loaded with points.

Now, when my friends and I play, one person keeps score for everyone else and adds up all the points at the end an announces the winner. Thus commences much bragging, name-calling and teasing, then we start all over again. This game is perfect for an evening of fun (and ribbing) and is my favorite way to relax with my friends. What are some of your favorite ways to let your hair down?

Tater Tots, Bacon and Eggs

2010-02-14T07:40:00.000-08:00

It's so tempting to try to craft a blog, here, that captures the "image" of a down to earth, crunchy mama. So many people seem to think of me that way anyway and I never intentionally meant for that to be. But the truth is that I suck at lying, never have been good at it so I'm afraid what you're going to get is the hodge-podge of ME that I really am, with my fattening junk food, my meat loving diet and my kids that run around half naked (like little hippies) with a hot-dog in one hand a *shudder* HFC containing garbage in the other (I really didn't buy it for them!).

Today it's Valentine's Day (both of my daughters INSIST that it's actually ValeMTIMES Day) and I wanted to do something special for my family. So I'm making a deliciously unhealthy breakfast. The bacon isn't even finished cooking that and the girls have eaten half the tater-tots already! I loved the delighted little faces when they first discovered bite-sized hash browns. I don't know why but my kids LOVE them! So does my husband, he literally did a little *GLEE* squee when he saw the bag of 'tots I brought home from the store, lol.

Yeah, I know, I know, it's not GOOD for them! Neither is the delicious maple-bacon behind me, sizzling away on the stove. The eggs won't be either, because I AM going to cook them in the bacon fat! I don't get a chance to thoroughly spoil them rotten like this very often so imagine my pleasure at reading their happy little faces over greasy, nasty food. :)

I don't know, for some reason I just wanted to blog about my happy little girls, my little family, tucked away in the snow today. I started this blog to be brainy and run with the "big girls" and now I think that's dumb. I suppose my blog is sort of evolving here so bear with me, please, while I figure it out!

Anyway, A very Happy Valemtimes's Day to all of you!

Did you pop yet?

2010-02-12T07:44:00.000-08:00

Have you had that baby yet?

Click the link! It's hilarious! There is nothing quite as irritating as trying to round up your gestation in peace and being constantly hounded about having the baby. Next time someone sends you an annoying "Where's the baby?" post, send them this. No idea who to credit but it sure got me laughing!

Marriage! "Mawiage is what bwings us togevah, today!"

2010-02-11T21:12:00.000-08:00

Recently, my husband and I celebrated our 10th anniversary together. Sometimes it seems like that whirlwind of our first year together is still fresh in my memory and other times, I can hardly remember what it was like to be that person!

I have been asked many times over the last decade how me “make it work”. I'm often met with the “wows” when I mention how long I've been with my husband. The divorce rates in our country are shockingly high (http://www.divorcerate.org/ ) so I guess it shouldn't surprise me that I get that reaction. But it does and it also makes me kind of sad. There is nothing in the world like having a strong marriage and it's something that I feel every couple deserves to have.

In our society today, there seems to this notion that a good marriage looks like a sitcom. You know what I mean, the idea that if it's “really real” all will be sunshine and cupcakes? That you'll wake up in love every day, that all arguments end with a heartwarming moral lesson and fabulous make-up sex? True love, according to apparent expectations, is all sparkles and roses. Here is where my readers would hear snorting if they could only “hear” my writing. PUHlease.

What a ridiculous load of crap. True love, marriage and everything that comes with it is hard work. Blood, sweat and tears hard work. My husband and I are not lucky, special or particularly gifted individuals. Nope. We are just committed to loving one another. I don't mean to make it sound as if it's a trivial thing; it's just that it's not terribly complicated. Simplicity and ease, however, do not necessarily go hand in hand. I am utterly thrilled with my marriage (most days, haha) but it hasn't always been that way and it wouldn't surprise me if, at some point in the future, I find myself questioning it again. See, I'm married to a person and that person, silly boy that he is, married me: another person. People are a pain in the ass, have you noticed?

Perhaps a good place to start with answering “what makes it work” is to define “True Love”. What the heck is true love, anyway? To be completely frank, if you are thinking of TWOO WUV, as perpetuated by Disney, it's a MYTH. True love isn't butterflies in the tummy (though they are nice) and it's not about knights in shining armor, good vs evil or pretty, pretty princesses that need rescuing. I'm sure many people have their own ideas about what true love really is so I'll just share mine and leave the definition open to comments. For me, true love between a man and a woman is completely impossible to put into words, lol. I will say that I knew it was real the first time I was so angry with my husband that I wanted, desperately, to bash his head in yet still couldn't imagine my life without him. I think what defines true love is the commitment. If it's not worth fighting tooth and nail for, it's not True Love. There's the butterflies-in-the-tummy love, which comes and goes along with hormonal surges and circumstances. I think it's fair to say that if that is NEVER present, we're in trouble. There is also the love that says, “I've picked your dirty socks up off the floor 16478980 times over the last 10 years and I will continue to do so, no matter how much it irritates me, because I love you”. Really, if that's not true love, I don't know what is!

Seriously, though, while the basic idea behind a healthy marriage (commitment) is simple, actually putting it into practice is anything but. I can't really say there is any one magic thing that will make a marriage work but there are a few things that most would agree are paramount to a healthy relationship. Those are communication, trust and a healthy sense of individuality.

I feel that trust and communication are two sides of the same coin. Without trust, there isn't any real communication and unfortunately, without communication it's nearly impossible (if not completely so) to build any trust. A friend of mine and I were talking a couple of weeks ago about this relationship that had sort of gone south for her. One of the things that was really bothering her was that her beau wouldn't really talk to her or open up about himself. I know that this is partly something that women are just more likely to do than men. We talk about everything! But men (at least in my experience) aren't as likely to open up and talk about how they feel and for most of us women that isn't cool. Why? Because we need to feel like he trusts US. It stands to reason that if someone won't open up to me, it's because they don't trust me enough to feel safe to do so. If a person doesn't trust me enough to be real with me, then I start to feel like maybe I shouldn't trust them, either. That's when communication utterly breaks down and when we're talking a marriage, well, a relationship like that isn't going to last. The flip side of this, though, is that women tend to broadcast their feelings in a myriad of ways, words being sort of at the bottom of the list. Yes, we talk. But we talk with our expressions, how we laugh, the way we tilt our head, hold our eyes or even how we smile.
In my marriage the feminine ability to “broadcast” with my whole body tends to get me into trouble because I find that I often expect him to just “get” what I want and when he's utterly clueless it frustrates me. I mean, it works with my “sisters”, right? My husband isn't one of my girlfriends so subtle communicators don't tend to register on his mandar. I have to be willing to take a deep breath, step back from my emotions and just talk plainly to him. One of my sisters made a good point to me, too: We can't expect him to just know what we want! No matter how badly I might want to just beam from my brain to his what it is I want or need him to do, it doesn't work.

She made another excellent point, regarding trust, that I have been musing on all day. She was talking about how being willing to just accept an apology even when she wants to make him pay (and we all struggle with this!) is a big factor in her marriage. It definitely is for me, too, and I suspect that it is for our husbands, as well. She made the point that intent is something we shouldn't loose sight of; we should be able to trust that our spouses aren't trying to hurt us or piss us off. I feel that we should also be willing to trust that our spouses really want to hear what we have to say and that they should be able to trust that the same is true of us. We see here, then, how trust and real communication are absolutely not mutually exclusive. Two sides, same coin.

What about that healthy sense of individuality? How does that fit into a marriage? Aren't the two supposed to become one? Isn't it all about creating a new family? Of course it is! Consider, though, an old-fashioned A-framed house. If the two main walls creating that house were smashed together in the middle, so that they touched from base to top, there wouldn't be a house, would there? Worse, the structure would just topple over and cease to be anything but a big mess. However, two strong, sturdy walls, tilted in towards each other, so that they “kiss” at the top, make a strong house. I think this principle holds true in a marriage. I think it's very important for each partner to have a strong sense of who they are without their partner because who they are all by themselves is all that they have to bring into their marriage. Not only that, but without a little self-preservation, one looses their sense of self and the marriage becomes suffocating. I think too many of us, men and women alike, forget that we love an individual. We didn't marry someone so that we could change them into us. They didn't marry us because we were them in a different package. Our individuality is what makes and keeps us interesting. I think accepting and being comfortable with my spouse having and interests of his own, that doesn't always include me, is another aspect of trust. I appreciate his tolerance of me doing the same, too. As such I never feel like I'm being squelched with him and I hope he feels the same. It hasn't always been that way. I think women are more prone to utterly freaking out over their man having a life of his own, particularly in the beginning of the relationship. For me, I was just afraid he'd leave. I had very little self esteem and was convinced he was settling and good God, what if he was out for hours because he secretly hates me?! Again with the trust,eh? I had to learn to trust, to let go. And when I did, lol, he was MUCH happier!

Thoughts? What makes your marriage/relationship strong?

Well I guess I AM lucky, then!

2010-02-03T11:05:00.000-08:00

Today I had the OH SO FUN procedure of having an IUD "installed" (haha, I loved calling it that). I am a cyborg, now. :P Anyway, I was very nervous as I really can't stand vaginal exams of any kind and I was trying really hard to relax (because then, maybe, it wouldn't hurt?) and I think the midwife who was doing it for me picked up on my tension because she engaged me in very lively conversation regarding my favorite subject: birthing my children. I had used the practice way back when I had my first and she was curious to know why I didn't have my other two with them. I explained that I have this little thing about not EVER birthing in a hospital unless I have a good reason to. The conversation went on and somehow we got to talking about who I did use and do you know *this* person? Oh yes? And what about *that* one? Who did you have at your births? Oh you did your second YOURSELF (wtf, of course I did it myself, WHO ELSE IS GOING TO BIRTH MY BABY???)? ON PURPOSE (yes on purpose, for heaven's sake)? And so on and so forth. At one point she asked me something (I don't even remember what) and part of my answer was that I hate VE's and I absolutely will not allow them during labor/birthing. AT ALL. Her response was, "Oh. Well I guess it's lucky that you have short labors, then."

Um...what? And now, we get down the crux of the issue and the reason why I don't use them at all for birthing. Don't get me wrong, I love this practice, I've recommended it to many women and their online review got 4 glowing stars from me. HOWEVER, the practice is affiliated with a major hospital down here and there are SO MANY bull-shit things they "have" to do as part of that affiliation. All of the midwives are CNM's (and I have nothing against CNMs as a rule) and they tend to be more medically minded than I, personally, am comfortable with. Here is a young midwife, suggesting to me that it's a GOOD thing that I have short labors because I don't allow VE's. The implication being that if I DID have long labors, I would need an exam. PUHLEASE. There is only ONE time during labor that a cervical check is even appropriate, and that's IF IF IF labor is NOT progressing NORMALLY. Excuse all of my caps but the more I think about this, the more irritated it makes me.

I AM lucky I have short labors, but it's NOT because there wasn't anybody there to shove their fingers up my hoo-ha, breaking my concentration and causing me a lot of pain for NO GOOD REASON. It's because it means that labor didn't take all damn day!

Women of the world, partners of the women, please hear this and do a little digging to verify what I say: Cervical checks pre-labor and during labor are, 99% of the time, a complete and utter waste of time at best and at worst a triggering, awful experience that can quickly spiral a happily laboring woman right down into the pit of despair. THEY DO NOT TELL YOU ANYTHING YOU CAN'T FIND OUT JUST BY LOOKING AT OR ASKING THE WOMAN IN LABOR.

A little known fact by lay-people (and apparently, by medicos, as well) is that how dilated a woman is at any given point is absolutely NO indication of how "well" she is doing OR when he baby is going to come out! The MYTH that the average woman dilates a centimeter an hour is LABOR MATH. It means NOTHING. It is a) a lie and b) completely false. Oh wait, that's the same thing, isn't it? SOME women dilate at that rate. Some women get halfway there before even starting labor. Still more women get halfway there in 24hrs and THEN go from 4/5 cms to birthing in an hour! The midwife and mother knowing how dilated mom is doesn't DO anything except set up expectations that her body has no need or reason to honor!

I could rant about this all day. Instead I will give you a link to a MUCH better written article about it, by someone more qualified than myself (a practicing midwife): http://www.nurturingheartsbirthservices.com/blog/?p=50 EXCELLENT POST, I might add, and a HEARTY "Huzzah!".

Another thing. I am a survivor of molestation. In my case, a family member made medical pretenses for needing to stick his fingers into my vagina on many occasions so I have completely valid and utterly unrelated reasons for despising vaginal exams, particularly when I'm doing something as intimate and PRIVATE as giving birth. I know that I am not alone in this, that birth tends to bring to the surface abuse issues anyway. Women, you do not have to put up with this. There is literally no reason to ruin such a triumphant experience with a procedure that makes you uncomfortable. Believe me, the baby is coming out. If the midwife really wants to know what is going on, she should either pay attention to what you are doing or she can ask you because YOU will know when that heads starts coming down. Trust me on that one, lol. There isn't any mistaking it. OH LOOK something the size of a watermelon is coming out of my vag! I think the baby's coming! Quick, stick a finger up there and verify it for me, ok? *snort* Please.

When I had my first (with same practice, different midwife) I didn't know ANY of this. I mean, I knew a lot about natural birth. I just had no idea that VE's would HURT and that they would piss me off. I had a fabulous birth experience with my first except that the thing that stands out in my memory is NOT labor pain (and that was pitocen augmented, I might add). It was the pain of having the Midwife "give me a stretch" to help me finish dilating because I was pushing! That hurt possibly more than anything I've ever experienced (and I've got a broken bone and an infected tooth nerve on my list, here!) and there was NO REASON FOR IT. I knew that much, anyway. You can't tell me I have a "lip" that needs to be pushed aside when I've been in transition for less than 20 minutes, lady, I did my homework.

I guess I'm just still flabbergasted that there are MIDWIVES out there that don't REALLY trust birth. I mean, I know it, I read lots of blogs by midwives, but my personal experience with them is minimal and the midwife that almost attended my son's birth (she missed it by mere minutes!) just wasn't like that. At all. I said no VE's she said "Great, I don't like them myself". RIGHT ON. Useless and invasive, is what they are, not helpful. I want a midwife that respects me enough to expect me to know my body as a rule, not as the exception. I want a midwife that expects me to know what I'm doing, not to have to "teach" me everything. I certainly don't want a midwife telling me what I HAVE to do while I'm in labor or that I'm "lucky" I didn't NEED some useless intervention.

I guess, in the end, I'm LUCKY that I trust myself well enough to know what I don't want and to stick with it. Though, truthfully, "luck" has nothing to do with it. Hard work, determination and respect for myself are more like it.

The Great Debate Spirals Down into Whining...

2010-02-02T07:28:00.000-08:00

I don't know why this happens but it seems like in any given week, there is a topic theme that's repeated over and over again across the blogs I read. I think what happens is that many of my friends read blogs similar to theirs and so on and so forth so people tend to "discuss" the same things as they are inspired by their reading material. Last night I came across many breastfeeding related posts on Facebook while battling insomnia (yay for not sleeping!).

While perusing Woman Uncensored's Facebook, I followed a link over to SquishyBumMum's Facebook to read a really good quote that started a lovely debate (of course) that spanned 78 comments!

The quote was this: "When we trust the makers of baby formula more than we do our own ability to nourish our babies, we lose a chance to claim an aspect of our power as women. Thinking that baby formula is as good as breastmilk is believing that thirty years of technology is superior to three million years of nature's evolution."
~ Christine Northrup M.D.

Then a comment that basically read, "But women shouldn't be made to feel inferior for not breastfeeding" and many that said "but someone women can't breastfeed" and still more that suggested that telling the TRUTH (oh, suggesting that we give up our power when we believe that formula is as good or superior to breastmilk) is making women feel attacked or inferior.

It goes on and I saw a lot of good points made.

Before I get started on my little rant, allow me to remind my readers that my son, 6mo old on Wednesday of next week, is formula fed, 100%. So believe me when I say that I "get" where these women are coming from. The reasons why he's formula fed aren't really relevant to this discussion but if anyone wants to know, just ask I'm happy to share (and no, it's not because I'm lazy, uneducated or believe formula is "Just as good or superior").

I am a STAUNCH supporter of breastfeeding and I will always be so. As a formula feeder, now, I am STILL a militant breastfeeder at heart. I believe this attitude is paramount to normalizing breastfeeding in our society and I will shout "breast is best" from the rooftops until the day I die. I feel very passionately about this issue so don't any of you think otherwise, mkay?

Anyway, to go on. So the whining started early and I say whining for a reason. Nowhere in that quote is anyone suggesting that women that breastfeed are superior mothers to those who don't. Nowhere does it suggest that people who choose to formula feed are...well, anything! It simply states that believing formula is better than breastmilk has further implications than just being misinformed. It's not a judgmental statement on anyone's character at all. It's just a statement of fact. So the people who read that and MUST project their own feelings of insecurity into the discussion as if they were attacked are WHINING. Yes, I just made a judgement.

The reality is that yes, many women are not able to breastfeed for a variety of reasons and as a formula feeding mother I get very tired of the 2% of all women statistic. It's true that only 2-3% of the world's women are physically incapable of breastfeeding, I don't argue it. I'm just sick of seeing that statistic thrown out willy-nilly. And don't tell me it's not used in a subtle "I bet you really could have if you tried" kind of way because I KNOW it is because I've been reading Mommy blogs n Mommy groups for YEARS (and I'll tell you that particularly when I was a new mommy to my first baby, I was happily tossing that statistic out in flame-wars, myself). Now, 2-3% doesn't sound like much, I admit. However, if you take the approx number of women in the world in 2007 and multiply it by .02, you get a grand total of 65,836,100 who will, in theory, be physically incapable of breastfeeding due to a defect of some kind or disease or you know, breasts that don't work. That is actually a LOT of people so chances are good, that some of these people we throw that statistic at actually ARE among the "very rare" women who literally CAN'T breastfeed. But that isn't really my issue with that statistic, though I think seeing the numbers like that may help breastfeeding supporters be more compassionate and less likely to just blow hurting women off. I think it is vital we approach this issue with tact and LOVE because many women are truly hurting or suffering from the inner fear that they ARE inferior! No, my problem with that statistic is it only covers a fraction of the reasons why women don't breastfeed. It does not, for example, touch women with serious medical conditions that need to be medicated (like women with severe Bipolar Disorder or certain diseases/auto immune disorders/congenital problems) in order to be functional women in society. Many of the medications these women need to take are not SAFE to feed their babies via the breast. I know some of these women, they are EXCELLENT mothers so don't you DARE suggest they just shouldn't have children, then. It doesn't cover situations like my own, where it's not the mother that is unable to breastfeed, it's the BABY. And sadly, it doesn't touch on the women my heart actually goes out to the most: women who cannot because they HAVE to work and pumping isn't working for them, or don't have the support networks they NEED in the workplace to breastfeed and work. My heart sings for them the loudest because THAT problem is fixable, rampant, and counts for FAR more FF mothers than we like to hear. So I get tired of hearing that because women that then stomp off in a huff because their feelings are hurt in many cases are just plain being dismissed and that's not fair.

However, back to my original point. The problem I have with the WHINING is that stating that facts does NOT mean you're inferior for choosing to formula feed!!!! It could very well be that you were misinformed. OR it could be that you have a damn good reason. There are MANY reasons why mothers choose to formula feed and if YOU choose not to for ANY REASON AT ALL, own it. Stop acting like information meant to inform and empower you is an attack. Believe me, there are staunch supporters for breastfeeding like myself running around with formula in their diaper bags. It's not about making women FEEL BAD. It's about empowering women to make informed choices. It's about empowering women to be confident mothers who know what is BEST for their babies all around. It's about spreading the INFORMATION that breastmilk is far, far superior for the health and well-being of our babies AND ourselves!

I formula feed and I'm not ashamed of it. I also breastfeed and I will tell you that my first thought upon reading that quote was "DAMN STRAIGHT, tell it like it is!". I don't feel inferior or looked down upon and there is NO reason why any women SHOULD just from reading that or any other pro-breastfeeding information. If any of my readers feels badly because they ff, you need to sit down and feel out the reasons WHY.

Do you feel badly because your breasts don't work? If so please, please be kind to yourself, it's NOT your fault and nobody with any sense is going to tell you it is. We understand, you're an awesome mom and don't let anyone tell you otherwise!

Is it because you just couldn't make pumping work? If so, I know MANY women, including myself, in that situation and my heart goes out to you. It's NOT as easy as some make it sound and you did your best. The FACTS are that the "breastpump" in general was designed by a dairy farmer (male) and an engineer (male) and they based it around how to get milk out of a COW. I don't know if any of you have noticed, but we're NOT COWS. So yeah, MANY women find the pumps of today "udderly" inadequate for keeping up a supply :P. Again, be kind to yourself, let it go, love yourself. It's ok. Cuddle your child while feed him/her and smile because you are STILL a fantastic mother and NOBODY thinks otherwise.

Is it because you honestly didn't try hard enough? Ok, so you didn't try hard enough! Listen, nobody is perfect! We all make mistakes! The problem comes in when we don't learn from them. It doesn't make you an inferior mother but projecting that feeling of insecurity on people trying to HELP other women NOT make that mistakes DOES make you a whiner! Sorry for saying so, but I don't do unicorn farts, ok? You're still a great mom! Now you simply have an opportunity to be a greater person, in a way, because NOW you have the power to go out and share what you have LEARNED from that and empower other women to do the same! Furthermore, should you be blessed with other children, you have the power to make different choices based on the knowledge someone risked offending you by posting an "inflammatory" quote.

And what about those of you that had such difficult time, were in SO much pain, sick, etc etc? Honey, you do what you have to do and own it in the process. If you still feel you made the best decision, all things in your life considered, that's on you and nobody can take that from you unless you LET them. The only thing I would say to you is that you that it might be a good idea, when you are ready, to see what could have been done differently. Find out the WHYs of your problem. Sometimes just knowing that you did all you could is enough. Sometimes finding out that the problem could have been surmountable if x, y or z were in place is healing in it's own right (I know it was for my mother!). It is also a positive thing for your daughters and your sister women. They don't need to hear "but breastfeeders think I'm inferior". What they need to hear is "my situation sucked here's what I did...and here's what I learned through it".

Are you upset because you have some living situation/working situation that pretty much made breastfeeding impossible and you will mourn it forever? Honey, you are not alone! Instead of being offended, please, PLEASE speak OUT about how angry and hurt you are over this issue. Our society BENEFITS from hearing your righteous outrage over how your right as a mother and your child's right as a person was denied you because of a completely un-supportive system. Here you are, doing your best to raise your kids and you just CAN'T do what is in your heart because there are so many walls in your way! Raise awareness, nod your head and get out there and make yourself heard! These quotes aren't meant to piss you off, they are meant to inspire you, meant to empower you and meant to make you know that you are NOT alone with your inner wisdom. You were RIGHT.

So, to round up my post (and if you've stuck with me so far, brownie points to you!): Someone made a comment in the post that I heartily agree with, both as a lactivist AND formula feeder. Mothers need to work together and support each other. Formula feeders, if your friends are lactivists, that is a GOOD THING. It's not a personal attack on you, after all, they are your FRIENDS. I'm sure how you feed your baby is not the ONLY criteria that made your friendship to start with (and if it is, there is a problem, lol).

Lactivists, for heaven's sake, please take a minute and think about how you present things to you readers/friends. If someone is telling you that they are hurt, take a minute and think before flying off the cuff with statistics or ranting. Think to yourself, "What's her story?" ASK HER. Talk to her. It is my belief that really hearing your sisters and supporting them, even if it means gently telling them they could have done this or that and maybe had success, is THE pivotal point of lactivism. The reality is that we are NOT going to stop big business. What we CAN affect is the consumers. They are our sisters, our neighbors and our daughters. Be compassionate. LISTEN. Choose your words with care. Someone who is even participating in the discussion has an interest, try no to chase her away by being unwittingly callous in your enthusiasm. I speak from experience, I've hurt people unintentionally, I've sent people packing. It's NOT effective.

Mothers, keep up the good work! ALL of you!

Following a chain of threads got me thinking...

2010-01-27T09:24:00.000-08:00

Jill at Keyboard Revolutionary posted links to a chain of posts and threads inspired by AtYourCervix. The discussion started around the film The Business of Being Born when someone, predictably, stated that some women are being selfish when worrying about their experience during childbirth. Her contention was the the most important thing is a healthy baby and the original commenter was NOT saying that the experience isn't important, just that she felt some people got carried away with it. Reading Jill's response got me thinking, though. Generally, I agree with her pov, except I would take it even further. It IS possible (and exceedingly relevant) for women to have a safe birth AND a good experience. The two things do NOT need to be mutually exclusive, regardless of the situation. Even if she needs interventions, they can be done in a compassionate, inclusive way that doesn't alienate her or further terrify her. There is NO good reason why every effort shouldn't be made to protect the experience, imo, and here's why: When a baby is born, so is a mother and subsequently a family. It's a thought I touched on in my last post. One of the people Jill links to speaks about the fact that the experience of the birth, good or bad, will be carried with that woman to her grave. It goes even further, it will be shared with her children, her friends and random people who ask or she chooses to relate the experience to. Her perceptions of that reality will shape the perceptions, even if just in subtle ways, of everyone who hears her tale. More importantly, though, how her birth was experienced has a DIRECT affect on her perception of herself as a mother. When we harm women during their birth experience, facilitate trauma or invalidate her NEED for the "experience" we are affecting society at large, one birth at a time. It's NOT a good affect!

So I would take the sentiment further and argue that the experience is AS important as the birth of a healthy, thriving baby. I feel that the obstetrical community at large needs to get away from the "in this moment" mentality. The birth of a human being has consequences that FAR exceed the delivery room. Obviously, in the moment, the thing at the forefront of everyone's mind (including the "selfish" mother) is the safety and well-being of the baby. In fact, the vast majority of women who choose natural birth do so because they understand how important it is to the SAFETY of her baby and herself. The fact that even needs to be said is a testament how far we've come from even basic RESPECT of mothers.

I do not think that a woman who is interested in protecting herself as well as her baby is foolish, naive OR selfish. She is, rather, wise and thinking ahead, beyond the moment. Protecting her emotional and mental health is equally important to her physical well-being and has enormous impact on the emotional and mental health and safety of her children as well. This is to say nothing at all about the enormous benefit to the baby's physical health. The beautiful thing about birth as nature intends it is that it protects the safety and well being of the mother/child unit from conception and beyond, into the many years they will spend nurturing and teaching each other. To suggest that protecting the experience is selfish, foolish or naive is at best, naivety expressed to a "T" and at worst, derisive, arrogant rhetoric meant to skirt the issues at hand. It's an EXCUSE that has no basis in reality whatsoever.

Just saying.

Why Be A Midwife?

2010-01-20T08:58:00.001-08:00

Hello, I’m Rebekah, aspiring midwife. I’ve been forced, yet again, to evaluate if, in fact, midwifery is really what I want to do. The answer is a resounding yes, yes OH YES!

Why? What is it about the birth world that fascinates me so? Why is it that nearly every time I see a birth (usually on youtube) that moment of birth just takes my breath away? Why, after watching probably a thousand videos do I still tear up? Why is it that deep in my soul, I feel like empowered childbirth is SO SO IMPORTANT? Why do I feel like I MUST facilitate this in any way that I can?

