http://consciouswoman.org/2008/08/04/conscious-woman-of-the-month-august-2008/
Want to have your blood pressure raised? Want to realize yet again how incredibly lucky you are to have been born as you were? Read this month’s Conscious Woman article, about Dalit activist Manjula Pradeep.
http://midwiferyworld.com/?p=232
WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 16, 2008)—Just in time for Father’s Day, at its annual meeting last weekend, the American Medical Association (AMA) adopted a resolution to introduce legislation outlawing home birth, and potentially making criminals of the mothers who choose home birth with the help of Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) for their families.
I think what kills me about this is that if home birth is outlawed… what are they planning to do with the babies of the women who do it?
More news as it appears, and as soon as I have some concrete action to take, I’ll let y’all know.
La Leche League founder Edwina Froehlich died last Sunday. She was 93.
I am completely devastated. Edwina pretty much embodied everything I admire in an activist. And also proved that even if you come late to your passion, you can change the world.
My favorite article about her, so far, is the Chicago Tribune piece. Some tidbits:
In the 1940s, Mrs. Froehlich witnessed her older sister Pauline go through what were then standard hospital childbirth procedures: plenty of drugs, the use of forceps and no fathers allowed, said another son, state Rep. Paul Froehlich (D-Schaumburg). Her sister also was discouraged from breast-feeding.
“That experience led mom to seek a better way,” Paul Froehlich said.
Newspapers would not run stories or meeting notices that included the word “breast,” so the group used the Spanish word for milk, “leche,” for its name.
How fabulous is that? Smack into some stupid arbitrary rule, and work around it creatively. See what’s wrong with the world, and change it. Some other fun bits from the New York Times piece:
Edwina Froehlich,… was inspired to help found La Leche League to support breast-feeding after being told at the age of 35 that she was too old to make breast milk for her baby…
A pioneer on several fronts of motherhood, she worked for Young Christian Workers, a Roman Catholic lay organization, before marrying John Froehlich when she was in her early 30s. She had her first child a couple of years later, making her comparatively old to have a first child at the time, and she made the controversial decision to forgo giving birth in a hospital in favor of a more natural delivery in her Franklin Park, Ill., home, with an obstetrician attending.
“We used to tell the mothers the three main obstacles to successful breast-feeding were doctors, hospitals and social pressure,” Mrs. White said.
It is so hard to be an “older” mother. It’s so hard to stand up when the world wants to shame you for doing what’s biologically appropriate in birthing and feeding your offspring. Having had a cesarean with my first baby, and feeling that breastfeeding was at least something I could do right, it’s because of Edwina’s work that I was able, 2.5 weeks out from that cesarean, to participate in the Berkeley, CA Guinness World Record Breastfeeding event. It healed a lot of the “broken” feelings I was working through. Breastfeeding has also been a really good arena for me to use in my birth activism work, to show mothers how very wrong doctors can be about very basic things.
But at the time Edwina and her six cohorts (Marian Tompson, Mary White, Mary Ann Cahill, Mary Ann Kerwin, Viola Lennon, and Betty Wagner) got started with LLLI, breastfeeding in America was down to 20% of women. It’s not a whole lot better now, but without them to hold back the tide, who knows how much harder it might have been for me to get the support and encouragement I needed for this critical aspect of mothering?
So thank you, Edwina, for standing up for what you believed in, and making it that much easier for me to do so as well. You’ll be missed.
I‘m due to have this baby any time now.
It’s obvious if you know me and know my dates. I’ve been telling people “I’m having a Gemini”, so that’s a clear clue. And of course, I’m huge, so that’s a dead giveaway.
If even one more person asks me “haven’t you had that baby yet?” I’m gonna stick ‘em in the eye with a fork. Cause clearly, they aren’t actually using their eyes for, y’know, observation or anything. And that’s just the people I see in person. The oh-so-subtle “oh, I was just thinking of you and thought I’d call…” phone calls aren’t much better. I’ve put myself on self-imposed phone rest (like bed rest, but better), and made Jason answer the dratted thing.
I was pondering, this morning, as I awoke having yet again not gone into labor in the night, what it is that makes people get in such a hurry at the end of a pregnancy. It’s like at 36-37 weeks, the baby has to stay in, then at 38-39, everyone starts freaking out and being impatient. “Is it there yet? Is it there yet? Have you had it yet?” It sounds like little kids at Christmas. Or at the end of a road trip. Or… and it struck me… like people who are excited about an event, but have no actual work to perform to ensure said event comes off.
