ElementalMom

By way of Geoff Arnold, this old gem. Makes me teary-eyed every single time I hear it. I cannot believe the BBC is bleeping it, but hey… at least it gets noticed.

http://geoffarnold.com/?p=1843

Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War by Joe Bageant. 2007, Crown Publishers. 267 pages of sheer rampaging depression upon a backdrop of a subtly pounding headache you weren’t quite sure you had, but are now mainlining excedrin to try to relieve, unsuccessfully.

How’s that for the opening of a book review?

I was ranting to Beverly, our dock neighbor, about the hell my parents are going through, learning the lumps of the American Lack-of-Medical-System while it slowly murders my stepfather, the Bear, by inches. This isn’t something I’ve blogged about a lot, mostly because a great deal of the pain involved is way too close to the vest, and a bit much to discuss out loud in public. But sometimes, like this last week, where the Bear was in two different surgeries and several different dialysis treatments and not a little bit of psychological abuse, designed, as far as I can tell, to both dehumanize him and compel obedience, I was done with holding my act together, and had started ranting to poor Beverly, who simply had the misfortune to be the first person who noticed that I looked like crap.

She handed me Bageant’s book. And walked away. So in I went, as much for a hit of bibliotic escapism as anything else. And found myself being drug backwards through my very own history and background, through the socio-ethnic matrix that explains what the hell makes Americans capable of so much atrocity, so much mindless hatred, such willful, blind ignorance.

Page after ugly yet totally honest page, I found myself nodding, connecting the dots right along with Bageant, squirming uncomfortably, thinking “yeah, I’m related to those people.” Pretty horrifying moments for someone who thinks of themselves as a humanistic liberal. Apparently, there-but-for-the-grace-go-I. As a nation, we are either super-wealthy and utterly heartless, or we are overworked, sick, and incapable of reading well enough to string two original thoughts together. I finally understand how we could possibly have elected Bush twice. I finally have a window that makes a little sense into the fundies who are so sucked into the vision of the Rapture that they’re blowing the shit out of everything.

While I was writing this, my Mom called to tell me about a mutual acquaintance of ours, who after an 18-year career as a Sheriff in a small town, is tired of getting screwed over, tired of living paycheck-to-paycheck, tired of realizing that his family is up to their neck in debt again, after already filing bankruptcy once. So he’s signed up as a consultant to a heartless megacorp I won’t even name, to go teach Iraqis how to be police officers. I suppose the fact that he’s lived in the desert all his life, surrounded by nothing but lily-whites and Indians somehow qualifies him to pass along techniques that will work in the cradle of civilization. ::shrug:: It gets him away from his family for a year at a time, makes excellent money, and buys them another lease on their debt-go-round. Somehow, this exemplifies to me every last thing that’s wrong with the whole damn system.

I guess it feels so much worse, Bageant’s writing, because I’m at a stage right now where 3/4 of everything I say to people makes them tilt their heads and change the subject. EC, babywearing, extended breastfeeding were bad enough; now there’s homeschooling, food sensitivities, and living on a boat. The cesarean epidemic, global warming, godforbid I mention the political crisis in this country. Anyone who reads this blog knows that I have enough soapboxes for eight people. And that right there is the problem. Why am I one of the few people I know who either knows about this stuff, or bothers to get in a twist about it?

Many years and two vehicles ago, I had a bumper sticker that said “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” So much has changed since I got that, about me, my politics, my worldview. And it’s only gotten worse. I have no stickers on my car any longer. Back in my Humboldt-soaked treehugger youth, I had this idea that it was just that people were unaware of the issues, and all you had to do was talk to them, and they’d be on board.

Isn’t youthful naivete adorable?

Anyway, I really recommend the book for anyone who’s still, in their heart, baffled by how America got to be the way it is now. But I recommend you pick up a stiff drink to have along with.

OK, this totally cracked me up:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071212-pregnancy-tips.html

Karen Rosenberg, an anthropologist at the University of Delaware, said that the feature would have been naturally selected in humans at about the same time that bipedalism evolved, nearly five million years ago.

I am just dying, picturing all these cavewomen getting to a certain stage of pregnant, and just falling over and rolling like weebles. And then suddenly, some of them had stretchier spines and were able to get up and run away from the predators, while the others hung out like bait…

Another great post from Question the Culture: "I Ought“

My favorite line? "And here comes the ought: take the idea, make it a rule, a requirement, a standard for decent motherhood, citizenship and humanity, wrap it in a brick and beat myself with it."

Clearly, she reads my mind.

I haven’t had a good solid birth rant in a while. Sometimes, the Universe conspires to set me up for one, though.

Night before last, my fabulous pal Jessica invited me to a showing of The Business of Being Born, being hosted by UrbanCrunchyMama. I was really excited to be there, since other ICAN women had been seeing it, hosting screenings, and generally talking it over for a while, and I was looking forward to forming my own opinions.

More on those opinions in a bit.

We got back late, and while I was still reeling, the next day, working on this very blog post, the CDC released the preliminary statistics for cesareans in the US in 2006 (pdf).

Days like this, I wish alcohol was an option. Days like this, I wonder if the stress to the baby I’m gestating is worse than the impact of the glass of chardonnay I could hear calling to me.