There are probably a lot of reasons but the thing that gets to me the most is because birth, in a way, is the heartbeat of society; of ALL societies. When a child is born into the world, a new mother is born and with her, a new father, a newly defined family. That newly defined family changes the community they live in and so, with the birth of that new child, a new community is born. And so on and so forth until you’ve expanded that reasoning out to a whole new world being re-born every couple of minutes! I mean, you can’t HAVE a society without birth. It just makes sense to me to acknowledge that how birth is viewed and handled has an enormous impact on society, recognized by most people or not!

Birth is the very stuff of life. I believe that when birth happens under duress and in a fearful, imprisoning environement, it has ripples of impact that just keep spreading out until it touches everything. When birth is celebratory and a rite of passage experience, the mother that is born that day has the potential to be more confident and empowered as a mother. And confident mothers inspire confident fathers and the two, in turn, inspire confident children. I don’t think birthing is an issue just for women. HELL NO. Are you a person? Were you born? Are you likely to procreate? Any plans on living in a society where people are born and procreate and are raised up by other people that were born? It impacts us all, quietly and often unspoken of.

Birth is like a giant bloody mystery in our culture. I can’t tell you how many women I’ve met over the past couple of years that know literally NOTHING about childbirth until they get pregnant and even then, something like 80% of them will walk into the delivery room with “What to Expect…” being the only thing they’ve ever read about birth. A crappy hospital “do what the doctor says” course, masquerading as a chilbirth prep class will be the most information they’ve heard in their entire lives about birth. Fathers tend to be even LESS prepared!

It seems to me that in cultures where the birth itself is celebrated as a rite of passage and a time of great joy and anticipation, the women grow up hearing about it, celebrating it, looking forward to it and preparing for it. Fathers in these cultures tend to view birthing as a woman’s domain and don’t get involved. It’s not callousness, it’s an innate trust in their women to do what they were created to do, without their inerference. I don’t know if they have the same deep-seeded fear that our culture’s men do. I find it unlikely. For them and their women, it’s a thing of quiet, intense pride, bearing a child (or at least, that’s the impression I get). In our culture it’s the BIG SCARY THING that we have to endure if we want children. Fear permiates the air of most discussions involving childbirth, though I think most peope don’t even realize it. Most of the stories I heard growing up (though not all!) involved terror, trauma and relief that someone saved the baby or mom’s life. My own mother has 3 awful stories to tell, out of 4 births. She is, to this day, so poorly educated about how birth works and so deeply mistrustful of her own body that she still believes the complete nonsense they told her when they justified an episiotomy by suggesting she doesn’t DILATE FAR ENOUGH. If you don’t know why that’s a pile of horse-shit, you are in desperate need of a basic education about your body and what it does when it’s birthing. My mother isn’t stupid nor is she generally an under-educated person. She is, however, a perfect example of a society that shrouds it’s births in mystery and fear and promotes the pervasive notion that our bodies are defective and need to be delivered of our children. This notion is destructive to society at large because it’s implications impact and reach farther into our lives as a whole than just our birthing-days. It undermines our trust in ourselves in general which leads to a whole host of insecurities that touch everyone we interract with.

My hope in being a midwife is to help women to re-discover their own unique power and inner voice and in doing that, she spreads those positive ripples out from where she stands, having a positive impact on the lives of those around her. I suppose every person that enters into the healing field has a little bit of a hero complex; that inner drive to help or “save” people. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t exist within me. That said, my goals in becoming a midwife are not to “save women” or to save the lives of their children. I don’t see myself becoming any woman’s personal savior. I think if that’s a persons’s goal in going into midwifery, they are entering into the wrong profession. The Hero complex to that degree doesn’t belong in the birthing room. It’s not about my ego. Rather, for me, it’s about trying to do my part to help heal a hurting society by reaching out to the women in my community and fascilitating them to heal themselves. To me that’s what midwifery is all about; serving and nurturing a community. It’s NOT about catching babies (though what an honor if that’s the mother’s wishes, yes?). No, it’s about nurting our families, about being a shoulder, an ear, a helping hand. It’s about service and THAT is what I want. I think the reality is that I will learn more from the families that come into my lives doing this than any of them will ever learn from me. I truly hope so.

Co-sleeping is bad and will kill your marriage!!!

2010-01-19T07:19:00.000-08:00

Chris, over at The Man-Nurse Diaries, Jill of Keyboard Revolutionary, and Woman: Uncensored (who's name I don't know as I only just started reading her) have all written excellent pieces about co-sleeping and how it affects their marriage.

I think they all made excellent points and of course, I wanted to add my two cents!

I'm gonna be honest, here: I co-slept because I'm lazy. It's that simple. I did my research, I learned that the idea that co-sleeping is dangerous is outdated nonsense that doesn't make any sense, nor does the previously touted "data" match up with any of the data from around the world where co-sleeping is the norm. Am I saying accidents don't happen anywhere in the world but the US? No. That said, most of the tragedies that occur from co-sleeping here in the states occur in circumstances that most co-sleepers either wouldn't consider co-sleeping (passing out drunk on the couch with a newborn babe in arms? Not co-sleeping) OR involve someone who is drunk or abusing drugs. Parents have naturally built in "alarms" that alert them to just about everything their baby does while they're sleeping, UNLESS they are knocked out artificially. So rolling over on your baby while you are sleeping in a natural state is HIGHLY unlikely.

In fact, it was something I worried about when my first was born and I remember clearly the night I quit worrying about it. My baby was maybe a week old, tops. She was sleeping securely, next to me, for the first time between my husband and I (we had a king-sized bed at the time). Her little face was maybe four inches away from my own as I liked to mover her up near my head so I could hear her breathing and so that there was NO possible way our covers could get anywhere near her face (in fact, she was so tiny and so high on the bed, they never touched her at all). I was sleeping the sleep that only an exhausted new mother can sleep- dead to the world, when suddenly, I snapped awake and caught my husband's descending shoulder before he rolled on her. Just the fact he touched flesh caused him to stop mid-roll and go the other way. He never woke up, I didn't hit him hard or shove him, I just put my hand out and he touched me and rolled the other way. I have no idea what woke me to the fact he was rolling over. I just knew. I can't explain why, after 5 years of marriage and him nudging me in my sleep THIS time he just went the other way other than to say that well, there was a baby in the bed and even in his sleep, he knew it. Five years and two more kids later, there has NEVER been an incident where someone rolled over on a kid or a kid fell off the bed OR into a crack or any of that nonsense. There are some basic, common-sense precautions that should be taken (and we took them) but for the most part, we are designed to sleep-share. I'm not going to post all the different links to reputable sources that back up my opinions as, if you're reading my blog, you probably know them all anyway and if you are not a regular reader and don't know what I'm talking about, it's easily Googled.

There are lots of benefits to co-sleeping but I think my personal favorite is the SLEEPING part. Currently I have a bottle-fed infant that I rarely bring to my bed (situational reasons) and let me tell you, it's SO MUCH HARDER to get good rest this way. UGH. I remember people used to tease me about the whole "new parent zombie" thing and while sometimes it was true, most of the time, I got a decent amount of sleep. Until now, that is. NOW I have an infant that sleeps in a crib three inches from my face but there is no more "stick a boobie in his mouth and go back to sleep" for me. I hate it, lol. I can easily say, from experience, that breast-feeding, co-sleeping Moms get more sleep. My husband will tell you that father's with breast-feeding co-sleeping infants get more sleep, too!

Oh but what about bonding time for Mom and Dad? What about the completely ridiculous concern of Mom being selfish and unfair to dad by bringing a baby into the sex-place (bed). *snort* PLEASE. I like sex, you think I'm going to let a little thing like a baby in the bed keep that from happening!??! Take a good look at the world's population sats and compare them to the data on co-sleeping around the world and TELL ME that parent's who co-sleep can't get sex time in. HAHAHAHA. Right.

Chris quoted someone in his post that covered the issue of bonding between parents who co-sleep and I loved what she had to say. The reality is that bonding between two grown-ups happens around the BIG things in life ANYWAY. I fall in love all over again every time I see my husband playing dolls with my daughters or whenever I peek in and I see him with a kid in his lap, trying to do his school-work. Some of my favorite memories with him involve sleepy, midnight conversation over the soft head of a nursing baby. Sure, we go on dates. Those are stress relief, usually, not bonding time. Bonding happened when I birthed two children into his hands. Bonding time happened when we rushed our first baby to the ER when she had a high fever. In fact over the last five years, some of our most intense moments together have involved the tiny voices of our children ringing in our ears.

I'm not saying sex isn't one of the things that keeps a marriage "well-bonded". What I'm saying is that if that's the only thing that's keeping your marriage strong and healthy, there is a serious problem. Kids are cock-blockers, it's a fact. That has nothing to do with where they sleep (or don't, as the case may be. I can't be the only parent on the planet with kids that think 2am is party-time.).

Oh and one more thing. I think the most commonly touted nonsense I hear from people is the idea that if you co-sleep, it takes forever to get the kid out of your bed. I would just like to point out that I've never met a college age person whose parents allowed them to sleep share that was still in their parent's bed. At some point in every human being's life, the need to be independent surfaces. It's different for every child. My first, for example (she's five), would still sleep in our bed, every night, if there was room. There isn't so she sleeps with her sister, who is two and moved out of our bed at a year because for some reason, she didn't like co-sleeping at all (though she LOVES sleeping with her sister and refuses to sleep anywhere else).

Some parents will never be comfortable with co-sleeping and that's ok. But I don't think we need to continue to perpetuate the myth that all co-sleeping is dangerous, selfish or crazy. It's not going to ruin our marriages OR spoil our children. There is even some evidence (that bears more research) that indicates it might even save the lives of some babies. Go-figure, an ancient practice from the dawn of time is a good thing? Hmmmm.

Random Rant About Societies "Don't become a parent" message to young people

2010-01-14T09:15:00.000-08:00

First off, let me just emphasize that I'm not promoting teen pregnancy or suggesting that people who aren't ready throw caution to the wind and become a parent. It's sad I even have to put that in here but there it is.

That said, what the HELL is up with this idea that having children will ruin your life?! I see billboards all the time, meant to "scare" teens into having safe sex. The most annoying ones suggest that your life will be OVER if you have a baby or get a girl pregnant. "A baby costs $745/mo How much is YOUR allowance?" I won't even get into the consumerist garbage that makes a baby cost that much (like, hey, breastfeed your kid and consider using cloth diapers and shop Good-will or just trade clothes with a few other parents and suddenly your baby is practically free on a week to week basis, for the better part of a year!).

I get that teen pregnancy is a problem because the children being born potentially will suffer. I understand that. I just don't think LYING to our young people is how we solve the problem! Why do we do this?

For one thing, telling today's teenagers that having a baby will ruin their life is subliminally suggesting that THEY were the ruination of their parent's lives. Great confidence booster, guys, really. "Hey, you were a big giant mistake yourself so don't make any more of them!" Way to raise confident, productive members of society. Great way to insure that IF they do become parents, they are competent at it. Let's just start them off with the idea that their kids are an example of what fuck-ups they are! The common approach to parenting small children today is to shy away from SHAMING and yet we have that as our first line of defense against teen pregnancy? How does that make any sense? I don't understand how brainwashing our young adults into being ashamed of their bodies and their children is preventing them having sex? Because guess what, it's not working! Instead what we have is angry, resentful, scared shitless teenagers without any frigging clue what they are supposed to do with their little, shameful "mistakes".

Why not just stick with the TRUTH?

The truth is that having a baby, regardless of how old you are or what kind of financial straights you are in, WILL change every aspect of your life in ways you can't even comprehend until you are a parent. This is true for EVERYONE, not just irresponsible teenagers.

Being a good, stable, loving parent has very little to do with how old you are. It has to do with how selfless you can be, how responsible you can be and how well you understand the responsibility you have. I have known some very young mothers that make their "older, respectable" counterparts look like complete idiots when it comes to parenting.

What is being a parent really like? What is the truth about having a baby?

Being a good parent is the hardest thing you'll ever do. At first, every tiny seemingly insignificant need of that child is met by you and only you. Baby needs to fart? Your problem. Baby needs to eat? You feed it. Baby needs a bath? Your bathing it. YOU need a bath/pee/meal? Well, it will have to wait because baby is hungry/crying/teething whatever. That's not to scare you away, it's just the truth for EVERY SINGLE PARENT ON PLANET EARTH.

You will cry, rage, and feel like you're suffocating. You will miss countless parties due to fevers, sickness, diarrhea and just plain exhaustion. People will stop inviting you places because you have kids and it's complicated. You will loose friends and gain others. You won't look at anything the same way ever again. You children will fill your life up with so much wonder and joy you won't be able to contain it sometimes and THOSE tears are the best. The first time your baby visibly snuggles you, those first slobbery kisses, the first steps, the first, "I love you, too", all of those thing make every headache, every sleepless night (and there will be MANY) 100% worth it.

Did becoming a mother ruin my life? No. I had children before I should have, that's a fact. My life isn't ruined and I don't regret my children. I'm only sorry that I can't provide for them right now the way I think they deserve and that is a HUGE BIG THING. Trust me, when your little child looks at you with tears in their eyes because all their friends are doing something and they can't go because you can't afford it because you made some foolish decisions, it really hits home how everything you do affects your dependents. THAT is the truth. My life is richer, more full and at times, blissfully happy BECAUSE I have children. Far, far from ruined. But every. single. day I think about the fact that they could have what they deserve if I'd been more careful, more responsible. It's just the truth.

I believe that teenagers can be capable parents if we would just stop treating them like socieites parasites and treat them like adults. You want responsible 16yr olds? Quit insisting they are CHILDREN and expect them to act like adults. Yeah, they're young. They'll make mistakes. They lack life experience, that sort of thing. GIVE IT TO THEM. 16 yrs old doesn't make you stupid or incapable of learning the simple facts of life. Nature didn't make a mistake by allowing us to be fertile so young. Society, however, has made a mistake in forcing young men and women to stay children until their practically 20yrs old and the expecting them to suddenly have it all figured out as they leave college. HA. It's not working, people!

I hear some of the most vicious campaign-style messages to teenagers about pregnancy from the pro-life, anti-abortion movement. Ok, great, you're anti abortion and you want teens to quit doing that so you figure keep them from getting pregnant and you've fixed the problem. So we LIE TO THEM to keep that from happening except that teenagers are not any more stupid than any body else so it doesn't WORK.

Why not tell them the truth? You want to reduce abortions? Try actually supporting our young people. Oh, you're having a baby and you're only 16 and you're scared shitless? Let me HELP you. Congratulations, you're in for a wild ride. Being scared is good, it means you're human, lol. We are ALL scared shitless when we discover we are carrying our first babies! This teen mom and that one are perfectly capable if we don't SHAME them. Don't be ashamed of your pregnancy, you made a choice, this is the result, OWN IT. Now, let's see about helping you know what you're getting yourself into. Let's NOT insist you're a fuckup. Let's not insist your life is over. Instead, ok, the journey has begun. Let's give these women and young men the tools they need to succeed!

Educate them. Talk to them straight. Be fucking HONEST. Babies will not RUIN your life. They will transform it AND you. Are you ready for that? NO? Ok, that's fine, too. Here's how to prevent it. And while I'm on the subject of birth control, people, GET A CLUE. You can't be anti-abortion, anti-teen pregnancy AND anti-birth control! It's ridiculous thinking. People HAVE SEX. Get over it! It's what people do and no matter how hard you try to convince young people to wait wait wait, there are always going to be peopel that don't, can't, whatever. It's naive and STUPID to insist we convert the world to believe it's wrong to have sex before marriage. It's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Let's be realistic. Girls, if you're having sex and you aren't ready for the above described journey, reevaluate. Sex equals babies, that's what it's FOR. IF you aren't ready for babies, you aren't ready for sex. If for some reason, you can't dig that, USE BIRTH CONTROL. And don't let anyone tell you it's WRONG. Because those same jerks are going to then look down on you for having a freaking baby because you weren't using protection!

How many teen mothers would have an abortion if they weren't scared shitless that they'd loose their homes, ruin their lives and loose respect? Hmmmm??? The messages we are sending out are all counter-productive and worse than that, they are often in contradiction to each other!

So, sum-up. Having kids before you are ready to do so WILL have life-long implications for you and your children. It will NOT ruin your life, though. It WILL change it irrevocably. Stop telling our children that they were a mistake by telling them that babies ruin their lives. START telling our children that they are strong, capable, smart and that you believe in them. When they make a decision that lands them in trouble, support them. You want to stop abortions? Quit making it nearly impossible for a teen parent to get help. Quit scaring them away. Stop telling them they are dirty, gross, sinful, stupid, shameful, or self-destructive. Empower them by telling them the truth. And yeah, some of them are still going to be irresponsible. Duh, no matter what, the "poor" (and by this I mean selfish and irresponsible) will always be with us, regardless of age! But start empowering them and god forbid, respecting them, from a young age and see if they don't run with it!

My Turn for a Reply Turned Post:

2009-12-31T09:34:00.000-08:00

My husband posted a link on his facebook that sparked some comments from this guy and my dh was at work so asked me to respond to him. Link here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1060304414&ref=mf

As is typical for me, my first response was off the cuff and wasn't very good and this guy is a smart guy and ripped it to shreds SO I was compelled to craft a better one. And, also typical for me, it got too long for a facebook reply so I'm posting it here. Feel free to totally ignore this entire post!

The italics are the other guy.

A: The flu vaccine is updated every year with new strands and strains. It may have old strains in it as well, which would be needed.
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/vaccineeffect.htm

There will always be new variations, so can it possibly be 100% effective? No, it can't. Scientists cannot possibly find every single variation and strain that exists.

I'm not arguing that but the reality is that when you or I go into our private doctors and receive the shot, we are not necessarily getting it from the newest batch available. It's not uncommon to be receiving injections that are “out of date” in this regard. Therefore, unless you are specifically requesting to see the vaccine inserts and verifying for yourself that your vaccine is the newest one available (this is obviously not such an issue in extremely high populated areas where they go more quickly) you don't know which strains you're “protecting” yourself from. Furthermore, until they start testing every person diagnosed with the “flu” for which strains they are carrying at any given time, they absolutely canNOT prove that their vaccine is effective at all. They simply don't have the data!

B: True, vaccines cannot offer full protection, but they can offer SOME protection. 50% (usually about 75% for normal flu vax) protection is better than none at all.

I hear this argument all the time and it doesn't make any sense to me. 50%- 70% “protection” against a disease in an entire population isn't protection at all. We're either protected from pandemics or we aren't. If only 50-70% of the people vaccinated are actually effectively immune, then it's not doing much to forestall a pandemic, is it? Because if, as you will argue further down the page, NOT getting vaccinated puts others at risk, so does getting vaccinated and being stubbornly still vulnerable to getting the disease. So really, anywhere from 30-50% of the Vaccinated population is “endangering the lives” of the rest of us. That's NOT an affective program for preventing pandemics!

C: The vaccine has killed ZERO people. None. There have been a few deaths of people with pre-existing serious health conditions that may have died because of the vaccine (re: straw that broke the camels back) but no causal relationship has been proven.

Actually, 25 people died from GBS (a rare disease linked with the h1n1 vaccine) though I'll happily admit that proven causality was never a conclusion reached (though I can't find any reference to any studies being done to determine if it was or wasn't and as such, some officials WERE expressing cautious use of the vaccine because of this, even on the news...I posted a video of it a few weeks back, actually). http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,539880,00.html (just one I found real quick but this information was broadcast debate-style all over every major news-network over the last several months). That fact, though, is a large part of the controversy in the worldwide medical community. That and well over 500 cases of GBS were documented (this happened during the last “pandemic” of the H1N1, back in the 1970's) and that much, at least, is an accepted risk of the H1N1 vaccine as well as other vaccines.

Again, find me an accredited source. Correlation does not, has not, and will not, ever prove causation.

Exactly right. Find me the same, please, the PROVES that vaccines do NOT cause the problems people are concerned they cause (autism is only one concern, here). I'll get back to your accredited sources in a minute (though at this point, I'm not even sure what you consider “accredited”).

D: Wrong. Not every disease has the potential to be pandemic. Cancer is not pandemic. Cancer does not transfer by bodily contact, fluid transfer, etc.
The vaccines ARE tested. As strenuously as they can given the short time frame with which to work. Scientists and researchers worked around the clock to ensure that H1N1 WOULDN'T become pandemic if something major happened.

Point conceded, I worded that poorly indeed. I was thinking of communicable diseases, I didn't even think about cancer and Auto-Immune disorders or congenital conditions. Let me revise my statement: Any contagious disease has the potential to become pandemic (thought not all of those diseases are likely to cause a lot of deaths, though neither is the flu, for that matter).

No vaccine is toxic to the human body. The only ingredients in a vaccine are a crippled version of a virus that YOU CAN ALREADY GET, and some solution to keep it in, which is also non-toxic. Even the supposed link between the preservative used in vaccines and autism, which was repeatedly proven false, isn't used anymore.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. HOOOHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Seriously? Have you ever read the ingredients list to ANY of the vaccines available? Like, for real? Tell me, what is this “solution to keep it in” made up of? (check out http://www.informedchoice.info/cocktail.html). Yeah, not a single toxic substance on the whole page!!! (please tell me you can hear my sarcasm. phenoxyethenol is highly toxic, in case you don't know http://msds.chem.ox.ac.uk/PH/2-phenoxyethanol.html). The preservative you are referring to is called thirmerosal (sodium ethylmercurithiosalicylate ) and you are correct, it was phased out of almost all of the vaccines, with the exception of...wait for it...the flu vaccine! It was phased out because the preliminary research that was done on it's safety was not reassuring. (Though I don't get from the literature that autism, specifically, as it's defined right now, was THE concern so much as neurological damage and this little thing called death). To date, afaik, research has not reached a conclusion either way as to it's safety as a preservative in vaccines (this is because the previous research that was alarming in the first place was on a slightly different kind of mercury so there is some question as to how much of that concern would apply with thirmerosal in the first place).

“As part of the FDAMA review, FDA evaluated the amount of mercury an infant might receive in the form of ethylmercury from vaccines under the U.S. recommended childhood immunization schedule and compared these levels with existing guidelines for exposure to methylmercury, as there are no existing guidelines for ethylmercury, the metabolite of thimerosal. At the time of this review in 1999, the maximum cumulative exposure to mercury from vaccines in the recommended childhood immunization schedule was within acceptable limits for the methylmercury exposure guidelines set by FDA, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and the World Health Organization (WHO). However, depending on the vaccine formulations used and the weight of the infant, some infants could have been exposed to cumulative levels of mercury during the first six months of life that exceeded EPA recommended guidelines for safe intake of methylmercury. As a precautionary measure, the Public Health Service (including FDA, National Institutes of Health [NIH], Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] and Health Resources and Services Administration [HRSA]) and the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a Joint Statement, urging vaccine manufacturers to reduce or eliminate thimerosal in vaccines as soon as possible. The U.S. Public Health Service agencies have collaborated with various investigators to initiate further studies to better understand any possible health effects from exposure to thimerosal in vaccines.
Available data has been reviewed in several public forums including the Workshop on Thimerosal, held in Bethesda in August 1999 and sponsored by the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, two meetings of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the CDC, held in October 1999 and June 2000, and by the Institute of Medicine's Immunization Safety Review Committee in July 2001 and February 2004. Data reviewed did not demonstrate convincing evidence of toxicity from doses of thimerosal used in vaccines. In case reports of accidental high-dose exposures in humans to thimerosal or ethyl mercury toxicity was demonstrated only at exposures that were 100 or 1000 times that found in vaccines.
its report of October 1, 2001, the IOM's Immunization Safety Review Committee concluded that the evidence is inadequate to either accept or reject a causal relationship between thimerosal exposure from childhood vaccines and the neurodevelopmental disorders of autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and speech or language delay. At that time the committee's conclusion was based on the fact that there were no published epidemiological studies examining the potential association between thimerosal-containing vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders. The Committee did conclude that the hypothesis that exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines could be associated with neurodevelopmental disorders was biologically plausible. However, additional studies were needed to establish or reject a causal relationship. The Committee stated that the effort to remove thimerosal from vaccines was "a prudent measure in support of the public health goal to reduce mercury exposure of infants and children as much as possible."

-http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/vaccines/QuestionsaboutVaccines/ucm070430.htm
All emphasis mine, btw.

E: The investigation is a joke. H1N1 had the potential to be far worse than it was. HAD. We got lucky. We might not get so lucky the next time.

The WHO declared that there WAS a pandemic. The issue is that “By classifying the swine flu as pandemic, nations were compelled to implement pandemic plans and also the purchase swine flu vaccines.” Furthermore, perhaps you think it's a joke but some people really want to know how you can declare a pandemic before it happens! Every single YEAR the flu has the potential to be far worse than it is! Perhaps the WHO should declare a nationwide pandemic preemptively ever year just so we can all get lucky? "We might not get so lucky next time" is open-ended reasoning that doesn't really MEAN anything. You could use that to "justify" almost anything.

And please, big pharma pushing a vaccine that would STOP PEOPLE FROM GETTING SICK AND THEREFORE BUYING MORE OF THEIR PRODUCTS. Sorry, that doesn't fly. If they got money, it was from the government towards their product and not the ridiculous fees associated with specialty drugs. Also, considering that the majority of makers of vaccines AREN'T big pharma, your theory doesn't hold water.

Your argument here doesn't make sense. For starters, “Big Pharma” is a slang term used pretty liberally to define any major pharmaceutical industry in a debate. It's not as if ALL pharmaceutical companies are actually one really big one that stands to gain from any and all things marketed to consumers. So it is ENTIRELY plausible that one company (say Glaxosmithkline or Novartis- both major pharmaceutical companies that produce vaccines) would stand to gain by a pandemic without concern that all the no-longer sick people would “stop buying their products”, particularly if their product purportedly would keep them from getting sick...as long as they kept using it. IN FACT, from same article, that is part of the concern : “What is a pandemic should not be allowed to be defined by an organization that is clearly under the influence of the pharmaceutical companies that profit from the sales of vaccines accompanying such a pandemic. Many of the decision-makers in WHO have worked for the pharma industry and go back to work in the pharma industry.” Obviously, I too, would like to see some documentation on that but that's why it's called an investigation and not a trial. Declaring a pandemic when there isn't one is fishy no matter how you look at it. That is the subject of this thread, not whether or not vaccines should be given or not. I would point out, though, that as it's just an investigation, no one here is saying conclusively that WHO did anything WRONG just that at this current time, something seems off.

Where did they market it? If I saw any commercials, they sure wern't by Pfizer or whatever, telling people to come get their 'special' Swine vaccine. I saw a few commercials by the CDC, thats it. Thats hardly a marketing campaign.

Seriously? Like, for real? When you are watching a commercial or taking your kid into their routine visits, pay attention to who pays for the commercial (it's usually somewhere along the bottom of the screen or quoted at the end of the commercial by the voice-over) or the pamphlets littered everywhere or the posters all over the wall. They are almost ALL paid for not just by the CDC, but by the manufacturing companies (I've seen Glaxosmith Kline, Novartis and Merk many a time on adds and all OVER my ped's office...as well as Lysol and Clorox, depending on the commercial). A marketing campaign does not necessarily have to include a Billy Maye's type character promising you miraculous results in between your favorite television programs. Have you not been listening or paying attention to billboard adds, commercials, the news, radio programs?!