Think about it. Adults who are responsible for filling the gas tank, doing the auto maintenance, doing the trip planning, doing the driving, parceling out the snacks… they never ask “are we there yet?”… they just stare out the windows. Adults who are fully engaged with the holiday madness of shopping, party-having, cooking, planning, etc, always are startled by how fast the calendar moves, and wish for an additional week or two.
So here’s my solution. People who ask me if I’ve had that baby yet? Clearly, they haven’t enough to do. The next person who asks me that question gets invited to bring a casserole, do a load of dishes or laundry, handle the grocery shopping, or rub my feet (since helping actually gestate this little punkin is physiologically impossible). I figure if I start involving the rushers in the process, they’ll realize there’s so much going on, that clearly, they need to either pitch in fully, or maybe plan themselves a road trip.
Apparently, having a child in this culture means you are disabled. At least, that’s what HR thinks.
I spent about 45 minutes on the phone with the illustrious folks who administer these things last week. This is the third baby I’ve had while working, and thank goodness I kinda know what I’m doing, or it would have been ugly. Last time, I was all fired up about my VBAC, about fighting the birth machine, about making sure everyone and their dog knew that I was having a homebirth, by God.
This time? This time I just want to have my baby in peace. Course, that’s not the way it’s done in these parts…
“Who’s your OB” the chipper operator asks. I simply give her the name of my midwife; it’s easier than arguing.
“What hospital are you delivering at?” I simply give her the name of the only hospital in CA that I would consider setting foot inside. I’ve never actually been there, spoken to anyone there, or interacted with the place in any way, but they’re the only hospital that “allows” VBACs, so that’s my “in case of disaster” backup option. But it allows her to fill the blank in her form without the computer having fits.
“What’s your due date?” This one is a bit trickier. I don’t actually have a due date, for a lot of reasons, that mostly involve my cycle being all messed up from my miscarriage still at the time I conceived this baby. Besides, due dates are pretty bogus (my favorite discussion of this is here). Babies come when they come. If my boss is OK with me working straight up into contractions, if my coworkers are OK with this, then why do I have to… oh never mind. I pull a date out of thin air that’s more or less in the right range, and reaffirm that I can indeed switch the date around “if work requires it.” And that seems to be OK… if the demands of my job require my leave to change, that’s alright. So we’re set.
Because I’ve done this before, I am prepared for the gotchas. I’ve had two other babies in this timeframe, so I know what’s coming. I ask the HR person “so is that goofy rule about not being eligible for Performance Review if you’re on disability still in place?” She mumbles something, and goes to look it up. Sure enough, it is. So by virtue of the period of time for which I’ll be on leave, I will not be eligible for any of the perks that come with a good performance review. Luckily, I figured this out before. So I tell her, “OK, so I’ll contact you, go on vacation for the week of reviews, then back onto disability afterwards.” She gasps. No one has ever handed her this particular workaround before, but of course, other than being a paperwork hassle, it’s utterly valid. I do not make the rules, I just figure out how to work around them.
But I’m lucky; this woman is on the ball. “Oooh!” she says, “it’s the same stupid thing (her words!) for holiday pay too! So go off disability and onto vacation for July 3, so you get paid for July 4, then back on disability again!”. It’s always nice to have a collaborator on the inside.
So my paperwork is all set. I’m good to be considered Disabled by the State after giving birth to my child. But only for six weeks, mind, because I’m not that disabled. And that, my friends, is a whole other tirade.
I was extremely honored to be asked to provide a guest post on Rixa’s wonderful “True Face of Birth” blog recently. The post was a response to a comment-storm, generated by some people who were not prepared to see some pretty typical homebirther stuff online (although what they thought they’d see on a blog subtitled “Raw, Powerful, Ecstatic” is beyond me…)
Anyway, here’s my contribution to the fray, “Judgment, Fear, and Focus“.
A while back, before I had her permission to post, I wrote “Triumph” about Shaye’s birth. On Brighton’s one-month birthday, she’s now published the full birth story. It doesn’t show up well in firefox, so use IE. And prepare to be amazed. A few of my personal fave bits:
Way to go, Shaye. I am so so so proud of you, and of what you’ve accomplished. What a beacon of hope, what a trailblazer, to all the other women who are stuck where you were, and not sure how to get out. Because you did it, they’ll be able to see a path as well.
As usual, things are nutty in the birth advocacy world. It’s not worth going into the details, but recently, I was questioned by someone who basically said that because I was a mother of sons, not daughters, my birth advocacy work didn’t have the urgency that the work mothers of daughters had. You know, because my boys were never going to get subjected to what women here routinely do.
That part’s true. My sons will never be the direct physical victims of the physical, emotional, and mental abuse that passes for birth care in this country.