31.1%, my friends. I can’t even type that without crying. 31.1% of babies in this country are ripped out of their mothers through an act of major abdominal surgery. More than one woman in three has this damned scar on her belly. And that’s an average. In some states (pdf) , it’s far higher. And you know what really sucks? Those numbers are still, even, low. In some states, cesareans for multiples (twins, triplets, etc.) are not included.

I am not even going to try to be balanced and rational about it at this point. If you want balanced and rational, stop reading.

Nothing has changed suddenly in the last 15 years about American womens’ pelvises. The only thing that has changed is malpractice insurance, and physician arrogance. Oh yeah, and women’s compliance. We just walk right in, when we find out we’re pregnant, we find an OB, and we let that person tell us what to do, because we have this blind, naive, stupid idea that they have our best interest in mind.

I just recently heard the story of a woman whose doctor told her that her baby was in distress, and not a few minutes later, overheard the nurses talking about how what was really happening was that the doctor had a new wife who demanded that he be home for dinner promptly at 6PM.

31.1 fucking percent. Women cut. Babies cut. Women and babies dying (pdf). Families disrupted. Biology disrupted. And oh, how the money rolls in to the pockets of the hospitals. I hope the shareholders are fucking happy, safely counting their earnings, drowning in blood and pain they never touch. How many Americans are enrolled in a 401(k) that includes shares in Kaiser or any of the other big “health” organizations? Go check your plan. Do it now.

So meanwhile, back to Business of Being Born…

I forget, sometimes, because I am so immersed in the politics of birth, how far I’ve come in the last five years. I was trying hard to keep my cynical mouth shut, with fairly limited success.

I found the portrayals of the births themselves to be fantastic. Women at home, moving, vocalizing, whining, complaining; doing all the things that real women really in labor do. The midwife had filmed her own birth, and she was the biggest whiner of the lot; a fact she admitted with no small degree of humor. I found myself indulging in some equally funny memories of my own homebirth, and chuckling.

It was really really nice to hear other people saying what we say in ICAN all the time, and get branded as being “bitter, hysterical, angry women” over; that American birth is dangerous, pathological, and all about the cash flow. That the lithotomy position is evil. That birth is a natural bodily function. That OBs are surgeons with no training in normal birth. That most medical professionals have never seen a normal birth. That when you start in with interventions, you are playing with mechanisms that are poorly understood, and that nothing good comes of it. A few times, I flat-out applauded.

I have to say though, that while the film is a great start, I am wildly disappointed by the end. And again, maybe that’s just because of where I am, and who I know, and how immersed I am in the whole birth thing. For those of you who haven’t seen the film, basically despite everything she’s seen in making the film, the director (Abby) opts for a classic American McPregnancy, early ultrasounds, OB care, the whole enchilada, and ends up with an emergency cesarean for a breech baby. Oh sure, there are some other complications, and I suspect that we’ll never know the whole story, nor should we necessarily have the right to. But what women are going to take away is that cesarean for breech is acceptable, and it isn’t.

Breech birth is a variation of normal. It has a few special techniques involved, that require some additional training to be able to manage correctly. But instead of simply acquiring that training, midwives who practice more in the medical model, and obstetricians, simply declare breech to be an automatic cesarean, and that’s that. I know a lot of very dedicated women (I’m talking about you, Christie!) who have dedicated themselves to fighting back the tide on this one, and Abby’s inclusion of this debacle in the film sets them all back, and hard.

One step forward, two steps back. Good news, a film about the insanity of American birth culture is getting attention. Bad news, it ends with an unnecessary cesarean. Good news, people are talking. Bad news, they’re talking about how great it is that Abby and her baby were saved. I could beat my head against the wall.

Abby was one of those 31.1 percent of women, cut in 2006. Face to the statistic. Just one out of so very many.

Things are incredibly ugly, financially, for my little family right now. Our house is on the market, and isn’t moving. Larry, our agent, tells us that’s not a problem, that we need to be patient, and just to hang on for a while. That despite all the media fearmongering, the market is not so much depressed, as just not insane like it’s been the last few years. That it’s gorgeous, that people are looking, and that in a little time, we’ll be looking at a sale agreement.

Nice, but in the meantime, we’re supporting the house, the boat, and five people, on my one income. Needless to say, the ends are not exactly meeting where they need to. I’m having to do the bill shell game, where you pay these four on time this month and short these four, then switch. And make a lot of grovelling phone calls.

One particular bill I’d been ignoring, started calling. I ignored them. They called four or five times a day. Since I didn’t have the money, I let the phone ring. But there’s the physical, visceral reaction; my heartrate sped up, my shoulders hunched, I blushed.

Classic shame, pure and simple.

I finally got sick and tired of it, and resolved to face the music. So I looked at the account the next paycheck, and you know how much I owed them? $250. You know how late the bill was? Less than 15 days. I called them, to do a pay by phone, and end the madness. The woman I spoke to was incredibly friendly, waived all the fees when I explained why the bill was late, and wished us great luck on the house sale.

The whole drama could have been avoided, had I faced up instead of cringing. I think about the days I spent wincing, and I am chagrined at myself.

I think it’s human nature to feel some degree of shame when you can’t make ends meet. It’s normal to be a little embarassed when you have to say “I just don’t have the money for that right now, can you be patient with me?” It’s not in the nature of creditors to be kind or patient or understanding. But you know, sometimes, creditors are staffed by people, and those people do sometimes have a heart. So here’s my thank you to all of them.