See above for 'untested.' It was tested. A lot.

What's “A lot”? Really? Show me. Show me the 10+ years of testing usually required by the FDA done on this vaccine. Documented, please. I've been all over the CDC's website looking for these studies (on H1N1, NOT the yearly flu vax) but I can't actually find any links to the actual DATA. Just putting “studies show” in a paragraph doesn't equal proof, I wanna see the data! From what I've been reading since this “pandemic” was declared, this has been the debate all along! Not so much that there is a vaccine available but that it was rushed through all it's protocols. This isn't a concern that started with a bunch of ignoramuses like us, either, it's been brewing for a while, starting with the scientific community. I'm not going to bother posting all the links I found regarding the warnings the British Gov't sent out about the possible link between the H1N1 vax and GBS and the concerns about it possibly being a “rush job”. They are all over the place and easily Googled.

Finally: Vaccines ARE necessary. It wouldn't be so bad if not vaccinating a child would only affect said childs health and/or living status. But thats not the case. By one parent not vaccinating their child, they endanger the lives of OTHER PEOPLES CHILDREN.
See the Mumps outbreak in a Brooklyn Jewish community because of ignorant anti-vaxxers.

This entire statement is PURE opinion. Bully for you. Again, allow me to point out that as long as vaccines only offer “partial” immunity, you can't blame “ignorant non-vaxxers” for the outbreaks that happen. Show me the documented PROOF that these “ignorant” people are the sole cause of disease outbreaks in largely vaccinated populations. Proof, mind you, not media speculation or raging hysteria. Interesting to note that one of my daughters used to have a pediatrician that doesn't get vaxed and refuses to even discuss them with her clients until the child in question is at LEAST 6mo old. It's pretty amazing that even doctors that think this way are reduced to “ignorant” in your mind. Do you know who Dr. Marsden Wagner is? Is he ignorant, too? He spent 15 years as Director of Women's and Children's Health for the World Health Organization (responsible for Women's and Children's Health in 45 industrialized countries). I've seen some interesting documentaries with him featured, including one about vaccines. He is also in favor of more research and less blind jabbing.

Seriously, find me actual, accredited proof for any one of your (multi-point) points. Scientific journals, peer reviewed sources.
Jenny McCarthy is NOT an accredited source on vaccine information.

I'll try, though finding “accredited” sources of vaccine information that aren't partially or entirely funded by pharmaceutical companies is a toughy (and that matters because it raises the concern of a conflict of interest):

MMR VACCINE

Pancreatis Caused by Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine Pancreas vol. 6 no 4 1991 [2]
Mumps Meningitis Following Measles, Mumps and Rubella Immunization Lancet July 1989 [1 pg]
Optic Neuritis Complicating Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination American Journal of Opthalmology 1978 :86 [4 pgs.]
A Prefecture-wide Survey of Mumps Meningitis Associated with Measles, Mumps and Rubella Vaccine (Infec Dis J 1991 Vol 10 pg 204-209)
Risk of Aseptic Meningitis after Measles Mumps and Rubella Vaccine In UK Children (Lancet April 93 Pgs. 979)
A Prefecture -Wide Survey of Mumps Meningitis Associated With Measles, Mumps and Rubella Vaccine Pediatri Infect Dis J 1991; 10 [6pgs]
Guillain-Barre syndrome after measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine Lancet jan 1 1994 Vol 343 [1 pg]
RUBELLA VACCINE
Two Syndromes Following Rubella Immunization (Suggests a polyneuropathy in both syndromes) (JAMA 1970 Vol 214 no 13) [5pgs.]
Chronic Arthritis After Rubella Vaccination Clinical Infec Dis. 1992 15;307-12 [6pgs]
Acute Arthritis Complicating Rubella Vaccination (ARTHRITIS AND RHEUMATISM 1971 41) [4pgs]
Joint Symptoms Following an Area Wide Rubella Immunization Campaign Report of a Survey Am J of Public Health Vol 62 no 5 [4pgs]
Polyneuropathy Following Rubella Immunization Am J Dis Child 1974 Vol 127 [5pgs]
Postpartum Rubella Immunization: Association with Development of Prolonged Arthritis, Neurological Sequelae, and Chronic Rubella Viremia (THE JOURNAL OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES 1985 vol 152 no 3) [7pgs]

MEASLES VACCINE
Thrombocytopenic Purpura Following Vaccination With Attenuated Measles Virus Amer J Dis Child Jan 1968 Vol 115 [3pgs]
Investigation of a measles outbreak in a fully vaccinated school population including serum studies before and after revaccination (Pediatr Infec Dis J 1993 12) [8pgs.]
Risk of Aseptic Meningitis after Measles, Mumps , and Rubella Vaccine in UK Children Lancet 1993 Vol 341 [4pgs]
An Explosive point-source measles outbreak in a highly vaccinated population (American Journal of Epidemiology 1989 Vol 129 no 1) [10]
A Persistent Outbreak of Measles Despite Appropriate Prevention And Control Measures ( American Journal of Epidemiology Vol 126 No3) [13pgs.]
Measles Vaccine and Crohn’s Disease Gastroenterology vol. 108 no 3 1995 [3pgs]
Aseptic Meningitis after Vaccination Against Measles and Mumps (Pediatr Infec Dis J 1989 8 pg 302-308) [7pgs]
Measles Vaccine Associated Encephalitis in Canada Lancet Sept. 1983 [2pgs]
Guillain -Barre Syndrome Following Administration of Live Measles Vaccine Amer J of Med 1976 Vol 60 [3pgs]

Pancreatitis Caused by Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine Pancreas vol 6 no 4 [2pgs]
Measles Vaccine and Neurological Events Lancet May 1997 [2pgs]

MUMPS VACCINE
Mumps Outbreak in a Highly Vaccinated School Population /evidence for large scale vaccination failure Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 1995 Vol 149 [5pgs] Summary: 54 students developed mumps --of those 54, 53 had been fully immunized.
Aseptic Meningitis as a Complication of Mumps Vaccination (Ped Infec Dis J 1991 Vol 10 No 3) [5pgs]
Guillain -Barre Syndrome occurrence following combined mumps- rubella vaccine Am J Dis Child Vol 125 1973 [2pgs]
Mumps Vaccines and Meningitis/ Heterogeneous Mumps Vaccine (more on Urabe strain vaccine) Lancet Vol 340 1992 [2pgs.]

Flu Vaccine
Neuropathy After Influenza Vaccination (this deals with Swine flu vaccine) Lancet Jan 29, 1977 [ 2 pgs.]
Isolated Hypoglossal Nerve Paralysis Following Influenza Vaccination Am J Dis Child 1976 vol 130 [2pgs]
Guillain -Barre Syndrome Lancet Sept. 1978 [1pg]
Relapsing Encephalomyelitis Following the use of Influenza Vaccine Arch Neurol Vol 27 1972 [2pgs]

Optic Atrophy Following Swine Flu Vaccination Annals of Opthalmology July 1980 [3pgs]

Polio Vaccine
Anaphylactoid allergic reactions to influenza and poliomylitis vaccines Annals of Allergy Vol. 18 1960 [4pgs]
Vaccine Associated Poliomyelitis Lancet March 1994 Vol 343 [3pgs]
Vaccine Associated Paralytic Poliomyelitis New England J of Med 1993 [1pg]
Poliomyelitis and Prophylactic Innoculation against Diphtheria , Whooping Cough and Smallpox (DPT and smallpox vaccines increased chances of polio) Lancet Dec 1956 pg. 6955 [9pgs]
Residual Paralysis after Poliomyelitis Following Recent Inoculation (this on increase in polio after DPT shots) Lancet June 1952 pg. 1187 [3pgs]
The Relation of Prophylactic Inoculations to the Onset of Poliomyelitis Lancet April 5, 1950 [5pgs]
More on Vaccine Associated Paralytic Poliomyelitis New England Journal of Medicine Dec 23,1993 [2pgs]
Outbreak of Paralytic Poliomyelitis in Oman :Evidence for Widespread Transmission Among Fully Vaccinated Children Lancet 1991 Vol 338 [6pgs]
Immune Response of Infants in Tropics to Injectable Polio Vaccine BMJ Jan 1982 [1pg]

DPT Vaccine

Pertussis Vaccination and Asthma: is there a link? JAMA 1994 Vol 272 no 8 [1pg]
Further Contributions to the Pertussis Vaccine Debate Lancet may 16 1981 pg. 1113 [2pgs]
The Whooping Cough Immunization Controversy Arch Dis Child 1981 vol. 56 [4pgs]
Workshop on Neurologic Complications of Pertussis and Pertussis Vaccination Neuropediatrics 1990 Vol 21 [6pgs] Interesting point stated in this article: In evaluating side- reactions to the vaccine the following must be kept in mind:
1 Vaccines are not standardized between manufacturers.
2 For a given manufacturer, vaccines are not standard from one batch to the next.
3 Unless the vaccine is properly prepared and refrigerated, its potency and reactivity varies with shelf life.
4 In fact, the whole question of vaccine detoxification has never been systematically investigated.
Encephalopathy Following Pertussis Vaccine Prophylaxis JAMA Vol 141 [3pgs]
Encephalopathy Following Diphtheria Pertussis Inoculation Arch of Dis Child Vol 28 1953 [2pgs]
Mortality and Morbidity from Invasive Bacterial Infections During a Clinical Trial of Acellular Pertussis Vaccines in Sweden Pediatri Infect Dis J 1988 7 [8pgs]
Adverse reactions after injection of absorbed diphtheria- pertussis- tetanus (DPT) vaccine are not due only to pertussis organisms or pertussis components in the vaccine Vaccine vol 9 1991 [4pgs]

Pertussis Vaccine Encephalopathy JAMA 1990 Vol 264 [4pgs]

TETANUS VACCINE
Acute Transverse Mylelitis after Tetanus Toxoid Vaccination Lancet may 1992 Vol 339 [2pgs]
Adverse Reactions to Tetanus Toxoid JAMA may 1994 vol. 271 [1]
Unusual Neurological Complications Following Tetanus Toxoid Administration J Neurology 1977 ;215 [2pgs]
Guillain-Barre syndrome after Combined Tetanus- Diphtheria Toxoid Vaccination J Neurological Sciences 1997 147 [2pgs]
Abnormal T- Lymphocyte Subpopulations in Healthy Subjects After Tetanus Booster Immunization New England Journal of Medicine Jan 1984 [2pgs]
Hep B Vaccine
Acute Hepatitis B Infection after Vaccination Lancet Vol 345 Jan 1995
Multiple Evanescent White Dot Syndrome After Hepatitis B Vaccine American J of Ophthalmology Vol 122 No 3 [2pgs]
Systemic Lupus Erythematosus and Vaccination Against Hepatitis B Nephron 1992; 62 [1pg]
Hepatitis B Vaccines: Reported Reactions WHO Drug Info vol. 4 1990 [1]
Postmarketing Surveillance for Neurologic Adverse Events Reported After Hepatitis B Vaccination American J of Epidemiology Vol 127 no 2 [16pgs]

Childhood Immunization and Diabetes Mellitus New Zealand Medical Journal May 1996 [1pg]
Allergic Reaction Associated with Viral Vaccines (PROGR MED VIROL Vol 13 pgs. 239-270} [17pgs]
Malignant Tumors as a Late Complication o f Vaccination Arch Derm Vol 98 1968 [4pgs]
Vaccine -Induced Autoimmunity Journal of Autoimmunity 1996 Vol 9[5pgs]
Depressed Lymphocyte Function after MMR Vaccination Journal of Infec Dis.vol 132 no 1 1975 [4pgs]
Neurological Complications of Immunization Annals of Neurology Aug 1982 [10pgs]
Multiple Sclerosis and Vaccination BMJ April 1967 [4 pgs ]

SIDS/VACCINE CONNECTION Articles
Possible Temporal Association Between Diphtheria-Tetanus Toxoid-Pertussis Vaccination and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Pediatric Infectious Disease 1983 Vol 2 no 1 [5pgs]
DTP Vaccination and Sudden Infant Deaths—Tennessee MMWR March 23,1979 [2pgs]
Characteristics of Diphtheria-Pertussis- Tetanus (DPT) Postvaccinal Deaths and DPT- Caused Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS): A Review Neurology April 1986 [2pgs]

What I find interesting about all of these peer-reviewed, reputable sources is that these articles address the many questions that vaccines arise and you'll notice that not a SINGLE ONE OF THEM says anything at all about a possible link between ONE ingredient and Autism. There are many ingredients in vaccines and they obviously vary from vaccine to vaccine and manufacturer to manufacturer. Your arguments overly generalize the entire controversy and completely leave out the concerns of the medical community regarding the OTHER possible problems with vaccines as they currently exist today. Every study that I've read regarding vaccines (the actual studies or abstracts, not media articles covering them or pamphlets in the doctor's office) suggests MORE RESEARCH NEEDS TO BE DONE, NOT that vaccines are absolutely safe.

By the way, on the subject of safety, NOBODY with any real credibility will tell you that they are 100% safe. The US Government has a fund set aside specifically for financially compensating families who have proven damages or death to their children from vaccines (Its called the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program http://www.hrsa.gov/Vaccinecompensation/) This would not exist if they were “safe”, would it? Honestly, not even the manufacturers themselves would dream of saying that they're 100% safe so your earlier insistence that they don't contain anything toxic to the human body is just plain ludicrous. Even Tylenol contains toxic substances and can make you sick, for goodness sake!

In closing, “But you risk the lives of the children” is, at best, an argument meant to sway people not by rational thought, but by emotional knee-jerk reactions. People aren't saying that vaccinations are a stupid idea and going to kill us all. What people WANT is safe, effective vaccines. Especially parents. The argument that they are “necessary” must be backed up by “they are safe” because as a parent, I personally can imagine that being told that my child's death was “necessary so that little Henry down the street doesn't die from the measles” might not fly as a convincing argument.

Women Giving Birth at Home Without Midwives - ABC News

2009-11-20T19:46:00.000-08:00

Women Giving Birth at Home Without Midwives - ABC News

I was actually extremely pleased with this one...

2009-11-12T20:01:00.000-08:00

The wee hours of August 19, 2004 found me birthing my first daughter into the world and becoming a mother for the first time. As she was pushed earth-side, I was shoved unceremoniously into a world I had no real understanding existed. The Mama World. The Mama world can be a wonderful place. Here you will find people that completely understand how you can dread and love the sound of your baby's cry all at once. Here there are women that KNOW. The droopy eyes, the mismatched socks, the twenty-three interruptions in one telephone conversation- they just get it. The internet has been, for me, the center of my "Mama World" as most of my IRL friends do not yet have children. The internet chapter of this world is always there. I got my first taste of it while pregnant. Any question that I had was immediately answered by at LEAST thirty different women (and in many cases, I received thirty different answers!). Once I was officially initiated into the Mama World I found that there were literally thousands of eyes always available to answer any questions I had. Trouble breastfeeding? Diaper rash? Colic? Not sure which store has the very best price on strollers? Need energy shots? No problem, here's seven-hundred and fifteen opinions with at least forty different links to go with them and while we're at it, here's fourteen phone numbers if you need to talk. With the birth of each of my children, I've been blessed with a HUGE support system for all of my various little Mama Quirks.

Oh we all have them. Some of us simply cannot LIVE without our baby carriers. Others would rather choke on a snake than touch a disposable diaper. Others are more concerned with whether or not everything that their baby ingests is organic. The lists of Mama Quirks go on and on and on and many residual fires can be seen still smoking from flame wars the internet-world over attesting to just how SERIOUS we all are about them.

Flame wars? I know, I said the Mama World can be a wonderful place. It can also be a vicious place. Mothers the world over have a reputation for being fierce and warrior-like when it comes to our children. Unfortunately that Mama-bear instinct can be misplaced into ripping our sisters to shreds for doing or thinking about things differently.

What follows is the first of what I hope will be a series of opinionated posts about these various issues. Today I want to talk about Parenting Labels.

It seems that when I first became a mother I got sucked into the flame wars as quickly as the next mother. I couldn't help but notice, though, that the "more experienced" moms tended to be a bit more careful about picking their battles. As I'm now rounding the first corner into my oldest child's fifth year, I'm beginning to understand WHY. Being a mother is quite possibly THE most challenging occupation I can think of. Deep down inside most mothers want one thing: what is best for their children that doesn't also equal complete insanity for them. Most of the internet moms I settled down with spend a lot of time reading about raising children. And in reading, they've learned that there are some "parenting styles" that have become rather popular. The one I run into the most is, of course, Attachment Parenting (usually referred to as AP parenting or just AP).

In the beginning, this was what I was ALL ABOUT. It just seemed to fit what I wanted for my kids. The base premise is very simple: respond to your baby's needs. And out of that premise we introduce things like baby-wearing and exclusively breastfeeding. But AP parenting has almost become the flag of the "natural" movement. I've not met many women, for example, that home-birth that don't also breastfeed and cloth diaper. I know very few women indeed who cloth-diaper that don't ALSO baby-wear. It's a slippery slope and in general, it's a good thing. All of these things are "good". What's NOT good is the way women seem to become divided over some of these issues.

Honestly, I never gave it much thought until recently. Some women baby-wear, for example, and some don't. But recently, one of the newer moms in a group I belong to wrote in asking a question that really made me realize just how bad this can be. Her question was along the lines of "Do I have to pick up my baby every single time she fusses, no matter what? I want to be AP but I sometimes I'm responding to her needs so often that I literally can't pee!" Ok, so I'm paraphrasing and I don't think her need to tinkle actually made it into her post. Her baby was old enough to be crawling around and getting into things and generally wreaking havoc on Mom's need to wash the dishes. Her question got me thinking: Why is she worried about being AP? It reminded me of my first year of Mom-hood, when I was afraid someone would find out that I let my 12mo old follow me around crying because she wanted to be picked up but I NEEDED a clean house because we were having company. She wasn't hurt, hungry or sick. She just wanted attention and was expressing that to me VERY CLEARLY. And I heard her! I listened, I responded! "I am RIGHT HERE, baby, I can hear you and you can be with me. But right now, I need to wash the dishes so I can make dinner so we can all eat." I felt GUILTY because I wasn't wearing her in a sling on my back so she could be in contact with me during her little moment of insecurity. It didn't help that while I was washing the dishes, she got down on her knees and laid her forehead on my feet and cried herself to sleep. Yes, on my feet. Right there at the sink with me up to my elbows in suds. In case anyone is wondering, she is JUST as dramaful today.

So what's my point? My point is that there seems to be a fine line between advocating "instinctive" parenting and advocating "getting in the line" of a particular label. We need to be encouraging our sisters to parent from the heart and soul, not trying to fit into a particular label. Some of this, of course, comes from the mother herself. I doubt very seriously that anyone would have criticized me for not picking up my whining toddler while I was in the middle of doing the dishes. After all, one of a child's basic needs is to learn how to appropriately interact with their families and sometimes, it is completely necessary that they WAIT on someone else. But I wanted to fit that label, man, I wanted to be an EXAMPLE. I wanted people to think I was the best mom on EARTH and to me, that meant being AP.

As an aspiring midwife, I think about things like this a lot. What motivates us as mothers and how can I facilitate the birth of a new Mom? What, if anything, would be the ONE thing I would say to a mother just starting out? Strive for "this" model of parenting and you can't go wrong? Peh. PEH I SAY. The one and only thing I think every mother on this planet needs to get through her skull is to parent from within. Find something that works for you and nurtures your children, your partner AND YOURSELF and go with it. It's ok if you just can't bring yourself to cloth diaper. I know, I know, it's better for the planet, it's cheaper and can be better for your baby's bum (depends on the kid, lol, I learned that the hard way!). But it's NOT a measure of how much you love your kids or how good of a mother you are. It's a Mama Quirk.

Three months ago I gave birth to my third child, a beautiful son. As I've been breastfeeding for five years (still "snacking" my 2yo daughter) it never even occurred to me that I might not be able to breastfeed my son. I've never had any significant trouble (except for thrush, thrush is my mortal enemy!). My babies have always come out smaller than my breasts but latched on without incident and there ya go, a breastfeeding mama! But my son had a severe tongue tie and was incapable of latching properly. We had his frenulum released at 8days old and all seemed to be well. Except for that niggling sense that something wasn't right, but he seemed to be nursing fine, had a perfect latch and all that. No worries. But he wouldn't grow. Eventually he was hospitalized for failure to thrive and after running every test we could think of it turns out it all came down to breastfeeding. After a long visit with a lactation consultant, we learned that our son has a rear tie (I have never heard of this until now, though apparently, I have one, too) and he literally cannot effectively nurse. It's correctable through major oral surgery. Yay. Not only is it highly invasive and involving general anesthesia, my insurance wouldn't cover it anyway. So...bottle feeding it is! He's getting far more formula than breast milk these days as that's the best I can do. One person very kindly asked me if I was disappointed. No, I'm not. It would certainly be nutritionally better for him if he could nurse but I say NO food is considerably less healthy than formula. I'm grateful we have bottles and the ONLY thing that disappoints me is that I am having trouble pumping enough to feed him. But I'm not upset that I can't breastfeed him. What bothers me is the knowledge, from being on the other side of the fence, that I will be silently judged everywhere I go for not breastfeeding him.

It's not that I don't agree that breast is best, I absolutely do (remember, five years and counting, here). I also extended nurse (my first was weaned at 3.5yrs old). I KNOW where the attitude comes from. But I must admit that now, being on the other side, I've been forced to really THINK about this "judging". Should we stop doing that? Are we hurting more than we're helping? I'm not sure. I will still encourage every mother I meet to breastfeed (or baby wear or whatever) but now I have a different attitude, I guess. The MOST important thing is that she nurtures her children from her heart.

Right?

The Birth of My Son Ethan

2009-09-29T09:06:00.001-07:00

Ethan's birth was such a healing, empowering experience for me. It feels odd to put it that way because honestly, most of the time someone says that, they are referring to healing from a previous birth experience. In some ways, I suppose that is true, also, but for the most part, his birth was a balm on a wounded spirit for me.

The year preceding his conception and birth had been one full of the highest hopes and the deepest devastation as all of our dreams came crashing down around us. Along with those dreams, reality crept in and I was dealing with some very painful truths from my childhood and my adulthood. I discovered I was pregnant right in the middle of this and I can't say that I was happy, per se. I was sort of automatically happy the way I always am but I was also feeling rather betrayed, angry and just, confused. My faith had already taken such a beating and here I was, pregnant with a child I was actively trying to avoid! I felt like God or the Universe or SOMEBODY had played a cruel joke on me. It didn't help that my poor husband couldn't take the news well and that both of us were about as stressed out as we could get. To be expecting another baby in the midst of the worst financial crisis (among other things) of our lives together was really a big thing to chew on.

I spent most of my pregnancy trying to consciously NOT make him feel unwanted. I tuned in, I talked to him, I prayed. I felt he was a boy and I felt his name out long before it was chosen (I always wait for my dh to pick a name as kind of a way of confirming my intuition. So far, three times now, it's worked and we've settled on the same name without previously confiding in each other). I was so afraid there would be something wrong with him. My concerns about this came from a feeling of guilt, that he would somehow know he was unexpected and perhaps get from those feelings that he was also unwanted (not true). Also, my 2nd child had been born 4wks early and was so tiny that my recovery time with her was fraught with constant anxiety and worry as I waited for something awful to happen to her. I think, honestly, the recent past had so traumatized me that I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

As Ethan grew within me, all sorts of things happened in my life. We uprooted our little family and moved back home (450some miles) after having JUST done that the year before, and moved in with my mother-in-law. QUITE an adjustment for all of us, I assure you. My mother in law is very uncomfortable with homebirth so I spent quite a lot of time grieving what I felt would be a loss of what I needed for a good birth. Oh I cannot thank Heaven often enough for the sisters I've been given as an adult. One of my dearest friends offered me her home to birth in (well actually, three of my friends offered, but I chose this one because it was so close. But really, THREE friends offered?! Who can say they've got their pick of homes to choose from for a birth?). This home is one of my homes away from home anyway. It houses 16 cats, 5 dogs, 2 married couples and 2 single individuals. All of them are some of my closest friends. My children know them all as Aunties and Uncles and it's almost as if my entire "adopted" family lives in one house. It's not a big house, but if there was any more love stuffed in there it would burst at the seams. I was very nervous about birthing in a home that wasn't mine but it certainly wasn't for lack of feeling comfortable there! The idea of actually having to get in a car and travel while in labor, though, UGH. I was not impressed! But again, the gratitude I felt at being so well supported and so well loved spilled over into my ambivalent feelings about my pregnancy and slowly, oh so slowly, I began to heal of the traumas my heart had suffered.

During my 2nd trimester, I began measuring really far ahead. I went from measuring 3wks ahead to measuring 6wks ahead in 2 wks. In another 2wks I'd "blossomed" to measuring 10wks ahead! A friend was helping me track my prenatal care and I had her double check for me. My friend is an apprentice mw (sort of) and offered to see if her preceptor would be willing to take a look. I was afraid to ask her because I cannot pay, though I know this woman by her reputation. She graciously agreed to take a look, and confirmed that yes, I was measuring very, VERY far ahead. We looked for 2 heartbeats and while we could find it in two places, the beats were not different enough to confirm twins. I felt in my heart it was a singleton, a boy. Nobody but Karen would listen to me. Everyone in my life was convinced it was twins (and in all fairness, I was HUGE). I finally accepted that maybe, just maybe, it could be twins but the truth was that I really felt like it was polyhydramnios and I scheduled an ultrasound. The long and short of that was that I was right: One baby, a boy, and a diagnosis of poly.

I'd like to take a moment to say that I do not do routine ultrasounds. In this instance, though, for peace of mind, I decided to have one because if it was twins, I needed to know (we live in a 2bedroom home with my husband's mother. She sleeps on the couch, my girls share a room and the baby, my husband and I have another. That's six people in a house barely big enough for three! We NEEDED to know). I also felt it was probably polyhydramnios and I am well read enough to understand that poly can be a symptom of serious problems for my baby and I wanted to make sure he was ok. What surprised me was how much confirming his sex allowed me to connect to him during a time when I felt very vulnerable and was having a hard time "connecting". I had already internally been referring to him as "my son" but it was very validating and affirming for me to be able to realize that my instincts were NOT broken. After so much going wrong and so much hurt I had begun to lose faith in myself. That little bit of confirmation was enormously reassuring to me. Even better, as far as the u/s could detect, our little son appeared to be perfectly healthy and growing just fine!

Our last child was born unassisted but my husband and I both felt more comfortable with a MW in attendance this time. We weren't concerned so much with the birthing (I would know if something was wrong) but we wanted someone who could look over the baby with a more experienced eye than us, should he prove to have some problem that explained the poly. The mw graciously agreed to attend, despite our complete inability to pay her. As my pregnancy progressed, I had some very laid back routine prenatal care with this woman. Towards the end, my blood pressure just kept getting higher and higher. We talked about a possible home induction but I wasn't sure it was time yet so we put it off for a week.