My sons, like their father before them, are likely to end up being helpless observers as the women they love are gutted like halibut. Woken up from a restless sleep in an uncomfortable chair to discover that other people have decided that it’s time to take your firstborn child by surgery. Completely discounted, completely marginalized, completely ignored. Here, put this surgical suit on; we’ll let you into the OR so you can see your wife’s intestines, smell her skin roasting when we do cautery, hold her hands when she starts convulsing, and have a moment of sheerest panic when we take the baby to the nursery; here, decide on a dime who needs your presence more, your helpless newborn or your helpless wife. Try really hard not to guilt yourself for either decision, but do so anyway.
My sons, like their father before them, will head home with a woman who underwent a surgery that everyone minimizes. Who is a shell of herself. Whose world was ripped apart and reassembled with vicodin and steri-strips. And they will be looking at between a year and as many years as the rest of her life, wondering when they get the woman they married back. And in the meantime, if she’s lucky, she’ll figure out that it’s the system, not her, and get her act together. If she’s not lucky, she’ll spend her days sitting in a rocker pulling on her hair, trying to figure out what’s wrong with her. Maybe she’ll get medicated, maybe she won’t. And my sons will be there, trying to deal with that and a newborn, and wondering where it all went wrong, and powerless to do a damn thing about it.
I have nothing to worry about. I’ll just be the mother in law, watching the impending train wreck, with no way to get in there and be useful to prevent … anything.
Friends… my urgency is huge. And there’s not nearly so much time as we think. In the time since advocacy groups began howling about the rate of cesareans, ours here in the US has skyrocketed from 5% to just over 31%. At that rate… by the time my sons are having children, my scenario is far more likely than the chance that the mother of their children will have a normal birth.
I could get lucky. They could hook up with women who know the score, who know how to fight, who are strong enough to have a normal birth. And of course I wish that for them with all my heart. But you know… *I* didn’t know any better. And in the years I’ve been doing this birth advocacy thing, I have met all kinds of women who are the sorts of women who could love, cherish, and honor my sons, who didn’t know any better. Not the first time, at any rate. Sometimes not even the second or third, and by that point, the fight to birth normally is insanely difficult, and uphill every step of the way, in the snow, both directions. I can’t assume my boys will hook up with women who are birth advocates. I have to assume they’ll be normal women, having normal lives, who are unaware of the monster of US obstetrics.
I can pray that I’ll have a relationship with them based on respect and support, and that maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll have earned the right to be involved in their process. It does happen; I myself have a wonderful MiL. But I can’t assume that.
Which means that I have serious work to do, on behalf of all women. And there simply isn’t much time.
This link, from the inestimable Raquel:
http://www.consciouswoman.org/2008/04/01/conscious-woman-of-the-month-april-2008/
I knew about Tatia; when cesarean activism is your thing, you start seeing a lot of maternal mortality. And in ICAN’s world, cytotec is considered to be nothing short of the most evil chemical in the world. All my admiration goes out to Maddy and the work she’s doing.
My friend S gave birth today. Her little boy came into this world surrounded by family, touched first by people who love him, quietly, smoothly, beautifully. The details of the story are hers to tell, and hopefully I’ll be honored enough to link to them sometime soon.
Four months ago, S believed she could not have this kind of birth. She’d had two cesareans. She lived in a state where midwifery is illegal. Her best option was to resign herself to planning the best cesarean possible.
But S is strong. And she asked questions. A lot of questions. And in three short months, pulled together a birth plan that involved things like respect, and privacy, and having her two other children present. It also involved driving across entire states, and finding midwives who viewed two prior cesareans as a failure of the system, not a failure of S’s body. And it involved S and her husband having the faith, and the strength, and the endurance, and the foresight, to question an entire paradigm that was pushing on them harder than it pushes on most people, throwing up barriers that stop most people from getting the birth they want.
So when I tell you that her birth was completely without incident, that it all went off without a hitch, and that today, S is not a recovering surgical patient, she’s a woman who claimed her power and changed everything by sheer determination, those of you who daily see what the birth machine does to women in this country will understand why I got off the phone with her, and cheered and danced around and cried a little and did it all again some more. Such a small thing, such a simple birth, such a miracle that it ever got the chance to happen like it did.
So here’s to S, her husband, and their family. Yours is the story that tells me there’s hope of being able to topple the birth machine. You had your normal, quiet birth against insane odds, despite stupid laws, around ridiculous constraints. But you did it. And nothing will ever stop you ever again.
UPDATE: Shaye’s birth story is now live, here.