Monday morning, August 10th, I was 39wks6days. Karen came over to do a quick check and my bp was through the roof. Not high enough to rush to the hospital (and I didn't have any indication that I currently had pre-e but I was beginning to show some worrisome symptoms) but enough to raise both our eyebrows and confirm to me that perhaps giving a gentle nudge was a good idea. I asked her for a vaginal exam (something I had no intention of doing previously, I hate VE’s). I wasn't even going to try a nudge unless it was physically apparent that labor was very close indeed. I was 3 ½ cm dilated and about 50% effaced. Baby's head was very, very low. She felt a nudge would be effective and simple and my bp wasn't so high that if it didn't work, I'd have to transfer...yet. I felt it was wise to nudge and so gave the go-ahead.

So, at 11:30 and again at noon, I took a tablespoon of castor oil. I also took some labor tincture (2 doses) as I began to have contractions (for the 100th time that month) at around 3:30pm. At 4pm, I called Karen and told her I'd started having contractions that were lasting anywhere from 2-3minutes and were coming anywhere from 2-7minutes apart. Long, sporadic and no, they felt no different to me than the contractions I'd been having on and off for weeks. She asked me if I felt like I was in labor. I told her that IF I was, it was very, very early yet . (To be completely frank, I never actually believed this would work and she teased me about it later.) She advised me to go to my friend’s house as traveling in hard labor is no fun. I said something about not wanting to be over there all up in their space for no reason and Karen said it was up to me but at least if I was there, I’d have a nice time and be in good company. I hung up with her and asked dh to call over at the house and let them know we’d be ready in about an hour. I was in total denial about my labor. Paul told me later that at the time, he thought I was nuts and should just go right over (this is our 3rd baby together, so I guess he knows what to expect) but he was trying to respect my wishes. It’s just that I read all about hypnobirthing and had practiced the relaxation exercises *every day* of the 2nd half of my pregnancy and THEY WORK. I just did not believe that the contractions I was having were any more than prodomal contractions. They just didn’t HURT enough.

So he gets off the phone with Elise (one of the women that lives in the wonderful house) and I make a trip to the bathroom. As soon as my butt hits the toilet seat, I have another contraction….and it’s all downward pressure, all head in the birth canal. OH SHIT. One of my first thoughts (while moaning like a lioness) is “WHAT HAPPENED TO TRANSITION?!?!”

I came out of the bathroom after two more of those and told Paul, “Call Elise back and tell her to come RIGHT NOW.” He said, “I knew it…” and picked the phone back up. Time gets very strange for me after that because the ONLY thing I was concentrating on was NOT pushing the baby OUT. I did not check but I imagine that if I had, I would have been able to touch his head. This is the only time during my labor that I did a lot of yelling. I had to! Birthing is so much energy and I handled the contractions well until I had to fight them. Fighting them SUCKS. I remember standing in the kitchen while dh and Elise were getting the car packed. I had this utterly powerful contraction, the kind that makes your legs shake and your entire body feel like it’s crumpling in on itself. NOT pushing during that contraction was one of the hardest things I will ever do and fighting my body HURT. I kept screaming “hurry up!!!” at them. I totally freaked my 2yo out. She was FINE until I started shrieking. Poor baby, I kept giving her hugs in between contractions, just to let her know I was ok.

Finally the damn car was ready. I fight off another contraction and then rush from the front door to the car-only to realize that the front seat (MY seat) is covered in junk. Damnit! I really did not want to be fighting contractions out where the entire world could see me. OH WELL. So I have one standing up by the car, while Elise is clearing the seat off. I say, “OMG it’s FUCKING hot out here!” And it was. It was the hottest day we’d seen that year (we found that out later). The contraction and gravity were working so well together that I had no choice but to get down on my hands and knees (yes right there in public!!!) and howl and holler, trying to keep my son IN. Finally! The seat is clean, I can get in the car. I’m talking to myself in my head, at this point: “You will NOT have this baby here in the grass. You will wait this contraction out and then, ok, here we go, UP, GET IN THE CAR, quick, before the next one!”

The car ride was a special level of hell. For one thing, I was literally sitting on my son’s head. I could FEEL it right there. I was trying not to shriek in the car because for some reason, I was very aware of how loud it would be to everyone in the car (particularly Abby, who was so upset by it). It occurred to me, though, as we were traveling, that dh needed to call Karen back and tell her that she needed to leave NOW to come meet us at Ruby’s. Right as he begins to do that…we turn up this little street only to be made to stop because of construction. The guy was trying to make us wait for an entire line of cars coming the other way! OH NO HE DIDN’T!! Elise starts shrieking out the one side of the car, My husband (who is still on the phone with the midwife) is leaning out his side of the car, banging on the door shouting, and I’m yelling NO NO NO NO NO!!!! As much as it sucked in the moment, it makes me laugh to remember it. He let us past, thank God.
At one point, during the drive, I said something like “do NOT have the baby in the car!” and Elise reassured me that hey, if the baby was born in the car, at least labor would be over!
Thankfully, the baby was not born in the car but I felt like I might need to poo. And as I’d had castor oil, I was highly conscious of just what that might look like and so I desperately wanted to get to the bathroom. This was at the forefront of my mind when we arrived at the back of Ruby’s house. Naturally, I’m having a contraction when Nick opens my door to help me out so I have to wait through that one and then it’s UP AND GET ACROSS THE YARD AND UP THE…OH NO, HERE’S ANOTHER ONE! I knew that if I stood up during a contraction, the baby was going to come sooner rather than later and damnit, I needed to go potty first! NO POOPING IN PUBLIC. So I backed off the steps I had started up and got down on my hands and knees, again, where everyone could see me. Why on earth it bothered me I cannot tell you but getting inside the house was SO important to me.

Finally contraction over and as I go up the steps into the house, I have this quick panic that I’d get in there and the pool would not be set up and I would cry. But no, there it was, in all of it’s glory! Clean, set up and half-full of wonderful, delightful water! But NO, I have to poo! Contraction by the door, walk to middle of living room, down to my knees for another contraction. I think Molly was helping me to the bathroom and I’m pretty sure I made it up the steps before the next one. I sat on the potty with Molly outside the potty and had 2 more contractions on the toilet. I managed to poo such a tiny little bit that I almost had to laugh at myself for wasting all that energy getting to the bathroom! So, back down the stairs.

I was beginning to calm down. Everything can unfold now, I don’t have to fight my body anymore, I can go back to relaxing and breathing and enjoying the amazing dance of life that is birthing a child. My husband had taken the opportunity to have a celebratory smoke with Nick, in the basement. Ruby had taken the girls out to the front porch. Molly and Elise were like my personal hand-maidens. I remember, upon first stepping into the pool, telling Elise the water was too warm, but not by a lot. I felt like a queen! It was…I don’t know how to explain it, it was just so calm and peaceful and I was cared for so much and I could FEEL it in the air! I sat down and immediately all the pain in my lower back just stopped. OH IT WAS HEAVEN. Elise switched the water to cool and I was so hot I put the hose right in my face and got my hair wet. Sweet relief! I just kept my feet in front of the cool water coming out after that, it felt fabulous. I had a contraction and was able to just stretch out and breath and no more fighting! Damn, his head is really right here, huh?

Ruby appeared and I don’t remember exactly what we said to each other but I do remember saying she could bring the girls in if she wanted to (Elizabeth really, really wanted to see her brother come out). Right then, Paul came upstairs. He was smoking a cigarette and on his way out to the front porch with Nick, who, having completed his task of setting up the pool, was leaving. Nick heads out to the porch and dh stops by the pool and says, “Wow, I didn’t even know you were down here, I thought you were still in the bathroom! You’re so quiet!”
“The baby is coming out” I said. With a look of affection and sympathy he says, “I know, babe”. Another contraction begins and I manage to grit out “No, he’s coming out RIGHT NOW” as I get my hand down to my vulva and cover the top of his head with my hand. Watching my husband consciously decide NOT to throw his smoke over his shoulder while he races around the pool to get by my side was priceless and I will never forget it. As he gets around, to where I was, my son’s head is born. “Head’s born” or “head’s out” (I can’t remember which I said). I switch to half crab-squat, half recline as he rotates and my body expels him in one big contraction. Paul gets his hands in the water just in time to keep the baby’s head from hitting the bottom of the pool. I have this snapshot image of him floating there, just for a second, before I reach down and scoop him up. I could NOT stop smiling this huge, elated smile. HI BABY!! HI LITTLE SON! I heard someone say “Becky, the look on your face!”. I don’t even know who it was. I just could not get over my beautiful son! He was here! And so quickly! It was only 5:15pm! AND THE HAIR OH MY GOD! My girls didn’t have a bunch of hair, but this boy looked like the dream-baby I had…Dark hair! And he was long and perfect and squishy and beautiful and I couldn’t take it all in, I was just telling my mw I was only, MAYBE in early labor and here I am, with a naked, vernixy boy in my arms and she wasn’t even THERE yet! Paul poked his head out the front door to tell Ruby and Nick and the girls that the baby was born. Nick hadn’t even gotten halfway through his smoke!

His cord was so much shorter than I’d had before, I could only hold him around my belly button area. The girls came in to see him then and Elizabeth was so precious. “Oh he’s so cute! Can I hold him?!” “Baby! Baby! Baby!” from Abigail. At some point Karen arrived and said something about how I make such pretty babies (that woman knows how to make a freshly birthed Mama burst with pride). Paul was there by my side the whole time. I loved how Karen made no moves to do anything at all. She just commented on my beautiful baby, my beautiful girls and began to fix me some tea. I loved that. I was worried, a bit, that she wouldn’t really be hands off but she WAS. I mean, lol, you can’t get much more hands off than missing the birth, but at no point in the 3rd stage did I ever feel like she “took over” . Nope. She was helpful and confident but not intrusive.

Ethan’s cord was short enough I asked her to cut it for me so that I could get out of the pool. I remember he had the kind I’ve always thought looked so cool: fat and really twisty. She cut it and I think I passed him off to Paul. The afterbirth high makes it hard to remember anything very clearly. I know that I took off my shirt so I could skin to skin with Ethan. I remember that before doing that, I birthed the placenta and in so doing discovered some minor little tears (skin deep, all of them) in some awkward places. I know Karen took a quick look at my girly bits (as I asked her to) just to make sure the tears were minor. The girls made sure I was snuggled in on the couch with my new little son and somewhere in there Ethan was weighed and measured (5lbs15oz and 20 ¾”). I couldn’t stop smiling! Karen instructed Ruby in how to make me a lovely cup of tea with some AfterEase tincture in it. That stuff is heaven! Meanwhile, the pool was broken down and washed and afterwards, I passed Ethan off and had a nice soak in an herbal bath while Ruby kept me company. Molly was the perfect nurse for me as she got me what I needed and helped me into Ruby’s bed for some more alone time with my baby. Karen left right around the time I was getting ready for my bath.
Again, I don’t remember the timelines so clearly but at some point I decided to join my family and friends downstairs on Ruby’s couch again. The girls had all had a chance to hold their little brother, my MIL and Aunt Debbie had brought some things we’d forgotten in the mad dash out of the house along with some gifts! After I got settled onto the couch, a bunch of our friends arrived. Lee, Jansen and Alex showed up. Lee and Jansen had gotten Ruby and I bottles of wine (and yes, I had a small glass to celebrate!). Lee decided he was going to cook everyone dinner and damn, they threw a party!

Honestly, I can’t say enough positive things about Ethan’s birth. I feel as if in many ways I’ve lost my family over the last ten years but these women have become my sisters (Uh…yeah, Jansen and Lee count as “girls” in our circle, lol, Lee was even at my Blessingway). How precious a thing, in this day and age and in our society, to have a circle of women that are so open to caring for one another? There aren’t words to express my gratitude and how humbled I was by their gift. I don’t know how many women can say they’ve had a birth experience like this one and I know I will cherish it in my heart until the day I die.

A post with a little substance?

2009-09-29T08:18:00.000-07:00

So I made this blog to write about things that were important to me. You know, to exercise my brain and my need to sound like I know a thing or two. I then promptly neglected it. :( I was reading Jill over at Revolutionary Keyboard and it hit me, yes, she's right: I don't have time for anything anymore. It's crazy!

We had our 3rd baby 7wks ago yesterday (and honestly, wth, he was JUST BORN a few days ago, I swear!) and ever since then it's like someone pressed the fast-forward button and I can barely catch my breath. I'm loosing my mind, lol.

No time for anything. Well that's not entirely true. I have time to do lots of "nothing" (you know what I mean, when you get to the end of a day and you're utterly exhausted and you have NO IDEA what you have been doing that wiped you out?). I have time to nurse my son. Time to clean up my youngest daughter (as she is forever finding new ways to decorate herself with food, snot, markers, various creams, shampoos and lotions she can reach NO MATTER WHERE I HIDE THEM!!!). Time to plan and cook nummy meals (crappity crap crap, I just realized I need to pull something out for dinner tonight!), time to potty and change my son, time to help my oldest with her homework and listen to her endlessly and excitedly ramble about how Juan pooped his pants at kindergarten and of course, the finer details of how to play Miss Fox in Gym class. There's the cleaning, the booboo-kissing, the OMG did you just dump half a carton of milk on the carpet?!, the rescuing the baby from the clutches of his adoring 2yo sister and the nearly endless (and mostly silent) battle with my mother in law over the right to mother my children as I see fit. I haven't touched on laundry, husbands that are full-time students, grocery-shopping, sick kids, cleaning the rabbit cage and the feeling that it just goes on and on in a great infinite spiral, forever and ever. You don't even want to know how many times a week I get to actually wash my body. And at the end of the week, ask me what I've been doing with myself and I draw a BLANK. Oh you're busy? What have you been up to? Um...ummm...I DON'T EVEN KNOW.

Time to write? I think that might count as an "anything". Well, I'm going to air the Stay At Home Mom dirty little secret: Sometimes it's absolutely MIND NUMBING. So while all the little "nothings" that fill my life DO bring me joy, fulfillment (and exhaustion) my poor little thinker is shriveling up and I just need MY SPACE. Which happens to be a bog or three. :) Got to love the internet: every poor SAHM's place to blow off steam!

So...I'm back and promising myself a little time for "anything" here and there because I need it.

My next post is going to be the birth story of my son, my 3rd child, 2nd uc/homebirh. I put my last one on here with some names changed and so, for the sake of consistency, the names I changed last time are changed here, also, with the same replacements.

Shout it from the rooftops, Woman!

2009-09-12T22:35:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of buzz lately about various shows and articles coming out about homebirth. I had a huuuuuge, disjointed rant in my head but thankfully, you are spared having to read that because Keyboard Revolutionary has done a MUCH better job than I could of saying all of the the things that need to be said.

http://keyboardrevolutionary.blogspot.com/2009/09/iridescent-tile-makes-all-difference.html

Check her out! Well said, Jill, seriously.

Stop and Smell the Baby: Prepared for Life

2009-08-03T19:26:00.001-07:00

Welcome to August's Carnival of Breastfeeding! This month our posts are on the World Breastfeeding Week themes "Prepared for Life" and "Breastfeeding in Emergencies." Be sure to check out the posts from our other Carnival participants linked at the end of this one.

I'm not entirely sure I'm doing this right but I've come across so many posts in response to this that I was inspired to write, too. So,here goes!

By the time my first was a few weeks old I could make a great case for breastfeeding based on the benefits to the baby alone. I was completely unprepared, though, for how it would change my life. There is something almost magical about the way nursing a baby makes a mother feel. The very first time I looked into my daughter's eyes, it took my breath away. She was so...sentient, so aware and so uniquely HER, right from the beginning. The first time she latched on and took sustenance from me, the hormonal rushes combined with intense pride about knocked me out of the bed! I chose to breastfeed before knowing anything about nursing, though. I chose it because it was FREE and natural. Therefore, it made loads more sense to me than the alternatives. I was to discover, though, that it is so, SO much more than just a free meal. I learned SO much in the first year about the benefits of breastfeeding for my baby but I was completely innocent of how much breastfeeding would change ME and prepare me for life.
You see, breastfeeding is natural, yes. For some of us, it's even easy (has always been for me, though I realize that for many, it's most definitely NOT). But it comes at great personal sacrifice. I know, I know, that's not trendy. Trendy moms juggle a career and a family and find a way to make it work: and my hat's off to them. But breastfeeding requires a great deal of personal investment. It's TIME CONSUMING. Yes, much easier than lugging bottles and checking water temperatures and measuring and sterilizing, to be sure. But you can't take your boob off, prop it up with a pillow for the baby and go back to doing dishes. Nope. You cant take your breasts off and hand them and the baby to a friend and finish cooking dinner, either. Nope. If the baby is hungry, everything stops so she can eat. If the baby hurts herself and needs comfort, you sit down, wip it out and give comfort! If the baby is sick you thank God, the universe or whomever you thank that breastmilk, at least, stays down when nothing else will...and so do you, on the couch, for the entire day/night until bub feels better. Nursing our babies forces us to literally give of ourselves. It's as if nature has built in a platform for forming that connection from day one. I'm not suggesting that women who bottle feed do not give of themselves. I've known plenty of fantastic, selfless, bottlefeeding mothers. I just have to wonder, though, if it was harder for them. I suppose this is the sort of thing that varies from woman to woman anyway, we are all so different. But for me, at least, breastfeeding my babies has underlined everything else. It's like a srpingboard that vaults me into other areas of self-giving that help prepare my children for life.

Nursing my children has taught me patience (trust me, when you've been interrupted during a growth spurt for what feels like the 400th time that hour for a quick nibble, you learn patience). It's taught me humility (I mean, come on, when one is wearing a 40G you learn humility when the baby isn't particularly interested in who you are flashing when nursing at Walmart).
Out of all the things I've learned, though, I think one of the most profound is to STOP...and smell the baby. This has been particularly true since my 2nd daughter was born, as I'm sure any mother of more than one can attest to. I just get SO busy, so stressed about this and that which needs to be done. Then, that call, those eyes and that forced rest. So, sure, the laundry is only half folded and taking over my kitchen table and perhaps child #1 is over there "helping" in an entirely unhelpful way while I'm nursing the baby but STILL, I'm forced to sit down, take a few deep breaths and look my little one in the face and spend just a few minutes with JUST her. If nothing else, I've learned to let go a little and relax. RELAX.

If I'm able to relax, to let rigidity give way to routine, to allow my children to impose upon MY plans a bit, I'm a better mother. I'm also far less stressed out. This not only prepares my children for a life that's actually happy (you know, without a stressed out, spastic headcase for a mom) it molds and shapes me into a better persn in general. Breastfeeding my children has been a door that has opened up onto a new outlook of life for me. I have learned (and continue to learn) how to truly serve. I've learned how to love with my whole being. I've learned that it's OK if the priority is my children and not having the Better Homes and Gardens thing DOWN. I've learned to stop and smell the baby. And really, what could possibly be more wonderful?

Check out the other participants in this month's Carnival.

Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog: Breastfeeding in Emergencies
Hobo Mama: Prepared for Life: Breastfeeding in local and global crises
Zen Mommy: How breastfeeding has shaped my toddler's view of breasts
Pure Mothers: Marketing away real milk
Chronicles of a Nursing Mom: Tips for consistent & long-term breastfeeding success
Cave Mother: Three moments that make me thankful I breastfeed
Blactating: Breastfeeding news and views from a mom of color: Infant feeding and disasters

So fantastic, I had to pass it along!

2009-07-01T07:43:00.000-07:00

http://jeremyscorner-grifter.blogspot.com/

I just copied and pasted what she wrote....no credit for this whatsoever. I will say this is one of the most concise, clear breakdowns of this particular debate that I've read in a long time.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Cesarean section is NOT the reason the maternal mortality rate has gone down

It has been a while since I posted another OB myth. Today's myth comes to us courtesy of Dr. Amy. Another Amy, Amy Romano, wrote a blog post in which she questions the lack of attention to the maternity care situation in an article written by Dr. Atul Gawande. In her blog post, she says,

Gawande saw a fall over time in perinatal and maternal mortality and attributed it to advances in hospital-based obstetrics. But he knows as well as anyone that correlation is not the same as causation. While a few medical advances — oxytocics and ergot derivatives to control hemorrhages, antibiotics to treat infection, and surfactant to treat respiratory distress in premature infants — have certainly prevented deaths, much of the fall in mortality likely comes from basic improvements in public health and hygiene. By looking through the bifocal lenses of medicine and history, Gawande makes an erroneous assumption that, when it comes to giving birth, more technology is inherently better. What he fails to ask is the very question at the heart of The Cost Conundrum: could we get the same or even better outcomes with fewer risky and costly procedures?

Of course, leave it to Dr. Amy to come around and champion the cause of medical technology. In the comments section, she says,

Basic improvements in public health and hygeine occured in the late 19th and early 20th Century. The spectacular drop in maternal mortality (99%) and neonatal mortality (90%) occurred between 1940-1980, long after basic advances in public health.
One of the advances most closely associated with the drop in maternal and neonatal mortality is the development and improvement of epidural anesthesia, making Cesarean section far less risky and far more common.

But Dr. Amy makes the same mistake that Amy Romano pointed out Dr. Atul Gawande made, and that most hospital birth advocates make: correlation is not the same as causation.

Dr. Amy mentions that the "spectacular drop" in maternal mortality, which occurred between 1940-1980, can be largely attributed to the use of the epidural, and therefore the relative safety of the cesarean section. This is an inherently illogical conclusion, as it assumes that cesarean sections were previously risky due to the method of anesthesia. In fact, the two biggest risks of cesarean section were (and still are) blood loss and infection, neither of which have anything to do with the method of anesthesia.

One of the main causes of blood loss during cesarean section prior to the end of the 19th century was the fact that physicians did not suture the uterus closed, fearing infection from the internal sutures. In 1882, Max Saumlnger, of Leipzig began arguing in favor of uterine sutures, and together with the development of silver wire sutures, physicians began using internal sutures, which necessarily reduced the rate of severe hemorrhage. From the late 1800s to the 1920s, physicians continued to improve the procedure itself, including performing the surgery earlier in labor, before the mother was on the verge of death, and using a transverse incision. (Please view this publication for more on the history of the cesarean section.) The first spinal block was not used until 1943 (ref), so while the epidural certainly contributed to overall improvements in the surgery, advances that directly eliminated or reduced factors that contributed to maternal mortality were already in place.

So what were women dying in or after childbirth dying from? The most feared complications of childbirth pre-1950s were hemorrhage, obstructed labor, and infection.

Hemorrhage

Blood loss is one of the most feared complications in childbirth. It is a reasonable fear! When the placenta separates from the uterus, several minor and major blood vessels are left exposed, and continue to pump blood until the uterus clamps down and closes them off. In some cases, the uterus does not do this adequately, or fast enough, which can result in blood loss, shock, and eventually death for the mother. Prior to the 1930s, there was not much modern medicine could do for blood loss. Midwives had traditionally used herbal remedies, such as ergot, to treat hemorrhage, but it was slow-acting and had serious side effects, including the potential to cause death. In 1909, the hormone oxytocin was discovered, but was not widely available. In 1935, the specific oxytocic agent in ergot was isolated, and preparations were made available. But the real discovery came in 1953, when the biochemist Vincent du Vigneaud discovered a way to create a manufacture-able, synthetic version of oxytocin (now known as pitocin). (ref)

No one can argue that the discovery of oxytocics was a significant step in advancing women's health, but equally significant was the improvement in women's lifestyles and nutrition. A study was done in Maryland which looked at a certain population of women's diets, which diet was considered to be comparable to that of women in the late 19th century, and found that 70% these women were severely anemic, and many had contracted pelvises (more on that in a minute). (ref) According to this publication, anemia in pregnant women reduces a woman’s ability to survive bleeding during and after childbirth, and is associated with 22% of mother's deaths (as of 2006). While oxytocics can slow a postpartum hemorrhage and prevent many immediate deaths, a reduction of severe anemia in pregnant women helps ensure they will survive in the days and weeks following a major hemorrhage. With increased proper nutrition among childbearing women over the years, it's no wonder that the maternal mortality rate has continued to decline. It is interesting to note that severe anemia due to poor nutrition still accounts for a significant portion of maternal deaths today in developing countries and poorer populations.

(It is also worth noting that while postpartum hemorrhage is typically associated with vaginal birth, the average blood loss from a c-section is twice that of an average vaginal birth. (ref) In addition, since 1998, the rate of blood transfusions in the US among all delivering women has increased by 90%. (ref))

Obstructed Labor

Obstructed labor, for various reasons, was a common cause of death previous to the improvements made in the safety of the cesarean section. If a baby was transverse, or stuck in the pelvis, or for whatever reason could not be delivered, it resulted in the mother's death. Prior to the improvements made to the overall safety of the cesarean section, if a woman did not die from the obstructed labor, she would certainly die from any surgical attempt made to save the baby. In that respect, one could argue that cesarean sections are the one of the main reasons for the reduction of maternal deaths due to obstructed labor. However, at the same time as improvements in obstetric care were developing, the number of obstructed labors were decreasing.

Obstructed labor is usually due to three main causes: malpositioned fetus (as in transverse lie), malpresentation (as in brow first), and cephalopelvic disproportion (CPD). One of the main causes of CPD is an inadequate bone or skeletal structure, directly related to poor nutrition. (See this article for a more detailed discussion of nutrition and obstructed labor). In the late 19th century, this often meant rickets. Women and children in urban areas, working in factories where they were largely not exposed to sunlight, and eating poorly, suffered this condition which often resulted in pelvic deformities.

In the book, Women's Bodies: A Social History of Women's Encounter with Health, Ill-Health, and Medicine, the author estimates that in some areas at this time, one out of every four women suffered from some degree of pelvic contraction. The percentage of women with contracted pelvises who died as a result of obstructed labor varied, from 20% of mildly contracted pelvises to almost 50% of severely contracted pelvises. With the total percentage of women presenting with a malpresentation or or malposition averaging around only 4% of total births, the reduction in the number of women with some degree of pelvic contraction, who accounted for perhaps 25% of all births in some areas, would have a particularly important effect on the overall maternal mortality rate.

How was this achieved? By the 1920s, researchers had learned what was causing rickets and other similar bone-deformity diseases, and successfully patented a method of irradiating food, and began a campaign to irradiate commonly eaten foods in an attempt to lower the incidence of rickets. (ref) By the 1940s, Vitamin D-fortified milk was ubiquitous, and the incidence of death of children due to rickets had been reduced to less than 75 cases a year. (ref)

So while the improved safety of c-sections certainly positively impacted the maternal mortality rate among women with malpresentations or malpositions, the largest reduction in maternal morality rate from obstructed labor has quite clearly come from better nutrition and lifestyle, which prevents contracted pelvises in the first place.

Infection

In the early days of hospital birth, another common cause of maternal death was "childbed fever," or puerperal sepsis. Puerperal fever is an infection caused by transmission of bacteria (most often Group A Streptococcus) to a woman, resulting in sepsis, and if untreated, death. Prior to the advent of antibiotics, puerperal fever was one of the leading causes of death among women in hospitals. Puerperal fever was known to kill postpartum women before the advent of hospital birth, but the incidence of it was apparently uncommon. When birth moved into the hospitals, doctors themselves caused outbreaks of the infection by going from patient to patient and performing vaginal exams without gloves, clean clothes, or washing their hands. In some cases, doctors would go from an autopsy to an exam of a pregnant or recently-delivered woman. (Read this article for more discussion on the history of childbed fever.)

In the mid- to late 19th century, several doctors put forth the idea of bacteria transmission as the cause of puerperal fever, but were dismissed. By the turn of the century, the theory of bacteria transmission was widely accepted, but aseptic routine was still not widely practiced. According to the article referenced above, the maternal mortality rate continued to stay the same until the 1930s, the United States continuing to have the worst maternal mortality rate among industrialized nations.

In 1935, a German doctor introduced the use of prontosil, a sulfonamide dye, the precursor to the use of penicillin and modern antibiotics, as a treatment for puerperal fever. It worked remarkably well, and by the end of WWII, penicillin was widely available and used to combat all types of infections, puerperal fever included. The result was that by 1949, the maternal mortality rate in the United States dropped by more than 700%. (ref)

What does all this mean? It means that the time period which Dr. Amy was referring to - the 1940s - might have seen the advent of the epidural, but that was almost certainly not the reason why our maternal mortality rate declined. The 1940s saw a reduction in bone deformity diseases, a reduction in anemia, a reduction in transmission of bacteria, and a successful way to treat bacterial infections. These advances were by and large brought about by cleaner conditions, better health, and better nutrition. The cesarean section has certainly had its place in the preservation of women's lives, but was not the first or the last word in maternal mortality, as proponents would like to argue.

But even if the c-section were the saving grace of modern women, surely we should be seeing an even more dramatic drop in maternal mortality today? Not so. In 2003, the maternal mortality in the United States ROSE to 12.1 deaths per 100,000 live births, to a rate higher than it had ever been since 1976. (see more numbers here.) The United States ranks 41st, continuing to rank last among industrialized nations as we did before all these new advances, for maternal mortality. Women are still dying in or after childbirth! Study after study continue to come out that show the risks of cesarean section relative to vaginal birth, and show the benefit of low-intervention births. It is obvious that the cesarean section, while essential to many women in high-risk situations, is NOT the primary reason maternal mortality rates fell in our country.

And I would like to ask the Dr. Amys and Atul Gawandes of the world what Amy Romano is asking: could we get the same or even better outcomes with fewer risky and costly procedures?

Seriously.

2009-05-23T05:26:00.000-07:00

And lets not pull out some ridiculous foolishness like "Baby's in 3rd world, starving countries die so homebirth/uc is dumb" because that is honestly just retarded, high-school logic.

This is what inspiration looks like.

2009-03-07T18:32:00.000-08:00

This is absolutely worth your time.

Black Family: A Doula Story 56 mins

Produced by Danny Alpert

A Doula Story documents one African American woman’s fierce commitment to empower pregnant teenagers with the skills and knowledge they need to become confident, nurturing mothers. Produced by The Kindling Group, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization, this powerful film follows Loretha Weisinger back to the same disadvantaged Chicago neighborhood where she once struggled as a teen mom. Loretha uses patience, compassion and humor to teach “her girls” about everything from the importance of breastfeeding and reading to their babies, to communicating effectively with health care professionals.

There really are not words to express my personal feelings about this woman and what she is doing.

My attention was brought to this Article by Heather Cushman Dowdee

2008-11-08T04:42:00.000-08:00

Essay
Industrial Childbirth

“Revisiting my son’s birth has made me angry.”

* Shonagh Strachan
* | 15 Oct 2008
* | 74 comments

* mother
* childbirth

Industrial Childbirth

My experience of childbirth was not an unusually traumatic one. In medical parlance I had an NVD: a Normal Vaginal Delivery. The midwives were pleasant. I was given an epidural. I was admitted to hospital at 2pm and delivered a healthy baby boy ( 8lb 7oz ) eleven hours later. This is the essential information, is it not? This is the only kind of information that we ever really hear about other women’s experiences with childbirth.

But there is more to it than that. It took me a while to sort out my feelings after the birth – the elation you feel at the presence of a new life combined with your physical exhaustion leave room for little else. And I never really experienced the hopeless grief of the flippantly named “baby blues” in the weeks or months that followed. What I felt – when I was finally able to identify the reasons for my confusion – was anger.

Is anger only blame and self-pity? Or can it be illuminating? For me it can – anger has traveled beyond blame, beyond the individuals involved and my personal experience, and shocked me into changing my whole outlook on life.

I wasn’t angry during my pregnancy at the lack of options for childbirth. I never knew what else I could expect. I wasn’t angry during any stage of my labor. As soon as I was admitted, I was told that I was two centimeters dilated and my waters were to be broken with something resembling a crochet hook. “Okay.” After that I wandered the halls and breathed through contractions for a few hours. When I was re-examined, I hadn’t “progressed” enough. I was told this was dangerous for the baby, and I needed an Oxytocin drip to speed up and strengthen the contractions. “Okay.” Now, these heightened contractions would be very painful so I’d probably be requiring pain-relief. “Okay.” The epidural is probably the most effective “Okay.”

I gritted my teeth but I wasn’t angry as the drip was repeatedly and painfully inserted incorrectly into my hand, or as the epidural took 20 minutes to stick into my spine. I wasn’t angry that I wasn’t allowed to eat anything even though I was very hungry. And I wasn’t angry that my parents weren’t allowed to see me in the delivery ward after driving for hours to be there.

As I watched the clock pass midnight into Halloween, fireworks cracked and flared outside the hospital. I smiled knowing that my baby would have great birthday parties to come. And for this next hour, I shivered in freezing shock, immobilized on the delivery table, uncaring and unangered as the drugs wore off so I could finally push. I wasn’t angry because the hospital staff was just doing their jobs and it seemed so normal for them. I was moving towards having my baby and this is what every mother went through.

The point at which I started to feel a twinge of anger was when, after the delivery, I wasn’t allowed to feed my baby. It was only then that my instinct was strong enough to say, “No. This is really wrong.” There is a period of about an hour after the birth where the newborn is alert and breastfeeding can be established. However, after a brief hold, he was taken away as I was given a Syntometrine injection and his placenta was delivered (by tugging on the cord). He remained away as I was stitched and examined and had to wait for a doctor to examine me.

By the time I was given the all clear (in tears at this point asking, “Can I feed him now?”), I had to be moved from the delivery ward and down to the post-natal ward. It was now 2 am, so friends and family in the waiting room were told to go home without ever having seen the baby or me. The baby’s dad had been present at the birth but was also sent home. Yet again I asked, “Please, can I try to feed my baby?” but he had to be taken away again – this time for a Vitamin K injection and for the nurse to bathe him and put his first vest and Baby Gro on.

When she brought him back he was tired and wanted to sleep. The nurse asked if I still wanted to feed and gave a little perfunctory hold of him up to one breast and then the other and said, incredibly, “No. He’s not a boob man is he?” She then put him down to sleep in the cot beside me, told me to sleep too and that I could try again when he woke up. I spent that first night wide awake, watching every twitch my new son made, desperate to hold him, horrified that I hadn’t managed to take him to my breast after he was born.

When he finally did wake up, I remember ringing for the nurse – looking for her permission to pick him up! This same nurse was the one who would throw back the curtains from around the beds at night if anyone dared to wish for some privacy.

Thankfully, my baby started to feed hungrily the next day. The rest of my stay in hospital was a blur of no sleep, noise, crying babies, feeding times, masses of visitors for two hours and then being left completely on my own. On the second day I remember being allowed to meet my teary mom at the end of the corridor as she passed me some supplies. Later that day I finally managed to have the baby fed and sleepy at a time when there was a lull in hospital activity. I was just dropping off – for the first time in about 70 hours – when I was woken up to bring the baby in for a BCG injection. I did so in floods of exhausted tears.

I gave birth to my son at the Holles Street National Maternity Hospital, in Dublin. Obstetricians at Holles Street have pioneered a policy of “active management” – an obstetrician-led intervention process that speeds up hospital labor. It begins with ARM – artificial rupture of the membrane of the amniotic sac or “breaking the waters” – though this may leave the fetus unprotected and vulnerable to pressure and infection. It continues with monitoring the birthing women and administering to them if they aren’t progressing “correctly.” In Holles Street, for example, the decided-upon correct rate of cervical dilation is 1cm/hour. If the mother “fails to progress” at this rate, she is hooked up to an Oxytocin drip which causes the onset of sudden intense contractions. In 2004 (the year I gave birth), 55 percent of first-time mothers at Holles Street were told they had “failed to progress” and needed to be sped up in this way (unsurprisingly, a slightly larger percentage opted for an epidural to ease the pain). Active management is currently used widely throughout the world.

The most oft-stated defense for the prevalence of today’s medicalized births is that in pre-hospital years gone by, childbirth could be a death sentence. The reality, though, is that most complications during pregnancy and childbirth occurred due to poor maternal nutrition and infections that are now easily treatable or preventable with better hygiene. The high-tech medical interventions available today certainly save some lives but in many cases – especially where active management is practiced – these interventions are often used unnecessarily.

There is also an often noted “cascade of intervention” where once one medical procedure has been carried out, another follows, and then another – leading to more invasive and traumatic interventions and often culminating in a caesarean section. In Ireland, the average rate of C-section is one of the highest in Europe at 25 percent. The midwife-endorsed alternative to this policy of aggressive intervention is “wait and see.” Strangely enough, this usually works out just fine.

In theory, a woman has the right to refuse any of the interventions offered to her. In practice, the normality of intervention and the culture of risk minimization (read: liability minimization) mean that women do not feel empowered to say “no.” I certainly never thought about saying “no” or asking what the alternatives were. I blame myself for this – that I was not more informed and proactive. But I am also angry at the bullying system in place. It is hurried and overwhelming so there is never time or space to question the “professional” medical opinion as to what is really right for you and your baby. So we become numbers, subject to routine interventions.

At Holles Street membrane rupture is carried out routinely. A “managed” third stage of labor is also routinely administered – with hormone injections and cord tugging to deliver the placenta. This is justified by saying that it reduces the risk of postpartum hemorrhage – a fact disputed by many midwives who argue that the early cord clamping involved is potentially injurious for the newborn and that the third stage of a normal birth should never be managed.

Until recently, episiotomy (cutting the perineum to allow more room for the baby) was routine. It is now being shown to be usually unnecessary and at worst a mutilation. Until recently, if a woman had one caesarean section, she could not expect to be allowed to try for a vaginal delivery in subsequent births (this is now slowly changing). At Our Lady of Lourdes hospital in Drogheda, Dr. Michael Neary carried out unnecessary routine hysterectomies, post-caesarean-section, over the course of 25 years before it was brought to light in 1998. At the same hospital (and at Holles Street, the Coombe and others around the country) between the 1950s and the 1980s, hundreds of women underwent a procedure known as a symphysiotomy. Here, a woman’s pelvis was literally sawn apart during childbirth, as an alternative to a cesarean-section. The justification seemed to be a good catholic one – the pelvis would heal widened and the woman would be able to bear more children – even though most were never even told what procedure had been carried out on them and many suffered life-long pain, incontinence, problems walking and arthritis. This is the history of routine interventions by those who know what’s best for us.

Our collective idea of childbirth is pretty nasty – blood and fluid, panting and screaming, stretched anatomy, the emergent gooey greyish-purple alien… horrible! Remember when you first heard about sex? Remember how horrible that seemed? But sex isn’t horrible, is it? What’s missing – and indescribable to a virgin child – is the emotional element. Sex is a natural and beautiful process, all entangled with love and passion. So too, and a million times more, is birth. In essence, our modern patriarchal institutionalized world has a childish view of childbirth. It can’t imagine that something that looks so gruesome could be anything but a horrendous experience and one that should be shortened and medicated. But childbirth is not a medical procedure any more than sex is.

Now, I’m not saying that every woman should have a pain-free, blissful, complication-free birth. I am saying that fear has no place in the process. Fear causes adrenaline production. This initiates the “flight or fight” response where blood drains from the uterus to the limbs, slowing the process of labor until the primeval woman escapes to a safe place to give birth. Meditation and relaxation techniques during childbirth – which are often described to women as methods for coping with pain – can in fact be methods of preventing pain by preventing fear. As with sexual intercourse, if a woman does not feel safe, relaxed and preferably loved, she will experience tension and pain during childbirth.

Without ever taking a single deep breath or doing a second’s meditation, what woman wouldn’t feel more relaxed anywhere but on a table in a hospital delivery “suite”? Looking back on it, it seems like the most ridiculous place to try to give birth. As with sex, your body wants a darkened, intimate, safe and private place to give itself over to its natural urges and processes. Instead, we retain bizarre postures under the bright lights and the ready interference and stares of strangers. Could you orgasm under the same conditions? Are you surprised then that our labors “fail to progress,” with fear and adrenaline coursing through every vein in our bodies? Overcome it with drugs. Pull, drag and cut those children out of us. Then tell us to be thankful. Mothers, partners, sisters and doctors tell us we are endangering lives, we are taking risks. Fill us with fear. No woman wants to endanger her child’s life so almost every woman does what she’s told and gets hospitalized.

Is it shocking to hear that many women liken the experience of “normal” hospital childbirth to being sexually assaulted? Aside from the obvious – the exposure of your most intimate areas to complete strangers – there is an utter lack of control over what is being done to your body. Your consent may never be sought for certain procedures – or it may be sought in the coercive manner of institutions that count on your fear for your cooperation. The feelings that may be experienced afterwards are those of shame and guilt that you weren’t able to give birth naturally, that you didn’t ask the right questions, that you gave up control and weren’t strong enough to resist certain things being done. These feelings can be particularly strong if the mother is separated from her newborn – for example, after an emergency C-section or if a baby is incubated. In some of these cases, mothers can experience bonding problems with the infant. Even once bonding is achieved, the guilt that accompanies this can be life-long.

But surely many mothers experience hospital births without mental trauma? Surely the fact that there is a healthy infant in your arms makes up for anything you went through? Aren’t you safe? Shouldn’t you be grateful to the hospital for delivering your baby? (Do women ever get to feel grateful to themselves, to feel the power and ability of their own bodies?) Won’t questioning the event just cause unnecessary pain and distress for women – shouldn’t they just forget about it and move on with their lives? Like survivors of sexual assault, survivors may live years, or their whole lives, unconscious of feeling anguish or anger about their experiences. But this doesn’t mean they are unaffected by them.

It is my belief that at some deep level, we all feel that we have been robbed. We pass through our childbirth initiation to become disempowered, disconnected, long-suffering, patriarchal mothers. We tell our horror stories as just that, or we say nothing at all. But it doesn’t have to be this way. If I ever have another child, it will not be in the same way. And it doesn’t stop there. I will never again blindly place my trust in authoritarian professionals and institutions. I will recognize all capitalist patriarchy for what it is and I will do my best to speak out against it.

Every day, in every way, my son is a wonderful gift. I would go through ten more hospital births just to keep him. I am sorry for his shabby entrance into this world but I am thankful to this little person for helping me to see something: the bald, blatant, oppressive, damaging, misogynistic forces at play in the most vital aspects of women’s lives. Revisiting his birth has made me angry, but that has made so much else clear: how blinded we can be by the guise of protection, how crippled we can be made by fear.

I wish that we talked about it. That we could stop reveling in horror stories and better place our fingers on the reason for our traumatic births – not the curse of Eve medicated to by our benevolent system – but the systematic violence that delivers our babies for fear that we might give birth to them ourselves. For in the process we might begin to understand our own strength and find words for our anger. We might begin to disobey.
Read more articles from Issue #80 - The Freedom From Want

From Dr. Mercola's Website

2008-10-25T05:25:00.000-07:00

Prominent Scientist Warns of HPV Vaccine Dangers

one less, gardasil, cervarix, HPV, human papilloma virus, virus, vaccine, STD, fertility, infertility, sterility, sterilization, population control, abortion, reproductive problems, pregnancy, WHO, world health organizationIndependent health researcher Grace Filby, who won a Churchill Fellowship for her research into phage therapy, is calling on the government for more research into the possible side-effects of the HPV vaccine that is currently being given to teenage girls.

Filby believes that not enough is known about the effects of the vaccine on children with pre-existing medical conditions and weakened immune systems. She says, "We simply do not know whether the vaccine interacts with other medication or medical conditions, and the manufacturers have not studied it yet. This could be a very valid reason why some families and schools might hesitate or opt out."

She has this week written to UK education ministers and health officials calling for urgent small-scale independent studies that would highlight any health problems stemming from vaccinations already carried out.
Sources:

* Medical News Today October 1, 2008

Here at Last — New Krill for Women
Find Out More

Dr. Mercola Dr. Mercola's Comments:

According to the CDC, the human papilloma virus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted disease in America. More than 6 million women contract it annually, yet cervical cancer claims less than 3,900 women – most of which are due to not getting regular Pap smears. In the U.K., cervical cancer claims a mere 400 lives per year.

Why is your risk of dying from cervical cancer so low?

Because your immune system is usually strong enough to clear up this kind of infection on its own, and does so in more than 90 percent of all cases. The CDC even admits to this fact on their website.

And, as long as you’re getting regular PAP smears, cervical cancer can be caught in its early, and easily treatable, stages.

So, the question begs to be asked: WHY is the HPV vaccine being pushed so vigorously when:

1. it prevents a type of cancer that is very rare to begin with
2. it protects against a virus that, 98 percent of the time, is not the cause of cervical cancer
3. it prevents a type of cancer that can be easily caught and treated by promoting regular gynecological exams
4. it offers less protection than what promotion of safe sex practices could accomplish
5. it is promoted to girls years before becoming sexually active, even though the vaccine may only offer about three years worth of protection
6. it prevents just 4 out of more than 100 strains of HPV; all of which your body can clear up on its own in 90 percent of all cases anyway
7. it has NOT been proven safe. No one knows if it can cause cancer or infertility, for example

And why would the feds go so far as to add Gardasil to the list of vaccinations that all female immigrants ages 11 to 26 MUST get before they can obtain a green card? We’re not dealing with potential import of bubonic plague here…

According to a New England Journal of Medicine study, the use of condoms reduces the incidence of HPV by 70 percent, offering FAR better protection than Gardasil, for example.

The HPV vaccine is a total head-scratcher of a mystery as far as what its ultimate purpose is, because “curing the rampant health disaster of cervical cancer” is certainly NOT it.

And since when do we have to be vaccinated against cancer in order to be let into a country?

Does the HPV Vaccine LITERALLY Mean “One Less”?

Marketing geniuses are known to play on words and create slogans with quirky double meanings, and if you’ve been tracking the concerns raised about the potential hazards of Gardasil and Cervarix, the potential for these HPV vaccines to cause infertility – whether purposely or inadvertently – is being heard with ever increasing frequency.

The federal government's Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) has received over 9,000 reports of problems since the vaccine's introduction in 2006, which include at least 28 spontaneous abortions, and 27 deaths.

Is it possible that Gardasil’s cry to fame, ‘One Less’, is turning out to be nothing but a sick, ironic play on words?

Anti-Fertility Vaccines

The World Health Organization (WHO) and its subsidiaries have been actively researching and funding the development of contraceptive / anti-fertility vaccines that prevent full-term pregnancies to take place, for over 20 years. There’s even a Task Force on Birth Control Vaccines of the WHO!

However, no anti-fertility vaccine has ever been placed on the market and promoted as such as of yet.

Instead, as described in a 1993 journal paper published in The British Medical Bulletin, anti-fertility vaccines were being engineered “incorporating tetanus or diphtheria toxoid linked to a variety of hCG-based peptides.”

The authors of this article state,

"The fundamental principle behind this approach to contraceptive vaccine development is to prevent the maternal recognition of pregnancy by inducing a state of immunity against hGC, the hormone that signals the presence of the embryo to the maternal endocrine system.”

Free tetanus vaccines that were offered to young women of childbearing age for years in countries such as Tanzania, Nigeria, Mexico, and the Philippines, were found to contain human Chorionic Gonadotrophin (hCG), which causes spontaneous abortions if the woman becomes pregnant.

While the woman is not technically sterilized, once injected with hCG, she may never be able to carry a child full term thereafter.

HCG-containing anti-fertility vaccines have also been pursued for more than two decades by the Indian National Institute of Immunology, and The Population Council of the Rockefeller University, among others.

In fact, there are no less than 50 research papers detailing research on “contraceptive vaccines” in the PubMed database.

One disturbing paper published in the FASEB Journal in 1993 states:

“… we initiated studies relating to possible mechanisms of action and potential side effects of this vaccine, which should be relevant to world-wide regulation of population growth.”

So again, why the frantic push for the HPV vaccine, created for young, fertile women, when there’s NO solid, rational basis for its use?

Massive Brazilian Vaccination Program Raises Suspicions of Covert Sterilization Plans

A much more recent case of illogical mass vaccinations against a minor health problem is that of the massive, mandatory vaccination program in Brazil, which has raised suspicions among international pro-life activists, who note that the program is similar to other vaccination programs in recent years that have included a hidden sterilizing agent in the vaccines.

The campaign to “annihilate rubella” began in early August this year, mandating rubella vaccinations for all women ages 12 to 49, and 12 to 39 for men; a total of 70 million people, despite the fact that only 17 Brazilian children per year suffer birth defects from the disease.

Adolfo Castañeda of Human Life International notes that just two years ago, researchers found that the rubella vaccine used in a similar campaign in Argentina was laced with human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG).

“The suspicion that brought about the investigation [into the rubella vaccine] was caused by the fact that there were very few cases of the disease in Argentina, which didn’t merit a large-scale campaign,” Castañeda said, adding, “The ages for women are the same as those who received the vaccines in Nicaragua, where they included a hormone that sterilizes the woman who receives it, and similar to the age of those who received another sterilizing hormone in the Philippines.”

Polysorbate-80 – One Less Mouse, Researchers Found

Now, let me state clearly that there’s no proof of hCG being present in any of the current HPV vaccines.

I am merely playing devil’s advocate as I examine the similarities between these other irrational vaccination programs in other countries for relatively minor public health concerns -- that turn out to have far more sinister agendas than mere greed – compared to the fervent, irrational push behind the HPV vaccine here in the U.S.

However, Gardasil does contain Polysorbate-80 – a surfactant used in pharmacology to deliver certain drugs or chemical agents across the blood-brain barrier -- which has been linked to infertility in mice.

Researchers Gajdova et.al. found that administration of Polysorbate-80 decreased the weight of the uterus and ovaries, and caused chronic estrogenic stimulation. The ovaries of the mice were also without corpora lutea (a mass of progesterone-secreting endocrine tissue that forms immediately after ovulation) and had degenerative follicles.

So what might the estrogenic effects of Polysorbate-80 be on pre-adolescent girls and pregnant women?

Anti-Fertility Vaccine Ingredient Also Has Clinical Application in Cancer Vaccines…

A potential coincidence I find most disturbing is some of the more recent research detailing the use of hCG, and other molecules, in vaccines against hCG-producing cancers, such as – certain cervical cancers.

One 2005 paper titled, Recent advances in contraceptive vaccine development: a mini-review published in the journal Human Reproduction concludes:

“At the present time, studies are focused on increasing the immunogenicity and efficacy of the birth control vaccine, and examining its clinical applications in various HCG-producing cancers.”

But research published just a few months ago in the journal Molecular Cancer states that the free β-subunit of hCG (hCGβ) – which was originally considered biologically non-functional -- has recently been shown to stimulate tumor growth, and lead to more aggressive tumors that are more resistant to therapy.

Again, I’m mentioning all of this because it just goes to show that pharmaceutical companies have little or no clue of the extent of harm these vaccines might cause, especially long-term. Something believed to be completely non-functional or harmless can turn out to be a MAJOR cause for concern after more thorough investigation.

For example, Gardasil also contains L-histadine, and histamines have been found to increase clot production five-fold when combined with, guess what? Surfactants! (L-histidine can also pass through your placental wall to your fetus.)

Granted, this laboratory investigative report titled Surfactants Attenuate Gas Embolism-induced Thrombin Production used surfactants like Perftoran, not Polysorbate-80, in their trials, but could Polysorbate-80 have a similar effect?

Could this explain why death from blood clots within hours or days is the MOST COMMON form of death after receiving Gardasil?

The HPV vaccine clearly has a lot of questions left to be answered. And those questions should be answered BEFORE pushing Gardasil on an unsuspecting public at the rate that it’s being done.

Be One Less to Get Gardasil

I think this would be a more appropriate message to send out to young women: There is absolutely no reason to risk the serious side effects of this vaccine to prevent an infection that goes away on its own 90 percent of the time. And there’s no guarantee that you’ll be protected anyway, since you can still get HPV once you’ve had the vaccine. It’s really a no-win situation for those who receive it.

Of course, you can radically reduce your risk of getting HPV in the first place if you follow safe-sex practices, or wait to have sex until you’re in a committed relationship. Then, keep your immune system in tip-top shape, and it will be more than able to shake any HPV virus that comes its way.

On Going Green

2008-09-03T03:03:00.001-07:00

Being Green has become one of the most trendy things a person can do. It's exploded into a status symbol. Any famous person worth their salt is either planting trees in Africa or flying huge jet-planes around, preaching about being green, promoting eco-friendly habits or posing for organic clothing ads. However, I've noticed that the more trendy something is, the more expensive it tends to be.
Some time ago, I was a member of a naturally minded parenting group that met at each other's homes once a month for play-dates. My experiences with these women were my first hard-core introduction to doing things “green”. These women were all upper-middle class white women (for the most part). They all lived in nice houses, had two cars, manicured lawns, big back-yards, children that wore organic clothes and they all wore Birkenstock's. Ok, not ALL of them wore Birkenstock's but you get the picture. . They all did the same things I did (breastfeeding, cloth-diapering/ec, baby-wearing, etc) our approaches were about as different as they could get. They cloth diapered because it was “natural” and ec'd for the same reason. I did these things because I couldn't afford to do it any other way. These women's children sported the fanciest, prettiest most adorable $15-30 butt-covers I'd ever seen. It goes without saying that breastfeeding is the very best choice for my children's health, but I would be lying if didn't admit that the fact it's 100% FREE played into that choice, as well. For them, it was natural for well educated, progressive women to do the natural thing and nurse their babies. The natural lifestyles these women led came in sharp contrast to their SUV-driving status. My point is that at first glance, it appears that “going green” is something for the rich and famous (or at least the moderately wealthy). If my readers are anything like I was, going green is downright intimidating and may even feel impossibly cost prohibitive.
Thankfully, it doesn't have to be that way and without realizing it, we got greener and greener over the last couple of years, almost by default. “Natural” living is a slippery slope and even though it's not necessarily recognized, its' hard to go natural without going green, too. Surprisingly, in many ways it's actually cheaper than doing things conventionally, too (providing you don't buy into the consumerist gimmicks that have followed the green movement almost since it's inception). For us, it actually started with breastfeeding. Nursing our babies is the simplest, cheapest way to nourish our children. It never occurred to me to do anything else so being a “lactivist” was never part of my motivation for nursing my first child. I did a lot of research on the topic, however, because I wanted to be successful and what I learned caused me to become a rather outspoken breastfeeding supporter. Breastfeeding our babies actually has a significant impact on the the earth and therefore the people around us, not to mention those roly-poly little people that deserve nothing but the best. All health benefits aside, there are no big, pollution spewing factories involved in the manufacture of the bottles that aren't needed, the cans for formula that aren't used or, of course, the unnecessary formula. Some breastfeeding mothers will need some of those things (bottles, for example, or breast-pumps) but not necessarily. For those that do, they are saving so much money by not buying formula, that they can probably afford the extra expense for eco-friendly bottles/nipples/pumps.
From there we came upon the issue of diapering. I remember when I was pregnant with my first, I was absolutely adamant that I would NOT be cloth-diapering. Too much work! I still chuckle at myself, looking back. As it happened, disposable diapers turned out to be a much bigger money-drain than I initially realized so I began the hunt for affordable cloth diapers. It was during an Internet search for these that I came across a post by a woman who was talking about the success she was having with her 5mo old on the potty. I could not believe my eyes. EC (or elimination communication, also known as Infant Potty Training, Early Potty Learning, Natural Infant Hygiene, Trickle Treat and Un-diapering) is a practice as old as humanity. Growing up in the US, though, I had never even heard of it, except when wondering how African women carrying their babes in slings on their backs managed not to get peed on. So, of course, I scoffed at this woman's post and wondered where I could get some of whatever she was on. At the same time, though, she was so enthusiastic that I just had to look it up and figure out what on earth she was talking about. It was not at all what I thought it was and it made so much sense that I couldn't resist giving it a try with my 4mo old daughter. Our successful venture with EC is a story for a different day but it's worth mentioning here because within two months, we were done with disposables, I had a small stash of used cloth diapers and my 5mo old was reliably using the potty. How does this pertain to going green? Paper diapers take up an unbelievable amount of resources. The average baby goes through about 5,000 diapers between birth and toilet training. Diapers made up 3.4 million tons of waste, or 2.1 percent of U.S. garbage, in landfills in 1998 -- the last year this information was collected, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. An interesting excerpt from the following website says this:

“In 1988, over 18 billion diapers were sold and consumed in the United States that year.4 Based on our calculations ...we estimate that 27.4 billion disposable diapers are consumed every year in the U.S.13

No one knows how long it takes for a disposable diaper to decompose, but it is estimated to be about 250-500 years, long after your children, grandchildren and great, great, great grandchildren will be gone.5

Disposable diapers are the third largest single consumer item in landfills, and represent about 4% of solid waste. In a house with a child in diapers, disposables make up 50% of household waste.5
The manufacture and use of disposable diapers amounts to 2.3 times more water wasted than cloth.3

Over 300 pounds of wood, 50 pounds of petroleum feedstocks and 20 pounds of chlorine are used to produce disposable diapers for one baby EACH YEAR.6”
~ http://www.realdiaperassociation.org/diaperfacts.php

All of the above plus, they are expensive. They don't seem so at first, but the bigger your baby gets, the prices on the packages go up and you get LESS diapers per package. Some people truly feel that cloth diapers start-up cost is rather high (and it certainly can be) but in the long run, it saved us a lot of money. Un-diapering saved us even more money and you can't get much more environmentally friendly than skipping diapers altogether.
Along with diapering comes the question of wipes. Wipes certainly aren't the most expensive item on the “must have” list for parenting but the reality is that every penny counts. I like to sew and I tend to have scrap bits of fabric laying around so, after being inspired by seeing someone else do it, I made a bunch of cloth wipes. I'm so glad I did, too. Not only were they practically free (they can be made out of anything from old towels to old t-shirts) they were so soft and had no chemicals in them. I was a happy “wanna be green” Mama! Four years later, I'm still a fan and I use my home-made wipes for everything from dusting the furniture to washing my face, to say nothing of the stack JUST for my baby's bottom. I'm not saying I never use conventional wipes or that I never buy paper towels. Sometimes I do. But usually, I use my home-made wipes. That reduces my personal use of the world's resources to water and some natural gas-powered washing machine usage. Oh! and laundry detergent (I've heard that you can make your own and I have a recipe but haven't tried it yet).
When we had our first baby, everybody and their brother gave us clothes. At that time, most of them were brand-new clothes as well wishers from seemingly every area of our lives showered us with gifts. When we had our second baby, though, we didn't need all that stuff because we had hand-me downs! We were blessed with another girl, so that made it even easier. I think this is one area of being eco-conscious that people often overlook. The clothing industry is a HUGE one. The clothes do not make themselves, they are usually manufactured in sweatshops (unfortunately) and are often made from non-natural fibers and even when they are not, textile mills are notorious for pollution. Our family is not wealthy enough to feasibly afford organic, fair-trade, entirely natural fiber clothes BUT we can afford hand-me downs! And we do so, without any shame. Good-will, Salvation Army, friends closets, etc, are doing more to help our earth than people realize. And of course, when those clothes are finally beyond wearable, we make wipes! Recently I began turning some baby clothes that weren't in good enough condition to pass to anyone into a patchwork quilt. Someday it would really be nice to be able to afford the aforementioned “super-green” clothes but in the meantime, we do what we can. It saves us a tremendous amount of money and it feels good to know that in some small way, we are doing our part for the environment, too.
It is my opinion that going green goes hand in hand with “waste not, want not”. We live in a disposable society. We want everything now, we want it to require little or no effort on our part to cook, clean up, put together, etc. We love our microwaves, our gadgets, our plastic throw-away containers and our dishwashers. The question is, though, “Do we NEED any of that stuff?” My husband and I have discovered that no, we do not. Having these things is not necessarily wrong, however, if every person was to take a hard look at all their “stuff”, I'm betting we could each pare down some things. This would positively impact the earth, removing one person less of various industrial wastes. Reducing how much we consume is a fantastic way to better our world. The fact is that things sell because there is a demand for them. If there is less of a demand, there is less production and less waste and ultimately, less garbage. Perhaps if, as a society, we moved away from needing to have every gadget and newfangled thing on the market, we'd do better as a planet.
One of the ways my family strives to do this is by paring down stuff in our home we don't actually need. Do I really need another bottle of shampoo to join the collection on the bathtub? Are 25 towels actually a necessity? Do I really need an entire closet-full of sheets for one bed? And what about those towels and sheets? They look ratty and worn? What could they be used for instead of running out and buying something else I don't need? Wouldn't it be better to use them than add another 2 or three bags of garbage to the dumpster? I have a friend that takes old bed-sheets and turns them into diapers for her kid. I know another woman who was very good at making summer play-clothes and pajamas out of things like that. I've seen baby pants made from Dad's old sweatshirts and beautiful diaper covers converted from a sweater that had a hole in it. I made a sling recently out of a sarong that had a hole in it. We ditched our microwave (it broke and we decided not to replace it) and we've never missed it.
There are many other little things that we do in our day-to day lives that I believe makes a difference. They don't have to be expensive or come with trendy labels on them. Most of the changes we have made that are better for our family and our environment were simple, inexpensive things that happened without our even realizing they were “green”. It is just simple, smart, frugal living.

2008-08-22T11:19:00.000-07:00

My Work

I have the greatest work in the world;
The job of rocking a baby to sleep,
That of guiding his tottering feet,
A baby's clothes to launder and fold,
A precious life to shape and mold,
A drink to give from a little cup,
At night his toys to gather up,
Hurts to heal and fears to quell,
A baby to keep clean and well,
A stack of diapers to put,
Oh, what a happy worthwhile day!
I am a "Mother."

I have the greatest work in the world;
A husband to encourge when things go wrong,
When he comes from work to greet with a song,
Denims and shirts to wash and mend,
A helping hand, when needed, to lend,
Three times a day is meals to cook,
To strive to be my best to look,
His back to rub at the close of the day,
For his faithfulness to God I pray,
When hubby's in the field I take lemonade,
for all these tasks his love has Paid.
I am a " Wife."

I have the greatest work in the world;
A home to keep happy, clean and bright,
Make things go smooth and strive for the right,
Jams to cook and jellies to make,
Cookies and pies and bread to bake,
Washing, ironing, and sewing to do,
So many tasks, will I ever get though?
Lettuce to wash and peas to pick,
floors to scrub, lost items to seek,
Dishes to wash and windows to shine,
These and many more tasks are mine.
I am a "Homemaker."

Help me, Father, to faithfully work,
Forgive if I unconsciously shirk,
give me the patience and love I pray,
To keep myself in duties way;
With all the hustle that each day brings
May I not neglect the needful things;
Each day to spend time alone with Thee
That Jesus Christ be seen in me.
Thank you for husband, our home, our boys;
Thank you for love which brings me much joy.
Thank you , Lord.

----Mary Lou Burkholder

My UC Birth Story (the names have been changed except for mine and the baby that's being born)

2008-07-30T09:42:00.001-07:00

Unassisted birth of my daughter, Abigail

April 11th, 2007: I started noticing some "difficult" contractions. I am a very braxton hicks happy woman, I've been getting them all day long since the very beginning of this pregnancy. I noticed them for the first time probably around 8 or 9 weeks. I don't mind, them I even kind of like them. They are reassuring to me, like a way of my body telling me that everything is working like it should be. Well, these weren't them. These were...well they felt like a warning. So many things were going on at the time that I chalked it up to stress and mentioned it to my husband in that context and didn't think much of it until the next day. The next morning I woke up and waddled my way into the bathroom to relieve myself. I discovered bloody show. I cannot even describe the barrage of feelings that flooded me when I saw that. I was 35wks pregnant. My first thoughts were dismissal. After all, bloody show by itself doesn't necessarily mean anything and really, it was probably just coincidence anyway. Unfortunately for me, that feeling of dismissal went right out the window as I had a painful contraction while sitting on the toilet. Then, I just freaked out in my head. I can't be in labor, dammit, I'm only 35wks pregnant! So I sat there and waited for another one. Nothing. Ok, fine, nothing, good. I got up and went about my morning routine, got dressed, dressed my daughter and had another one 20 min later. It didn't hurt as badly as the first one and was shorter. But there was this odd pulling sensation in my cervix that I recognized from being in labor with my first that meant that something was happening, albeit slowly. I knew I wasn't in active labor but I was certain this wasn't bh contractions, too. So I IM'd Paul and told him what was going on. He asked me if I thought I was in labor and I told him that no, I didn't think so but that I was really concerned as this was definitely prodomal at least and bloody show indicated to me a cervical change of some sort. I wouldn't have been concerned about that in and of itself but the painful pressure with each contraction was sort of freaking me out. I timed them at that time and they were coming sporadically but no farther apart then 20min and sometimes as close together as 5min. Their duration that day tended around 1min30sec with some variation. This went on all day and didn't let up until the late afternoon. Quieted down for dinner and came back with a vengeance when I went to bed. This was to be the pattern for the next seven days.

As I said before at first I freaked out. Paul and I had previously agreed that our safety-zone was 36weeks. We debated our options and in the meantime put me on bed rest. OH HOW I HATED THAT. It was hard for me not to have a bad attitude about it, particularly because I hate feeling like a useless couch potato and since I wasn't in active labor and wasn't sick, I just felt lazy. I knew in my heart that it was the right thing to do but you know, I couldn't help feeling like a giant bump on a pickle, making everyone's life harder. I had already spent the last month letting things go and taking it easy because of my pelvis and NOW I had to just sit down and dictate like some fat monarch on a bench. Yes, frustrating.

I spent a lot of time in prayer, tuning into my baby and into my Mama instincts. Every time I prayed and every time I "tuned in" to my baby I had this sense of peace. When I thought of transferring to the hospital, though, I felt this rising sense of fear. Now really, I have birthed in a hospital before, and while I do not believe it's the safest place (by far) for a healthy pregnant woman and her healthy baby, I am not terrified of the hospital and in some ways, being there again may have been a comfort as it's the only place I've birthed before so at least it wouldn't be uncharted territory. Nevertheless, I couldn't shake the feeling that going there would be wrong. I just knew we didn't need to go, that we shouldn't go and that I should do everything in my power to keep that baby in until at least Tuesday. We felt Tuesday was close enough to 36wks to be ok. So I quit freaking out. I assured everyone that things were fine, I probably just miscalculated my EDD and that we were going to be ok. It was so hard for me to admit that I may have just made a mistake in my dates. SO hard. Pride, anyone? We kept the my calculated due date, though, because it was the latest possible one and we felt it would be foolish to do anything else.

That week was the longest one of my life. Every morning the contractions would space out to infrequent and they'd get stronger as the day went on and taper off in the early afternoon and come back after dinner and keep me up all night long. I was emotionally strung out, exhausted. My head was in labor-land all day long, all I could focus on was the baby, keeping it in, wanting it out, etc. I went to bed early Wednesday night, telling my husband I'd probably have the baby on the 30th of May (my due date had been the 19^th of May) and that maybe she just needed to be in a better position for birth and that's what the crazy week was all about. I truly just didn't believe I was going to have a baby this week after all. Part of me was disappointed but part of me was relieved and I think I had finally reached a point where I was willing to let go and let God, completely. I just realized that there was no way He'd lead me in this direction and with the complete support and peace of my my husband without taking care of us through it. Truly, and I'm sure I'll need to say this again by the end of this telling, my faith has never been tested harder nor strengthened as much as it was having this baby. It is difficult for me to convey the amount of prayer spent over this baby. Even before, during the pregnancy, Paul would pray over me and the baby, ever single night. Both of us just felt secure that God was with us, that this was His will for this birth and that we needed to trust Him. So...we did.

Thursday morning, April 19th, 2007: I was startled out of the deepest sleep I'd had in a week at 3:30 am with a contraction I was already on my hands and knees moaning through before really waking up. "Oooooooohhh, baby, baby, baby, baby" So much pressure down below it was phenomenal. When it was over, I just laid back down and went to sleep. I never really even opened my eyes. I remember thinking that it wasn't fair to do this to me while I was sleeping when it wasn't going to happen for another month, anyway. Sometime later I came awake to another contraction that had me up and moving around the bed, panting and moaning. Went right back to sleep. My attitude at this point was "whatever, body, call wolf as much as you like, I don't even care, I'm sleeping, thankyouverymuch!" I didn't watch the clock per se, didn't time contractions, but occasionally I'd look to see what time it was because I REFUSED to get out of bed until it was closer to time to get up. I'd really spent enough nights getting NO SLEEP so i was going to sleep between contractions for as long as I could stand it. But around 6:30 they were making it impossible to do so. I decided to get in the shower because I figured they would let up around 7:30 anyway and I really, really wanted to sleep. So hot shower would probably just facilitated the "drop back" of contractions and then maybe I'd get another hour to SLEEP.

The shower did nothing, if anything I just felt pukey in the hot water so I got out and went potty. Oh wow, look at that, bloody show. I mean, I hadn't had any for two days and now it was bright, red and copious. Before it was bloody mucous now it was mucousy blood. The contraction I had on the toilet was hard and I believe I was moaning through that one, too. I went downstairs to do my morning thing, still telling myself it was going to go away. I figured I'd update my livejournal and lay down on the couch so as not to disturb my husband and then they'd let up again...like they had every other morning this week. I didn't want to believe I was in active labor, I just wanted to sleep. By 8am, though, I knew that I didn't CARE if I was in active labor or not, I could not possibly cope with those contractions all day, again, by myself with my daughter. No way, Jose! I went upstairs to find out if Paul would stay home with me. The thought of having to care for my daughter with contractions that were so hard I couldn't talk through them was just overwhelming and had me in tears. I asked Paul what it would take to get him to stay home today. He asked me why I wanted him to do that (he wasn't really awake yet) and of course, I started to have a contraction right then so I sort of gritted out, between my teeth "Why do you THINK!?!??!" He said "you think you're in labor?" and I said "I honestly don't know but I DO know that I cannot do this by myself today, I just can't."

Now see, we could only afford one day off for this birth. Honestly, any more than that and we'd be screwed. He was torn, obviously, because he wanted very much to stay home, he'd wanted to that whole week and he just couldn't and it made him feel awful. But he didn't give me an answer right away, he just told me that he'd wait a bit and see. I suggested to him that if he would just go in a little late, I'd feel better because the contractions would probably ease off for a while soon and I could cope with Elizabeth better.

They didn't go away and by nine am, my husband told me he was staying home. I contacted Rachel and told her I might be in labor and please have the girls stand by. They told me later she just told them I was in labor. I can't really remember my conversation with her but I do know that I was still thinking it might peter out and that I'd be pretty upset if it did because these contractions HURT. I mean, there was pre-labor ouchies and then there was OMG THE PRESSURE THE PRESSURE GIVE ME COUNTER PRESSURE NOW ouchies. See the difference?

This part of labor was so sweet. First of all, my daughter, Elizabeth, was still there. I had wanted her to be part of the birth, too, and wanted her to be there if she was ok with it. My final letting go for this birth was leaving that choice up to my husband as he really wasn't comfortable with her there. I think the stress of needing to be sure she really was handling it ok was just more than he felt comfortable dealing with; he wanted to focus on me. He called his mom and told her I was in labor and she said she'd come over but admitted later that she didn't believe him. She had just been out with me the day before and saw I was having contractions but also that they weren't active labor. Meanwhile, I was crawling around the living room on my hands and knees, leaning over the couch, pacing, bracing myself against the walls, etc, through contractions. I'd been showing my daughter birth videos my entire pregnancy and any of them where laboring mother yelled or cried I'd reassure her, telling her that the baby was going to come out and that Mama had to work very hard and sometimes it hurt so that's why she was yelling. The first time her Daddy gave me counter pressure I was moaning through the contraction and Elizabeth had freaked out and told him to stop it because she thought he was hurting me. So I explained to her that the baby was going to come out that day and reminded her that it was very hard work and that Daddy was helping me to do it. I tried taking a bath. While I was in there, Elizabeth came in (Paul was trying to fix her breakfast) and came over to the tub and gently started scooping water over me. She's TWO by the way. She says "It's ok, Mama, Daddy will be here to help you, soon" in this hushed, sweet little voice. Every time I had a contraction she'd reach out and touch me and tell me that it was ok, Daddy was coming. OMG just thinking about that makes me get tears every time!

I couldn't stand the tub (Fat woman + uncomfortable bathtub + intense back labor= crap.) I got out. I put my pj's back on and went downstairs and continued for a while, laboring on my knees, my chest draped onto the couch. I'd start making noise through a contraction and Paul would rush into the living room, from the kitchen, and give me counter pressure and rub my back and talk to me through them, Elizabeth watching the whole time. Sometimes she'd stroke my hair, or talk to Daddy or ask questions (I still chuckle at the mental picture of my husband rushing through the house with a towel over one shoulder and a spatula in one hand, to give me counter-pressure). When he left the room, at one point, she climbed up on my back (like she was going to "ride the horsey" and just her sitting in the exact right spot helped immensely. She then leaned forward and draped herself across my whole back and said "Daddy's coming, Mama, Daddy's coming, it's all right." I laughed a lot between contractions while she was with me. Oh I'm so blessed.

Ruth, my mother in law, showed up around this time and came into the living room and rubbed my back and asked me how I was feeling. I told her I felt good, that I was finally going to have a baby...hopefully. A contraction came and she suddenly believed that I was in labor!!! She had been present for Elizabeth's birth and I think she recognized the bellows. She had been trying to talk me out of a UC the entire pregnancy so in a half joking way, she asked me if I wanted to "go somewheres". I said "No, Mom, I'm in my jammies and I LIKE it here!" She laughed, I laughed, and she said "Can't blame me for trying!" She wished us the best, kissed me, kissed my husband and took Elizabeth and left. Elizabeth gave me hugs first and said that Daddy was going to help me, again, and "See you later, have fun!" She's so sweet.

Now my timing gets a bit fuzzy because with Ruth come and gone, I could really relax. I don't know what time Rachel got here though I think Ruth had come and gone by then. She cooked something for herself to eat and at some point in there Elise arrived. It was so cool to have them bustling around in my kitchen like any other time while I was wandering around dealing with contractions. I don't even know what they were doing most of the time although I remember thinking "Gee, this place gets cleaner every time I open my eyes". I know they cleaned the living room up (I said something like "it's too crowded in here" or something like that and the next time I opened my eyes it was like magic; suddenly it was all gone, clean, nothing on the floor!). In between contractions I pulled out some chux pads and the plastic sheet I had bought for the bed. I wanted it on the living room floor. Duct tape, incidentally, is a great way of securing a huge piece of plastic to a carpet! It just felt very homey, having my friends bustling about but not making a big deal. I heard laughter in my kitchen and the sounds of a very happy little one year old girl walking around (Rachel had brought her little girl). NO BEEPING. Oh how I hated that sound in the hospital for Elizabeth's birth.

The contractions got closer and closer together. They didn't seem to have any real pattern to them, really, at first, except I would get them in clusters. One, two, three a break...one two three, etc. I had this intense pressure in my vagina with every contraction and it would wrap up the bottom of my uterus and into the small of my back with this incredible pressure. The pain was all down below, too, just in the bottom half. The pain in back was just immense and oftentimes it was the only thing I could think of. I was afraid of the pain!! I was, I was terrified of it and that in and of itself was a shock because I had not previously been afraid of labor pain. In retrospect, I believe there are three reasons for this: One was simply that I was just plain tired! I'd been laboring for a week! The second was that I subconsciously feared that they would get even worse because my only point of reference was the pitocen induced labor I experienced while birthing Elizabeth. The third reason is that the shock of having a baby much earlier than I anticipated left me rigid. I was just blind-sided by the reality that I really WAS having this baby a month early. I was so incredibly tense that Paul noticed and he started to talk me down. He would rock with me, walk with me, stand with me sit with me, whatever I needed and I never had to ask him once. I never told him what to do, either. It was like he just knew the right place to stand, the right thing to say, the right place to touch. "You can do this, you're doing an incredible job, babe, you need to relax, don't fight it, you can do it" just a litany with every contraction. He told me he loved me, that he was proud of me, that I was amazing and that he had faith in me. I can't even type this without crying! I just love him so much. When we had our first, he was there, he was supportive, but he wasn't free to really connect with me on an intimate level. The difference between that birth and this one in that regard was simply night and day. His talking worked, before I hit transition I was able to do something I couldn't do at all with Elizabeth's labor. I stopped shouting through contractions and instead breathed through them. When I look back on this labor, I remember this time as being the most peaceful. Paul was sitting on the couch, I was on my knees in front of him, leaning into his lap and I had my arms wrapped around his waist. He had his hands on my back and his head by my ear and with every contraction he just talked to me softly and I concentrated on expanding my belly around the immense sensations there. I cannot say I felt no pain, because I can't perceive of that feeling any other way, really. But I felt so much more than the pain. It was a fight, it really was, to stay on top of that pain and experience the rest of it but it was BLISS. I can't explain it. It hurt like a BEOTCH, no doubt about it, but it was SO MUCH MORE. I would feel a contraction building and would expand my belly around it, like we were in competition with each other, my outer layers with my inner. Or maybe more like we were dancing. It was like: my baby, covered by my womb, covered by my belly, covered by my my husband, covered by Yahweh. In my mind, womb would pull and clamp and my belly would expand and expand over it like I was trying to draw that painful feeling OUTWARD instead of loosing myself IN it. I would take these huge, slow breaths and fallow myself to open wider and wider and to not clench anything but my hands on Paul's arms or his shirt. That part was awesome.

I don't know how long that lasted but at some point Hadassah arrived. By the time she got there I was really very, very tired. I kept thinking that all I wanted to do was lie down and sleep. I even tried lying on the floor for a minute but that was awful and so not going to work. I know I draped myself over Hadassah's exercise ball for a while and she gave me some homeopathic arnica and something else to help me relax. Looking back, I know this is around where transition started because I just started to get angry with every contraction. I felt like labor was progressing too fast and not quickly enough. This wasn't supposed to be happening right now, I was supposed to have another few weeks to prepare. Contractions were supposed to stop again, like before so I could sleep and just WHO WAS IT that declared I should get a week of minimal sleep before doing this? Oh I was angry, I was exhausted, I was afraid. Every feeling of let-down, of anger, built up tension and every feeling of sorrow from the last several months just came pouring out of me. I don't remember all of what I said. Mostly a barrage of "I don't want to do this anymore" and " I can't" and " I NEED A BREAK!!!" I could not have articulated anything else coherently if I tried. I started sobbing. I've never cried so hard in my life. So much intense energy was flowing through me and I just could not contain it all. I couldn't integrate the pain *and the energy *and the intense emotions. Nope. Mouth gets free reign, my heart is open and my mind was just bubbling over.

Transition ended as suddenly as it started. I had a contraction that was very different. Pain in my back took a back burner to the DOWNWARD feeling contraction (I was standing through most of transition and I had my arms around Paul's neck). I really just like, squatted down into this contraction and just "OH MY GOD" through it. My whole body shook with the force of it. I felt like it was pushy except it felt very strange. The third one of these ended with me giving a test push and my water breaking on the feet of everyone standing around me. So many loving hands encouraging me and not a single pair of those hands ever touched me in any place I don't normally share :P. Heavenly. At this point, Paul said "Oh thank you so much for not puking on my feet, which is what I thought you were doing just now!" Laughter, all around. That sound will stay with me forever, I think.

I realized that the contractions had just stopped and suddenly, I was ok. No more whirlwind of thoughts, emotions, and feelings flooding me. I said "Oh good, a break!" and sat down on the couch. Paul took a break and went outside to smoke. I was ok, I was in this little place of waiting in my head and felt like everything was on hold for a minute. I know there was conversation and I know I participated in in it but I really am not sure what was said. All of the sudden, I just needed to stand back up. So I did. And then I had another contraction or two and then another one that was HUGE. Then, like in a dream I had at the beginning of this pregnancy, I felt the whole baby come down in one huge, sliding motion and slam into my perenium. I wanted to push but something told me to wait and see what was presenting. I gave a test push and then said "What IS that?" WHAT IS IT???? Paul came back in and got down and took a peak, while Hadassah was trying to help support me from behind. It crossed my mind that I am an awfully big woman for her to be holding up like that but wow, she did it anyway!!! Paul said: "It's a head OH WAIT, that's a foot and a butt!!" Then, I felt a squirm and two feet kicked their way out of me and into the air, of their own volition! This baby wanted to come OUT. A contraction and a biiiig puuush. Oh that felt good, it was the best push EVER. Baby out to her umbilicus. I heard someone say "Oh it's so small!" Mixed feelings with that announcement. A brief brush of fear which I shoved out of my mind as quickly as it entered with a fierce determination that everything would be fine. As I was doing that, the baby kicked her daddy's hands. I remembered another dream from over a year ago of me having a baby breech and I just laughed out loud. I couldn't believe it!! I mean, I had been fascinated with breech stories my whole pregnancy and spent some time studying breech presentation during my preparation but for some reason I was convinced the baby was vertex. I believe the Spirit tried to tell me but that I just wasn't willing to believe it for some reason. I honestly think that a part of me knew all along she was breech but I cannot explain my reluctance to admit it to anyone. I certainly thought about it a few times during the week before her birth but I refused to give those thoughts any real attention and instead kept insisting to myself that I was wrong, that the baby was vertex. *shrug* I don't know why I did that, but there you have it.

Well I wasn't having contractions again. So I pushed without one just to see what would happen. Nothing, nothing happened at all. She didn't budge. So I tried again, this time squatting into it a bit. That felt wrong. So I turned around and leaned over the couch again and tried again. Nothing, not so much as a smidgent of a budge. I prayed out loud, "Abbah, I know this is you, I know this is ok, what am I missing? I trust you, tell me!" She punched my in the birth canal and like a light bulb, duh, her arms!!! "Hey, where are her arms?" Several voices at once "they are still inside". "Ok, honey, reach up in there and bring her arms down" He started to poke around like he was afraid he'd hurt me. "Don't worry about hurting me JUST DO IT!" He said "Ok, babe" and poked two fingers in there and hooked and arm and brought it down. He told me her other arm came down on it's own. THEN I had a contraction and pushed the rest of her out in one push. My legs were shaking so badly at this point that all I could do for a second was breathe deeply with my face in the couch cushion, . Everyone was so quiet I realized that I needed to turn around and tend to the baby.

I could tell from the hush in the room that everyone was worried. I just smiled to myself. I knew everything was ok, despite that nagging little snarky voice in the back of my head that said "what if..what if...what if..." I thrust it away and turned around and sat down on the edge of the couch, on a Chux pad and Paul handed me our daughter. She was seemingly quite limp and that purplish color that baby's who are pinking up turn. It was hard to see through all the vernix. Paul looked right into my eyes in that moment and I couldn't read his expression, it was just too full of too many things. I took my daughter in my arms and put her face down over my left arm and started talking to her. "Abigail, come on baby, I love you!" I started to rub and gently pat her back, making sure her head was at a slight incline towards the floor. She moved her foot and I noticed she was getting pinker by the second. I could feel the cord pulsing between us. I had a fleeting thought to call an ambulance but brushed it aside gently, to be considered later if it was needed. I kept talking, kept rubbing and she squeaked, coughed, and squeaked again. I turned her over without really thinking about it and sucked her mouth out, spat, sucked her nose out, spat, nose twice more and by the time I was finished with that she was hollering about it to the whole world. Eyes open, lungs going, lip trembling. "I'm HERE already, goodness, just don't do THAT again!!" We wrapped her up with a blanket, a hat came from somewhere an everyone was smiling. Welcome, Abigail!!

We waited about an hour to cut the cord. It was totally limp and we clamped it on baby-side and didn't bother with my side as I'd delivered it maybe fifteen minutes after Abby was born. She was TINY (she weighed 4lbs 10ozlbs and was 17 3/4” long). I could tell she was good, by the time she'd stopped crying, there was no gurgle left to her breathing and she was just looking around with her little hands folded like she was surveying her surroundings sort of grumpily. No retractions, no cyanosis. She was perfect. She looked like a wizened old lady, , and that made me laugh. I tried to nurse her but she wasn't at all interested in that so skin to skin for a while and then I passed her off to Paul so I could get cleaned up. I went up, took a bath and carefully checked around for tears or lacerations. Nothing. Not so much as a skid mark (that I could feel). I came back downstairs after getting dressed to discover the entire mess was cleaned up. Paul said it took about five minutes (he just rolled it all up in the aforementioned plastic mat and threw it in the trash). I settled onto the couch with my new baby girl and offered her a chance to nurse. This time she was ready and opened right up and we began that "eyeball talk" that all mothers have with their babies. I was just enthralled. I couldn't believe how tiny she was, how perfect every little detail was. I still feel that way, , looking at her is like looking at a tiny little miracle.

I cannot express enough my relief we stayed home. I'm so glad I kept her in a week, too. How to express my gratitude for Yahweh's provision? I can't. There just aren't words. Footling breech baby,. 4weeks early in a hospital (we determined that my dates were spot on based on her weight, vernix, etc)? The chances of her receiving such a warm, gentle welcome are pretty slim. To date, she has never been touched by anyone that doesn't love her. No one has jabbed at her, or messed with her at all. She has had warm days of nursing, riding and sleeping since the moment she got here. Nobody tried to take her away from me. Nobody squeezed crap in her eyes, stabbed her in the feet or stuck needles into her. I shudder to think what would have happened in the hospital had she been slow to start like she was here. She has not yet developed any yellowness so I don't believe she's jaundiced. Would that be true if she had her cord cut immediately and been suctioned in a plastic box under a heat lamp? Would they have even let me take her home, weighing in at under five lbs ? I don't know, I can't answer these questions with anything more than educated speculation. But I know what answers are likely and I am grateful yet again that we stayed home. God truly blessed us with this tiny little person, .

News!

2008-07-29T04:13:00.001-07:00

New law aims to distance the FDA from the drug industry

Jeanne Lenzer

New York

Legislation aimed at ending the close relationship between theUS Food and Drug Administration and the drug industry was introducedlast week in the House of Representatives by Congressman MauriceHinchey (Democrat) of New York.

The Food and Drug Administration Improvement Act 2005 has beenendorsed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest inWashington, DC, a non-profit education and advocacy organisation.Merrill Goozner, director of the centre's integrity in scienceproject, said it was "exactly what is needed to restore publicconfidence in the FDA."

The bill includes several provisions aimed at ending financialconflicts of interest. Drug companies would still be expectedto pay fees but they would be paid to a general fund of theUS Treasury. The bill prohibits the FDA from negotiating withdrug companies about how it uses funds and it "terminates allprevious agreements between FDA and such companies."

The bill would also prohibit scientists with financial conflictsof interest from sitting on FDA advisory panels.

Furthermore, it would establish a separate centre for post-marketdrug safety and effectiveness, so that "different doctors andscientists than the ones who approve a drug will monitor itssafety once it hits the market."

If passed, the bill would overturn provisions of the PrescriptionDrug Users Fee Act (PDUFA), first passed in 1992, which establisheda schedule of payments by the drug industry to the FDA.

Mr Hinchey said, "[PDUFA] was initiated during the first Bushadministration, allegedly to speed up the approval of drugs,but what it did—and what I think they knew it would do—wasto establish a close relationship between the regulatory agencyand the industry it is supposed to regulate. Right now, almost50% of the FDA drug budget is funded by the drug industry.

"And the ridiculous part is that the FDA has to negotiate withdrug companies about how they use this money. It creates a relationshipthat is contrary to the whole idea of what the FDA is supposedto be."

The bill would redirect drug company fees to a general fundof the US Treasury and would create mandatory funding levelsto support the FDA. It would also prohibit the FDA from negotiatingwith drug companies and "terminates all previous agreementsreached between FDA and such companies."

Other provisions of the bill would empower the FDA to mandatepost-marketing studies, demand label changes, and impose penaltiesof up to $50m (£27m; 39m) against companies that violateFDA drug regulations.

A controversial legal stance at the FDA known as "pre-emption"(bmj.com; 8 Jan 2005, News Extra) that was introduced by theformer chief counsel to the FDA, Daniel Troy, would also bereversed under the bill. Mr Troy argued that manufacturers ofdrugs that were approved by the FDA could not be held liablefor adverse outcomes unless the company committed outright fraud.

The FDA does not comment on legislation. The PharmaceuticalManufacturers and Research Association had not responded torequests for interviews at the time the BMJ went to press.

Abortion: Feminist Right?

2008-07-27T05:21:00.000-07:00

Feminism has promoted abortion as a woman's rights issue. It's touted by society that having that having the option to go to a doctor and have an abortion is empowering. I would like to examine that and present another perspective.

First of all, we don't need abortion clinics to eliminate a pregnancy. Women have been safely doing that for thousands of years. I'm not promoting it, I don't agree with it, but I think the highly dangerous methods of surgically ending a pregnancy that is touted as "safe" and desperately needed as legal so that women don't go for coat hangers is a grossly misleading idea. Emmenagogues are much safer than surgery and have a much lower chance of damaging future fertility. Women have been jumping on the "keep abortion legal" bandwagon largely because they truly believe that it's empowering, even for those who would never choose abortion themselves. They see it as protecting their autonomy on a broader level than just the right to end a pregnancy. They don't' seem to understand that they have been spoon-fed this lie that they NEED a clinic, a doctor and a $400-600 procedure to have this "freedom".

Feminists need to wake up. The right to murder our unborn children is not empowering nor is it protecting us. It's just one more drop in the bucket of how we've been suckered into giving up and handing over our power to someone else. One more aspect of this ridiculous system 95% of us don't' need.

In our society we promote birth control, sex education and abortion as a woman's empowerment. This is how she maintains control over her body and her life. Everything neatly in it's place, including your money in some clinician or pharmacists pocket. Where is the empowerment in depending on someone else to control your body?

I disagree with abortion on a moral level, as well, of course, but for right now I prefer to focus on the ludicrous notion of assuming it's a "right" we must protect. There is a better way, fellow sisters.

For starters, how about teaching our young women the truth of the true control they can have over their own bodies. Instead of teaching our women to take drugs to physically alter their body chemistry, having untold negative consequences on their health as a whole, why not teach them fertility awareness? There is nothing wrong with them choosing to take hormonal birth control or teaching them how to properly use barrier methods. This is all information they should have access to. But they should *also* understand that they don't' *need* any of that, that the power to control their bodies and protect that autonomy that is rightfully theirs exists within them. The fertility awareness method, if practiced correctly, has been proven to be as effective as the pill over and over again. It's something that is simple, easy and becomes second nature to anyone practicing it. Not only does it have the ability to help prevent or more accurately assist in conceiving, it also has the benefit of keeping the woman closely in tune with her body, allowing her to pinpoint telling changes and issues very early on. It's a method that promotes confidence and pride the woman's body, rather than mistrust and mystery. Why should any young girl feel that someone else should be relied upon to control her body? I think that idea subtly undermines her trust in her body and how it works. We are constantly inundated with the pervasive notion that our bodies are defective or will become defective from the time we are very young until we die.

Then there is the issue of personal responsibility. Our society promotes the idea of abortion as being a responsible choice for women who find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy. That seems the exact opposite of responsibility to me. I will be teaching my daughters that being responsible happens way before conception. The reality is that sex has a physical purpose beyond emotional/spiritual/physical gratification. That purpose is procreation. Sex is a good, beautiful and healthy thing but it serves a purpose beyond pleasure. No matter which method(s) one chooses to prevent conception, pregnancy is still a very real possibility! A responsible person doesn't take that risk without being willing to be *responsible* for the consequences. When it comes to sex, the consequences are not like possibly being grounded. The consequence is a new life, a new *person* being created. Life is precious and as women, we have been granted the privilege and responsibility of standing at the gates and guarding it with our bodies. Rather than looking at this as some sort of burden that must be collared and controlled, why not accept it as the beautiful mystery that it is? Why not embrace it? Take it seriously and be proud of this honor. I'm not saying we should all breed like rabbits but there is no reason why our options should be limited to societies excepted notions on how to deal with the growing number of unwanted pregnancies. Why not teach our daughters deep respect for themselves, their partners and the potential lives they may create? Why not teach our daughters to respect all life? Instead, our society teaches us to disrespect and mistrust our bodies, even to the point of viewing pregnancy as something that will ruin their lives.

In fact, we disempower our own young women by telling them they can not possibly care for a child, that they are incapable of being good mothers. And it's BUNK. That is only true if we as their parents raise them in such a way that they have no concept of what it takes to be responsible. I once worked with a teenage girl who was about to become a mother. Shortly after the birth of her son (whom she had been pressured to abort from conception right up until he was born by her mother) she told me, with wonder in her eyes, that NOBODY told her how fantastic being a mother was. She said that everyone she knew told her that having a baby at 16 would ruin her life and not one mother she spoke to mentioned the sheer joy of giving life to another person. Not. one. person. She was flabbergasted at the amazing transformation within herself when assuming the full responsibility for another life. How sad is that? I've known so many women to say the same thing. In the city we used to live in, there were billboards all over the place that basically said to the teenagers: "Getting pregnant is more than you can handle". In many cases, that is true but only because our society promotes a lifestyle that is fraught with irresponsibility until suddenly the people magically become adults somewhere around 30 years old. What a shame. I'm not suggesting that all teenagers should just be promiscuous and not worry about conceiving a child. I am suggesting, though, that teaching them abstinence or birth control because having a baby will ruin their life sets them up for negative attitudes about having a baby later, and encourages them to view their bodies as something that will hold them back in life. I suggest approaching the subject of teen pregnancy from a different angle altogether. Babies are precious. Sex is precious. Life is precious. So lets respect it, guard and hold it sacred. Why not raise our children with an ingrained sense of actual responsibility? Why not teach them that risking creating a new life they don't want to be responsible for IS irresponsible? Why allow them to foster the belief that it's ok, they can just terminate any new life that's inconvenient to them?

It is my belief that we would see a lot less unwanted pregnancies and subsequently a lot less abortions if we stopped crippling our women's ability to control their own bodies by convincing them they need “the institution's” help doing it. Maybe my ideas seem radical but again, where is the empowerment in depending on drugs and doctors to control your body? Where is the empowerment in teaching our young women that they are going to be failures before they even start?

I would say something similar to the pro-life movement. Picket lines, shouting obscene insults at women going into Planned Parenthood and trying to make it illegal may be coming from a noble place within the pro-life movement, but far too often it's just useless. It's approaching the problem from the wrong direction. You want to see less abortions (no abortions?) start from the ground up. Deal with the issue at it's source. The fact abortion is legal is a symptom of a much, much deeper problem. Our society has major issues and I honestly don't see abortion ever “going away” or at least lessening until those problems are addressed. Spreading hate and coldness is not going to have a positive effect. Better to educate. Better to listen and hear the voices and their reasoning behind defending it in the first place. Not every woman that has an abortion actually wants one. In fact, many upon many of them do NOT want one...but they see no other way out. THAT is a serious problem in this society as well. How many teenage girls get abortions because they fear their parents would kick them out or be completely unsupported? This is especially true in the groups that are also pro-life, ironically! What about grown women that are out on their own? How many women get abortions because they are afraid if they don't they will loose the man that supposedly loves them? Or maybe because they don't see any financial way out? Another issue that goes right back to empowerment and trust in one's own self and that is compounded by our societies lack of communal mindset.

I hope I have shared some of my ideas in a coherent fashion. I've not touched too much on the moral issues that I have with abortion as a rule. Maybe for a different day. I close with this: Society takes advantage of our desire to be “liberated women”. It feeds us lies constantly about how to do so. And yet, when we take a few steps back, we see that we are still enslaved, mostly without our recognition, in a system coerces us into their pockets. That's not liberation. It's almost as if we've traded our right to true autonomy over our bodies (with regards to birth and conception and conception control, especially) for the right to vote and be paid a fair wage. In the name of feminism, we've given up our unique powers as WOMEN. Doesn't make sense to me.

Fantastic Article by Henci Goer

2008-07-18T04:35:00.001-07:00

Gestational Diabetes: The Emperor Has No Clothes
by Henci Goer

Good medicine demands that diagnosis and treatment of any disease fulfill four criteria:

The condition has to pose a health risk;
Diagnosis must accurately distinguish between those who have the disease and those who don't;
Treatment should be effective; and
The benefits of diagnosis and treatment should outweigh the risks.

An entire medical industry has grown up around diagnosing and treating gestational diabetes (GD) in the belief that doing so prevents perinatal deaths, congenital anomalies, neonatal complications, macrosomic babies, and because of fetal macrosomia, birth injuries and excessive cesarean rates. However, diagnosis and treatment of gestational diabetes don't fulfill any of the above criteria.

To begin with, GD doesn't fit the definition of a disease. GD as a concept began in 1964 when O'Sullivan and Mahan performed a 100g 3- hour oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) on 752 pregnant women and tracked all women with at least two values above two standard deviations beyond the mean to see if hyperglycemic women were predisposed to develop diabetes down the road (O'Sullivan 1964). They were, leading the two researchers to conclude that the metabolic stress of pregnancy revealed a woman's "pre-diabetic status." This should not surprise anyone since overweight women are more likely to have hyperglycemia in pregnancy and to develop diabetes later in life.

Since insulin-dependent diabetes was known to threaten the fetus, researchers extrapolated that sub-diabetic glucose elevations might also do harm. This leap in logic was faulty on its face because GD does not share the risk factors of either type of true diabetes. In Type I diabetes, extremes of low and high blood glucose early in pregnancy can cause congenital anomalies or kill the forming embryo. Gestationally diabetic women make normal or above-normal amounts of insulin and have normal blood sugar metabolism in the first trimester. With either Types I or II, diabetes of long standing may damage maternal blood vessels and kidneys, causing hypertension or kidney complications. These may in turn jeopardize the fetus. Gestational diabetics do not have long- standing diabetes. The one problem GD shares with both types is that chronic hyperglycemia can overfeed the fetus, resulting in macrosomia (generally defined as birth weight greater than 4000 g) or large-for- gestational-age (LGA) (greater than the 90th percentile) babies.

Logic notwithstanding, these concerns launched a series of studies into the risks of mild glucose elevations. Unfortunately, they were badly flawed.

Studies selected women for glucose testing based on such factors as prior still birth or hypertension in the current pregnancy and then compared outcomes with the general population. Hunter and Keirse observe that according to Sutherland and Stowers' 1975 edition of CARBOHYDRATE METABOLISM IN PREGNANCY AND THE NEWBORN, the rate of fetal loss increases eightfold as the number of indications for glucose tolerance testing increasing from one to four. Glucose intolerance does not add to this risk (Hunter and Keirse 1989).
Studies included women who were known diabetics prior to pregnancy.
Studies failed to account for confounding factors such as that glucose intolerance associates with increasing maternal weight and age, which themselves are strong independent predictors of macrosomia and maternal hypertension.
Studies used management protocols that increased risks such as starvation diets, early elective induction, and withholding nourishment from the newborn.

In addition, glucose level turned out to be a poor predictor of macrosomia. Other factors such as race, age, parity, sex, and especially maternal weight, far outweighed glucose intolerance in determining birth weight. Hunter and Keirse observed that GD mothers had a 3-fold risk of giving birth to a baby weighing over 4500 g compared with normoglycemic women. However, a woman weighing over 90 kg had a 26-fold risk of having a baby this heavy compared with normal weight women (Hunter and Keirse 1989). Oats and colleagues could not find a significant association between glucose levels and birth weight until birth weight exceeded the 90th percentile. Even then, 77 percent of women had normal glucose tolerance (Oats et al. 1980).

Nonetheless, researchers concluded that mildly deviant glucose values in pregnancy constituted a new form of diabetes that required diagnosis, surveillance, and treatment. Researchers have gone on adding rooms and stories to the GD edifice, never noticing that they have built a house on sand.

Secondly, the OGTT, the standard diagnostic test, has many problems. A diagnostic test should be reproducible, its thresholds should be values at which morbidity either first appears or incidence greatly increases, and normal ranges should apply to the population undergoing testing. The OGTT is none of the above.

Obstetricians adopted O'Sullivan and Mahan's curve as the normative curve for all pregnant women, but it is not representative. For one thing, O'Sullivan and Mahan tested women without regard to length of gestation, whereas today, women are typically tested at the beginning of the third trimester. Glucose values rise linearly throughout pregnancy, but no corrections have been made for this. For another thing, O'Sullivan and Mahan studied a population that was 60 percent white and 40 percent black. Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asian women average higher blood sugars than black or white women. Since diagnostic thresholds are set at two standard deviations beyond the mean, values for O'Sullivan and Mahan's population have arbitrarily been established as the norms for all women. This means that some women are being identified as diseased simply because of race.

Worse yet, studies show that when pregnant women undergo two OGTTs a week or so apart, test results disagree 22 percent to 24 percent of the time (Catalano et al. 1993) (Harlass et al. 1991). An individual's blood sugar values after ingesting glucose (or food) vary widely depending on many factors. For this reason, the OGTT has been abandoned as a diagnostic test for true diabetes in favor of excessive fasting glucose values, which show much greater consistency, or postprandial values of 200 mg.dl or more, which are rare. Moreover, pregnancy compounds problems with reproducibility. Because glucose levels rise linearly throughout pregnancy, a woman could "pass" a test in gestational week 24 and "fail" it in week 28. These same problems hold true for the glucose screening test that precedes the OGTT (Sacks et al. 1989) (Watson 1989).

More importantly, no threshold has ever been demonstrated for onset or marked increase in fetal complications below levels diagnostic of true diabetes. O'Sullivan and Mahan chose their cutoffs for convenience in follow-up, but all studies since then have used their criteria or some modification thereof as a threshold for pathology in the current pregnancy. Numerous studies since have documented that birth weights and other outcomes fail to correlate with O'Sullivan's or anybody else's thresholds.

A test with arbitrary diagnostic thresholds is akin to claiming that all people over six feet tall have a growth abnormality or all people with a cough and a fever have pneumonia. The authors of A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE CARE IN PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH relegate "screening for gestational diabetes" to "Forms of Care Unlikely to be Beneficial" (Enkin 1995).

The original intent of treating GD was preventing excess perinatal mortality and congenital anomalies. Whatever the cause of increased deaths, it wasn't hyperglycemia. O'Sullivan and colleagues randomly assigned gestational diabetics to treatment with diet and insulin and compared outcomes among treated diabetics, untreated diabetics, and a normoglycemic control population. They found more perinatal deaths in the GD population, treated or not (O'Sullivan et al. 1966). Perinatal mortality statistics among non-insulin dependent diabetics remained unchanged between 1946 and 1972 in a Copenhagen study despite aggressive treatment throughout the timespan (Pedersen, JL et al. 1974) (Pedersen J 1977). Conversely, a Swedish study showed a marked reduction in perinatal mortality rates between 1961 and 1971, also while treating vigorously (Karlsson et al. 1972).

As for congenital anomalies, GD cannot cause congenital anomalies because glucose metabolism is normal in the first trimester. Even if it did, testing isn't done until the third trimester.

The main rationale for current GD management is to reduce the incidence of birth injuries and cesarean section by reducing the incidence of macrosomia. The goal of reducing birth weight raises philosophical problems. As with glucose values, doctors are defining deviation beyond an arbitrary point as inherently pathological. Moreover, can we justify manipulating the growth mechanism of a group of babies roughly 75 percent to 80 percent of whom will fall below the 90th percentile for weight if left alone?

Philosophical considerations aside, we have little evidence that GD management succeeds. As mentioned above, macrosomia associates with maternal weight, age, race, parity, and male fetus. Maternal overweight cannot be rectified during pregnancy; the rest cannot be altered at all. According to M.J. Stephenson, there have been only four randomized trials of diet or diet and insulin. All were flawed and taken together achieved a reduction in birth weight of 87 g, a benefit "of questionable clinical significance" (Stephenson 1993). A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE CARE IN PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH also lists insulin and diet therapy for GD under "Forms of Care Unlikely to be Beneficial."

Santini and Ales report results from a national trial that occurred in the early 1980's when some doctors at Cornell University Medical Center screened women for GD routinely and others did not. No differences in perinatal mortality, morbidity, LGA or macrosomia rates were found between screened and unscreened populations, but women in the screened population were more likely to have primary cesarean sections (19 percent versus 12 percent), more clinic visits, more fetal surveillance tests, and more prenatal hospitalization (Santini et al. 1990).

Non-randomized trials show that diet modification rarely works without severely limiting calories or the liberal or universal use of insulin. Even where it does work, only two studies of GD management reduced operative delivery or cesarean rates to reasonable levels, the main point of preventing macrosomia (Langer et al. 1994) (Coustan et al. 1984). In both studies, doctors knew which women were treated and which were controls. If they believed their therapy prevented macrosomia, which other work shows they did, this belief could well have influenced management decisions. A third study also reported similar cesarean rates in GD women and the total hospital population, but these were 27 percent and 25 percent respectively (Thompson et al. 1994).

As Santini and Ales' study suggests, not only does GD management offer little benefit, it confers risks, the gravest being a marked increase in cesarean section. The cesarean rate in a population of gestational diabetics cared for by midwives was 9 percent to 11 percent including women transferred to obstetric management, or about half the primary cesarean rate reported in populations managed by obstetricians in the same or an earlier time period (O'Brien et al. 1987). Goldman and colleagues reported that gestational diabetics had one-third more cesareans compared with a matched population with normal glucose tolerance, although birth weights were similar (Goldman et al. 1991). In another study, gestational diabetics were randomly assigned to insulin or standard treatment in the third trimester in an effort to minimize macrosomia. Insulin reduced LGA rates to 13 percent compared with LGA rates of 45 percent in the diet group and 38 percent in the group that refused randomization. Despite this, cesarean rates were 14 percent and 21 percent in the diet-treated groups versus 43 percent in the insulin-treated group, a difference attributed to transferring women on insulin to the high-risk service (Buchanan 1994).

Many doctors view high cesarean rates as a reasonable trade-off for preventing shoulder dystocia. This ignores that many shoulder dystocias occur in non-macrosomic infants (Keller 1991) and that the increase in cesarean rate for infants weighing over 4000 g has not improved outcomes (Boyd et al. 1983); not to mention the role typical obstetric management plays in causing shoulder dystocia.

Increased likelihood of cesarean is not the only risk of GD management. Insulin increases the risk of small-for-gestational-age babies and causes symptomatic hypoglycemic episodes (Langer et al. 1994) (Buchanan et al. 1994). Reducing calories by more than one-third in overweight gestational diabetics causes ketosis (Knopp et al. 1991). Finally, the poor predictability of the fetal weight estimates and surveillance tests doctors feel obliged to order, even the belief that GD is a high-risk condition, undoubtedly lead to countless unnecessary inductions and operative deliveries.

Few have noticed that the diagnosis and treatment of GD is a spectacular failure. A review article analyzes the OGTT, finds it worthless, and recommends continuing to use it to diagnose GD (Nelson 1988). After showing that current cutoffs fail to discriminate a group of women at high risk for macrosomia, obstetricians conclude in defiance of logic that they should lower the values or that insulin should be given to more women or that cutoffs should be chosen by fiat (Sacks et al. 1995) (Neiger et al. 1991) (Weiner 1988) (Tallarigo et al. 1986). Researchers take note that sonography to estimate fetal weight did no better than a coin toss at predicting macrosomia and recommended it anyway (Combs et al. 1993). Doctors find that rigid glycemic control did not improve infant outcomes and assume that means they should try harder (Hod et al. 1980). Goldman and colleagues, with similar birth weights but one-third more cesareans in the GD group, congratulated themselves on the success of their management (Goldman et al. 1991). The gestational diabetes literature reads more like ALICE IN WONDERLAND than science.

Still, midwives can winnow some grain from the chaff. Maternal weight has the strongest correlation with macrosomia rate; it makes sense to advise heavily overweight women to lose weight before becoming pregnant. Pregnancy makes extra demands on insulin production; to minimize the pressure, pregnant women should eat a diet low in simple sugars, high in complex carbohydrates and fiber, and moderate in fat. Moderate, regular exercise also improves glucose tolerance. Within the GD population lurk a few women who were either undiagnosed pregestational diabetics or who were tipped into true diabetes by the metabolic stress of pregnancy; a fasting glucose to screen for them might be prudent. And, of course, midwives already use strategies that help women minimize the likelihood of operative delivery or birth injury. Finally, to reduce the chance of neonatal hypoglycemia, the baby should be put to breast soon after the birth, especially if the baby is big, small, or the labor has been difficult.

Henci [sic] Goer is an ASPO-educator and doula. Over the past ten years , she has written numerous pamphlets and articles for childbirth professionals and expectant couples. In 1993 she received the National Association of Childbearing Centers Media Award, and in 1995 ASPO/Lamaze presented her with its President's Award in recognition of her book, OBSTETRIC MYTHS VERSUS RESEARCH REALITIES: A GUIDE TO THE MEDICAL LITERATURE. She also serves on CHILDBIRTH INSTRUCTOR MAGAZINE's Advisory Board.

Bibliography

Goer, H. OBSTETRIC MYTHS VERSUS RESEARCH REALITIES: A GUIDE TO THE MEDICAL LITERATURE. Westport: Bergin and Garvey, 1995.
"Gestational diabetes," INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CHILDBIRTH EDUCATION. 1991;6(4):1991.
"Gestational diabetes: It's Not What It Seems," CHILDBIRTH INSTRUCTOR. In press

O'Sullivan JB. and Mahan CM. Criteria for the oral glucose tolerance test in pregnancy. DIABETES 1964;13:278-285. [Ed. - No Abstract Available]
Hunter JS. and Keirse MJNC. GESTATIONAL DIABETES. In EFFECTIVE CARE IN PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH, Enkin M. Keirse MJNC, and Chalmers, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Oats JN. et al. Maternal glucose tolerance during pregnancy with excessive size infants. OBSTET GYNECOL 1980;55:184-186.
Catalano PM, et al. Reproducibility of the oral glucose tolerance test in pregnant women. AM J OBSTET GYNECOL 1993;169(4):874-881.
Harlass FE. Brady K. Read JA. Reproducibility of the oral glucose tolerance test in pregnancy. AM J OBSTET GYNECOL 1991;164(2):564-568.
Sacks DA. et al. How reliable is the fifty-gram, one-hour glucose screening test? AM J OBSTET GYNECOL 1989;161(3):642-645.
Watson WJ. Serial changes in the 50-g oral glucose test in pregnancy: implications for screening. OBSTET GYNECOL 1989;74(1):40-43.
Enkin M. et al. A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE CARE IN PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
O'Sullivan et al. The potential diabetic and her treatment in pregnancy. OBSTET GYNECOL 1966;27:683-689. [Ed. - No Abstract Available]
Pedersen JL. Molsted-Pedersen, and Andersen B. Assessors of fetal perinatal mortality in diabetic pregnancy: analysis of 1,322 pregnancies in the Copenhagen series 1946-1972. DIABETES 1974;23:302-305. [Ed. - No Abstract Available]
Pedersen J. "White Class-A-mild diabetes in pregnancy" and "Management of diabetic pregnancy and the newborn infant," in THE PREGNANT DIABETIC AND HER NEWBORN, 2nd ed. Baltimore: the Williams and Wilkins Co., 1977.
Karlsson K. and Kjellmer I. The outcome of diabetic pregnancies in relation to the mother's blood sugar level. AM J OBSTET GYNECOL 1972;112:213-220. [Ed. - No Abstract Available]
Stephenson MJ. Screening for gestational diabetes mellitus: a critical review. J FAM PRACT 1993;37(3):27-283.
Santini DL. and Ales KL. The impact of universal screening for gestational glucose intolerance on outcome of pregnancy. SURG GYNECOL OBSTET 1990;170(5):427-436.
Langer O. et al. Intensified versus conventional management of gestational diabetes. AM J OBSTET GYNECOL 1994;170(4):1036-1047.
Coustan DR. and Imarah J. Prophylactic insulin treatment of gestational diabetes reduces the incidence of macrosomia, operative delivery, and birth trauma. AM J OBSTET GYNECOL 1984;150(7):836-842.
Thompson DM. et al. Tight glucose control results in normal perinatal outcome in 150 patients with gestational diabetes. OBSTET GYNECOL 1994;83(3):362-365.
O'Brien ME. and Gilson G. Detection and management of gestational diabetes in an out-of-hospital birth center. J NURSE-MIDWIFERY 1987 Mar/Apr;32(2):79-84. [Ed. - No Abstract Available]
Goldman M. et al. Obstetric complications with GDM. Effects of maternal weight. DIABETES 1991;40(Suppl 2):79-82.
Buchanan TA. et al. Use of fetal ultrasound to select metabolic therapy for pregnancies complicated by mild gestational diabetes. DIABETES CARE 1994;17(4):275-283.
Keller JD. et al. Shoulder dystocia and birth trauma in gestational diabetes: a five-year experience. AM J OBSTET GYNECOL 1991;165(4 Pt 1)928-930.
Boyd ME, Usher RH, and McLean FH. Fetal macrosomia: prediction, risks, proposed management. OBSTET GYNECOL 1983;61(6):715-722.
Knopp RH. et al. Metabolic effects of hypocaloric diets in management of gestational diabetes. DIABETES 1991;40(Suppl 2):165-171.
Nelson RL. Oral glucose tolerance test: indications and limitations. MAYO CLIN PROC 1988;63(3):263-269.
Sacks DA. et al. Toward universal criteria for gestational diabetes: the 75-gram glucose tolerance test in pregnancy. AM J OBSTET GYNECOL 1995;172:607-614.
Neiger R and Coustan DR. Are the current ACOG glucose tolerance test criteria sensitive enough? OBSTET GYNECOL 1991;78(6):1117-1120.
Weiner CP. Effect of varying degrees of "normal" glucose metabolism on maternal and perinatal outcome. AM J OBSTET GYNECOL 1988;159(4):862- 870.
Tallarigo L et al. Relation of glucose intolerance to complications of pregnancy in nondiabetic women. NEW ENGL J MED 1986;315(16):989-992.
Combs CA. Singh NB, and Khoury JC. Elective induction versus spontaneous labor after sonographic diagnosis of fetal macrosomia. OBSTET GYNECOL 1993;81(4):492-496.
Hod M. et al. Gestational diabetes mellitus: a survey of perinatal complications in the 1980's. DIABETES 1991;40(Suppl 2):74-78.

My thanks to Veronica for posting this...

2008-07-15T14:19:00.000-07:00

At Least 12 Babies Die in Glaxo Vaccine Trials in Argentina

Trading Markets provides news of interest to investors: On July 10, it reported that at least 12 babies, who were test subjects in a clinical trial testing GlaxSmithKline's pneumonia vaccine, in Argentina died. (see below)

According to the Argentine Federation of Health Professionals, or Fesprosa, the pharmaceutical giant uses children from poor families, who are"pressured and forced into signing consent forms. This occurs without anytype of state control" and "does not comply with minimum ethicalrequirements."

Pediatrician Ana Maria Marchese, who works at the children's hospital in the provincial capital where the studies are being conducted, was highly critical: "because they can't experiment in Europe or the UnitedStates, they come to do it in third-world countries."

Indeed, "Colombia and Panama were also chosen by GSK as staging grounds for trials of the vaccine against the pneumococcal bacteria." But one of the lead Glaxo-paid investigators, pediatrician Enrique Smith, is quoted stating: "Only 12 have died throughout the country, which is a very low figure if we compare it with the deaths produced by respiratory illnesses caused by the pneumococcal bacteria."

Since 2007, 15,000 babies have been subjects of the trial, so the death rate in the trial is 1 in 1,250. Question is, would they have died had they received antibiotics and not been in the trial? Fesprosa complained that the parents are pressured, and trial "occurs without any type of control..."If "the trials were authorized when Enrique's brother, Juan Carlos Smith, was provincial health minister" the legitimacy of the trial isquestionable, at best.

The world is bearing witness to the moral dissolution of corporate influenced medicine--a pediatrician is sanguine about the death of 12 babies in a clinical trial, claiming it is "a very low figure..."

This profit-driven culture has derailed medicine from its traditional ethical principles, rapidly converting into a ruthless commercialenterprise.

This medical tragedy is widely disseminated on internet blogs but ignored by the press--Why ????????????????????? Contact: Vera Hassner Sharavveracare@ahrp.org212-595-8974 http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/1750553/

Another perfect example of our screwed up priorities...

2008-07-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

This is unbelievable!

http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/sendler.asp

There recently was a death of a 98 year old lady named Irena.

During WWII, Iliana, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist.

She had an ulterior motive…

She KNEW what the Nazi’s plans were for the Jews, (being German).

Iliana smuggled infants out in the bottom of her tool box she carried, and she carried in the back of her truck a Burlap sack, (for larger kids).

She also had a dog in the back, that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in, and out of the ghetto.

The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog, and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.

During her time and course of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.

She was caught, and the Nazi’s broke both her legs, and arms, and beat her severely.

Iliana kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out, and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard.

After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it, and reunited the family.

Most of course had been gassed.

Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes, or adopted.

Last year Iliana was up for the Nobel Peace Prize....

She LOST.

Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.

Check it out: http://www.irenasendler.org.

Argh!

2008-07-09T06:02:00.000-07:00

This is seriously a frightening concept. I could go on and on about all the things I think are wrong with this. Comments?

On the Subject of Freebirthing or Unassisted Birthing

2008-07-08T13:57:00.000-07:00

There was an article about freebirthing posted in the UK (here) and this comment was one of the ones I found in response to it:

I can tell you what might have gone wrong.

I had a trouble free pregnancy, expecting a second baby with no health problems or suspected complications. As it happened, I went into labour twelve weeks early and my son's lungs had not fully formed. Immediately after birth, he went into respiratory distress and would have died if I had been 'freebirthing'.

Comments like this always make me want to pull my hair out and scream in frustration. How does an anecdote like that even make any sense? What woman in her right mind would purposefully try to birth a baby at home twelve weeks early, midwife or not? Comments like this I think are meant to show the base ignorance of freebirthers but all they really do is demonstrate the amazing inability for the commenter to think rationally. It disturbs me how the vast majority of people that hear about freebirth think that we are all idiots. Women do not choose freebirth because they want an adrenaline rush or because they desire to push the envelope. Women and their families who choose freebirth do so because they believe it is the safest option for them. They don't just wake up one morning and say "Ah, I think I'll play Russian Roullette with this one!". I have met only a very few ill-prepared freebirthers. I've probably spoken with thousands of "mainstream" birthers that are ill-prepared about birth/pregnancy and wholly ignorant of the process. Most of the women I know who choose to freebirth do so after hours upon hours of research and experience. We don't come this decision lightly and most of us have a much better than average understanding of how birth works. I have known freebirthers with more birth-knowledge than their midwives! I certainly had far more knowledge about normal birth than the first ob I ever had. I'm not suggesting I could perform surgery, of course, he was obviously far more qualified than I will ever be for such a task. But natural pregnancy/labor, normal variations and, I was appalled to discover, *female anatomy* were something he was grossly lacking an education in. (He actually tried to tell me that the excruciating, debilitating pain in my *symphesis* was "just pressure on my cervix". That really frightened me, considering they weren't even in the same location!) I certainly had an extreme experience with that idiot but my point still stands. Those of us that choose to "risk" birthing at home without a paid attendant aren't generally stupid, ill-informed or foolish. I don't know *anyone* that would stay home with a 12week early baby. That kind of assumptions being made about the freebirth movement makes me want to ask people if vapidity was a class they took in high school. That wouldn't be very nice, though.

Ok, that's just not cool

2008-07-05T10:24:00.000-07:00

So I signed up for AdSense as I can use any extra money I can get.

The add at the top of my page says "Homebirth: Studies show it's not as safe as hospital birth".

This is an official disclaimer...I don't endorse the adds. THAT add is bullshit. Sorry. Studies do NOT show that, in fact, studies show homebirth for healthy women and children to be as safe, if not safer than hospital birth. Period. Don't believe me? Do some research! :)

On Faith rather than Religion

2008-07-05T09:17:00.001-07:00

I had a thought and wanted to jot it down before I forgot all about it.

Many of us seek God looking for the BIG experience. We figure, somehow, that we must see something amazing, all compelling or *feel* something mind-blowing. Much like a young lover thinks real love is found in the breathless butterflies in her tummy.

But I was thinking about this as I was doing dishes. I feel mind-blown whenever I think about my Creator. I feel absolutely certain of the Presence of that Awesome Being in my life whenever I think to look for it. I can see it everywhere, in everything. But it was a slow wooing. Most of my life, I was looking for that "knocked off the donkey, *Pow* straight to the moon!" experience. I went to revivals, teen conferences, big "Holy Roller" concerts. And yeah, I got that "high" that you get when you're at a place like that; all fired up and excited. But much long any romance, the high fades, the honeymoon comes to an end and then...what?

For me, it was learning *where to look* for that mind-blowing realization that I AM is here. Our God does should not NEED to cause foods, burn down entire towns or do things that jar us into shocking reality. Instead, he prefers to woo us like a young lover woos his bride.

In the scripture, we see evidence of him doing massive, supernatural, often catastrophic things. We might be tempted to see him only as a jealous, wrathful God because when it finally comes down to Him desparately trying to get our attention, we stiff-necked, arrogant, blind people don't SEE anything else. It's like the teenager that needs to get his ass kicked because everything else that's been tried just isn't getting through! But every single day we see evidence of the other sides of his nature. There is not a single thing you can look at, a person you can behold or a concept you can wrap your mind around that doesn't, in some way, point right at him. We want fireworks, we want butterflies in our tummy. When we get them, we accuse God of being wrathful, brash, or even evil. But every day, all around us, is evidence of his enormous, incomprehensible beauty. His awesome majesty is on display everywhere we look. Maybe what we really should be asking ourselves is: What gives me those butterflies? Are the butterflies from jumping around with thousands of other people, getting a contact high off of our own excitement? Are the butterflies from seeing fire and brimstone? Do we feel truly trusting and confident in our faith *only* in the face of what we perceive to be a miracle?

When I was a teenager, I fell (briefly) in love with this other teenager I volunteered at a summer camp, with. My previous boyfriend and I were a joke, we broke up. I never felt anything at all for him except some silly, girlish pride that *someone* had noticed me. But with Josh (for that was his name) noticed me we just...clicked. We connected. Oh the butterflies in my belly kept me awake at night. I was excited at times I could scarcely breath. Like Cinderella, I thought, "So this is love..."

Ha. HA.

Well, that ended suddenly (thought not badly and not by our choice) and life went on. That year was the same year I had just met the man I would marry. I realized it a few months after my relationship (if you can call it that) ended with Josh. I knew it as certainly as I know the sun rises in the morning. I was his wife...futurely. That was...um...12 years ago? 13? Something like that. The point is that it was a long time ago, lol. It will be nine years of marriage in December. The butterfly feeling only lasted for like, a year. It went away.

It was replaced by something wholley undefineable. Something so deep, so true and so unbelievably *quiet* that some people never find it. We have fireworks from time to time. But in the "quiet" times, that's when the REAL thing comes out. In the hard times, the "OMG LIFE FRIGGING SUCKS KILL ME NOW" times is when I know, deep inside of myself that THIS is love.

And that is how I feel about my relationship with God. When I was a teenager, Big Conventions were how I got my "spark". Now I get it in m quiet walks in the morning, looking around me and seeing and feeling Him as a presence that is too big for me to see. It's real, it's there and no, I don't spend all of my time wanting to spring to Africa on Missions trips. I don't bounce around wanting to stuff Jesus in everyone's face and save everyone. I'm human, after all, and sometimes I don't think outside of myself much at all. But the real faith, the real relationship is much, much more than I could have imagined as a child. I don't touch people and see them suddenly healed (and that's awesome, I'm not sayign it doesn't happen or isn't real). I have never been instrumental in raising someone from the dead. I've never heard God's voice audibly and I have never spoken in tongues. Those things are all powerful manifestations of the Spirit, but they are not the be all and end all, as Paul teaches. No, it's being STILL and KNOWING that HE is God.

That is the True Love Romance of a relationship is God Almighty.

Fantastic Statement

2008-07-01T07:23:00.001-07:00

Reading Carla Hartley's blog this morning I found this absolutely fantastic statement:

"The enormous potential that midwives have to make a difference in the world is not by how many babies they catch, but by how many women they encourage to trust birth and embrace their rights and responsibilities as birthing women with confidence and joy."

YES. I would have commented directly to her blog but I can't seem to figure out how to do that.

A rant about submission and birth

2008-06-30T13:00:00.000-07:00

I got involved in a lengthy discussion a while back about submission in marriage with regards to birthing choices. It's something that I've given a lot of thought to and I find myself repeatedly frustrated with the common views on this subject among believing women. As someone who doesn't attend a shul and who is not part of any specific believing community, I forget sometimes that not everyone sees things the way I do!

I cannot speak for the non-judeo-christian faiths that espouse submission in marriage (woman to man, of course) as I have no experience within that framework. I can, however, speak from a judeo-christian backround so that's the perspective I'll be working from.

It seems to be the common teaching, subconscious or no, that submission in marriage means that the husband has the final say-so in everything. I've met many upon many women that carry this right into the birthing room and into other areas related to it. I have met several women that chose not to breastfeed because their husband thought it was gross. I have met women that have allowed their husbands to choose FOR them, against their better judgement, where and how they will birth. Upon speaking out against this mindset, I usually get lambasted by someone that feels it's unchristian or that if "as long as he isn't leading you into sin, you must do what he says".

Well, obviously, I take issue with this sentiment. It may come as a surprise to some, but so does my husband. I prefer to take a different look at things. I look through the scriptures and I see no basis for this belief. The husband is the "head" of the wife in the same token as our literal heads sit on top of our bodies. But that head is nothing without the heart and the heart is nothing without the head. There is no actual difference in their significance or importance; they are part of ONE body. I think the goal of a marriage is to learn how to be ONE body.

It truly disturbs me how many women just blindly perpetuate this idea! I look at it this way: How on earth can I expect my husband to BE head of my "body" if I expect him to *also* be the heart? Brains do not have muscles in them for pumping blood. If my heart suddenly decided to stop working and expected the brain to do the pumping, I'd be dead in a matter of seconds. The brain, in the same token, cannot shut down and expect the heart to take over; what would occur would be absolutely disastrous on the body.

I don't think most women look at it this way but I do think this attitude stems from the pervasive idea that women are the cause of the fallen nature as a whole. This is an idea that has been perpetuated by the church and it truly sickens me. Culturally this is just pounded into our heads from the time that we are small. Eve is the one that ate the apple first. It was her fault. Because of that, giving birth is supposed to be painful so that we can all be punnished for ever after because of that woman's sin. Girls are born dirty and they make the mother dirty. It goes on and on and on and on and there is NO scriptural basis for this at all.

Eve certainly fell into temptation first but when Adam tried to blame it on her, what happened? Where in scripture do we see his blame-game being rewarded with anything but further judgment? And yet, the same people that taught me that insisted that Eve must suffer because man's fall was her fault! That doesn't work!

And what about this suffering that Eve and the rest of us were supposedly cursed with? In the Hebrew, the word that is used to describe her travail in labor is the SAME word that is used to describe Adam's hardships in the field, growing food. Stange how in the English, it's not translated that way. Adam works hard but the WOMAN suffers excrutiating pain. Hmmmmm. Something is not adding up here. I know, I know, questioning the King James translation is a sure-fire way to make me unpopular. Unfortunately, my quest is for truth, not acceptance. The hard reality is that the scripture speaks of hard work, effort, sweat, blood, things that require endurance and perseverance. But our "curse" as women was not for birth to be something horrific or terrifying. It was the same curse given to men, it just applied to our personal area of autonomy. Giving birth is not a curse. Rather, it is an unbelievable gift. God did not give us something that sacred and precious only to turn it sour. No, instead, He designed it to take effort. It must be something that required soul-searching and trust in ourselves, Him and our mates. It is NOT something that is to be subjugated by our husbands.

The truth as I see it is that it is seemingly heretical to recognize the power that lies within each woman. I have met more women offended by this idea of empowerment than I have men. Many women seem to have this idea that if you allow yourself to become empowered, it means that you are a man-hating, rebellious Jezebel. It doesn't have to be that way.

As a wife that believes in (biblically) submitting to her husband, I say NO. There are some things that I am not required to "submit" about because they are things that should never, EVER be an issue. Only in a twisted society would the question of "how to submit to my husband about birth" ever be an issue.

I'm not suggesting that women should just shut their husbands out of the birth entirely or that women should just ignore their husand's imput. That would not be fostering trust or acting as one body. But just as the head trusts the feet implicitly to get it from point a to point b, a husband needs to trust his wife in the things she was meant to shine in. It's ridiculous for a Christian woman to expect her husband to make choices like wether or not to breastfeed FOR her. Last time I checked, women had breasts and men did not. It is ludicrous for a man to make any kind of *demand* on his wife with regards to birth and expect her obedience!

I think what bothers me the most is this idea that women are children. I dont' think most of us, men or women, realize that really, that's what has been being taught to us. The scripture's Hebraic depictions of submission are filled with images of positive opposition. This means a woman who is confident in herself and leans into her husband in a complimentary fashion, while he leans into her, and in so doing, support each other! If a man is expected to make his wife's God-given choices FOR her, that's tipping the balance.

As women we must look at birthing as our responsibility. Our husbands/mates/partners bear a heavy burden of their own and it is completely unfair to just hand over our power, too. Yes, I said power. Women absolutely have power. Women are amazing creatures and it's ok to accept that and be proud of it. There is nothing wrong with a strong, confident woman. Strength is not synonomous to rebellion. Strength and confidence are not pride and haughtiness, either. They are good things! The incredible gift of bringing forth life was given to us women. There is absolutely no shame in grabbing that with both hands and making it ours.

My husband's description of our first birth was that it was "cool". He just didn't have much to say about it until much later, when we were planning a uc with our second child. He then confided to me that it was really stressful because he was basically, lovingly, shoved into a corner and was utterly helpless to be involved in any real way until our daughter plunked out and he could finally hold her, hours later (this was a midwife assisted hospital birth). After our uc, however, he told me that birth was like a drug. It was an utterly mystical, amazing, fantastic experience and he really looks forward to doing it again. His willingness to step back and let me be WOMAN when it came to birthing allowed us both to revel in the glory that is birth. He trusted me and I trusted him and it turned into an incredible dance that we just got lost in together. It's amazing what having free reign to BE a woman has done for our relationship!

Ladies, embrace your unique power as a woman. That is not sin, it's not prideful. It's a precious gift and we need to share it!

This man deserves an applause

2008-06-29T07:14:00.001-07:00

As many of you have heard, ACOG and the AMA have really stepped in it, both writing reccomendations to introduce legislation making out of hospital birth illegal. (For more information, try here,http://www.acog.org/from_home/publi

cations/press_releases/nr02-06-08-2.cfm , and here ,http://www.aolcdn.com/tmz_documents/0617_ricki_lake_wm.pdf .

Rixa's blog is a very good place to get a good overview of what is going on : http://rixarixa.blogspot.com/

Anyway, this was written by an OB/GYN (Dr. Fischbein) who is also a member of ACOG, regarding their recent statement. I seriously want to kiss this man. Please read this!

Douglas H. Kirkpatrick, MD
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
PO Box 96920
Washington, DC 20090-2188

Dear Sir:
I am a practicing OB/ GYN in southern California and Fellow of ACOG and recently was informed by midwife colleagues of your recommendation and encouragement for the AMA to lobby Congress for a law banning out of hospital birth. Funny that I had to hear of this decision from outside sources and was never approached by my college to see how I or my local colleagues felt about it. I have grave concerns regarding my organization taking such a stand. I think we are all agreed that ACOG has a statement regarding patients' rights to informed consent and informed refusal. Yet, it seems with every decision our organization moves further away from that basic tenet. ACOG's little "guideline" paper on VBAC in 2004 where the word readily was changed to immediately has had the chilling effect of doing away with VBAC options at hundreds if not more hospitals. Not due to patient safety, or the ideal of giving true informed consent but really, let's be honest, to fear of litigation. I have seen how patients have become counseled by obstetricians at facilities where VBAC has been banned. They are clearly given a skewed view of the risks of VBAC but rarely told of the risks of multiple surgeries. If you think this is untrue you are, sadly, out of touch with real clinical medicine.

As to out of hospital birthing, please give me the courtesy of an explanation as to the data you used and the process by which an organization which is supposed to represent me came to this conclusion. Any statement saying that it is as simple as patient safety and that one-size fits all hospital birth under the "obstetric model" of practice should be applied to all patients is, putting it nicely, not really in line with what best serves all our patients. In many instances, hospitals are not safe, certainly not nurturing and have a far worse track record for disasters than home birth. Even when emergency help is nearby this is true. The focus of all of us in medicine should be on reigning in trial lawyers and tort reform and lobbying Congress for that. The best interest of the college members and the patients we serve would be for my organization to spend its time and energy on something that has true benefit. Removing choices from well-informed patients and caring doctors and midwives is wholly un-American.

So please send me detailed information on how ACOG decided outlawing home birth was a wise thing to do. You must have scientific data to take such a drastic stand. Please make it available to me so that I may share it with like-minded colleagues. I would also like to know the process by which this came to pass. Who first raised this issue and why? What committee reviewed all the data and did its due diligence in interviewing those of us with long-standing experience in backing midwives who perform out of hospital births. There must be a fine, non-confidential paper trail you can share with your members. Specific names of committee member who voted for this would be enlightening and I am requesting this information. I would like to know the background and expertise regarding out of hospital birth for each member who had a hand in the decision to go to the AMA.

We live in an odd era where once something is said or recommended by a legitimate organization such as ACOG it has deep ramifications never intended such as becoming fodder for trial lawyers trying to squeeze the lifeblood and dignity out of your members. Or forcing women to travel hundreds of miles in labor to find a supportive facility. Or even worse, to have them arrive in a VBAC banned hospital and refuse surgery. Can this be the best we can do for our patients? Remember, your VBAC statement was meant to be only a recommendation but quickly became the rule by which hospital administrators, risk managers and anesthesia departments of smaller hospital banned this option for thousands of women. An option, that in proper hands, was the safe and accepted standard of care for 30 years. In fact, you still have an ACOG VBAC brochure that recommends this option! For those of us working at smaller hospitals where VBAC was banned due to lack of emergency help (anesthesia, OR crews, etc.) there is a big question that has perplexed us that no administrator seems to be willing or able to answer. That question is: "If a hospital cannot handle an emergency c/section for VBACs, and most emergency are for fetal bradycardia, hemorrhage (ie. abruption) or shoulder dystocia not for ruptured uteri, then how can they do obstetrics at all?" For they seem to still be able to have a maternity ward without in house anesthesia. Will someday ACOG, in their great wisdom but seeming disconnect from reality, make a "recommendation" that little hospitals stop providing obstetric services? Will this better serve women and their communities throughout America?

I am frightened and angered by what you have done in my name. Now I ask you to defend your position in encouraging the AMA to lobby Congress for another restriction on the freedom of choice that belongs to women and their families. Those choices include midwifery and the right to have the most beautiful and life changing event occur wherever best fits their desire. Midwives are well trained and required to have obstetrical backup. They have very special relationships with their patients and want the very best outcomes for them. They do not need me or you to police them. We have a habit inour country over the past 40 years of thinking we can legislate out stupidity. All that has done is erode the individual freedoms that belong, by birthright, to each of us. I would hope you trust your Fellows to know their specialty, their colleagues, and what is best for the patient as an individual. These decisions do not belong to politicians or faceless committees. You should have more faith in your members to give balanced informed consent. Again, my recommendation to you is to put all your considerable energy into changing our legal malpractice system. Those of us actually practicing medicine and caring for patients know this to be the greatest threat to the mission and responsibility we have chosen to undertake.

I look forward to your response and possibly the beginning of a meaningful dialogue.

Sincerely,
Stuart J. Fischbein, MD FACOG
Medical Advisor, Birth Action Coalition

A first post

2008-06-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

I have wanted a blog for more focused writing that I don't mind having public for a while. I just haven't gotten around to committing myself to it. Well, here I am. What will the subjects of my writing be? Oh, I'm sure it will vary greatly! I'm not sure what my primary focus will be, yet. Definitely you will hear discussions of birth, breastfeeding, loving and all around living. Likely you'll hear about cows and baby-butts, too.