Monday, October 23, 2006

first, do no harm

it is truly difficult for me to articulate my distaste at the odious and demeaning article that follows. the author is a pediatrician who is flabbergasted *and* preachy in response to the surprising news that some women may want to give birth naturally--yes, without anesthesia. read the whole thing here:

the mother lode of pain from the boston globe

here's an excerpt:

STILL, THERE WILL ALWAYS be people who want their pain. When I was a teenager in New Jersey, I endured an optional religious challenge called the atthai, an Indian Jain custom of fasting for eight straight days. The idea is that the people should dissociate from the material world, even from something as elemental as food. Accomplishing the painful challenge is something of an ego rush; the hunger artists are honored as members of a holy community. (I look back on this now with agnostic disbelief.)


Like prolonged fasting, enduring labor without anesthesia attracts notice. It casts the mother as a struggling heroine who - by sheer mental force - gracefully keeps her body under control...

In this setting, the pain of unmedicated labor offers up a formidable, if artificial, trial that precedes entry into a highly selective sorority. It creates drama. It captures attention.


Yet pain in the end is an utterly primitive thing, a vestige of insect and reptilian brains. It evolved primarily as a way to change behavior without need for thought - to force one's hand to pull away from fire or tend urgently to an injured limb. Thinking beings, in some sense, have evolved beyond pain. (Some pain reflexes continue even in brain-dead individuals.) If anything, reliance on pain to create meaning during childbirth indicates a constricted imagination.

now, when i read someone write about how we've evolved past pain i get edgy. cause i did read brave new world and i am not convinced that being pneumatic is all that grand of a promise. and you couple that with a man comparing the pain of labor to that of a hand in a fire or a broken bone, and i really am starting to think this guy is a pompous ass who hasn't figured out that telling women what they should or shouldn't do in birth went out with the beehive hairdo.

the startling dis-ease with which "western rationality" views the body, it's mystery and its raw primal power, especially in birth, comparing it to a pathological or crippled state, truly amazes me.

and i didn't realize they were still teaching misogyny in medical school.

both my births have been unmedicated. my first, i was a teenager in a hospital, and my last was at home, unassisted by any professionals.

to me, going unmedicated (and this REALLY is the case with my UC homebirth) is about respect for the process. why do runners choose to feel the pain of a marathon? why do tribal peoples have vision quests and rituals to mark life's changes? why in the world does anyone ever climb a mountain?

ritual/process are extremely important to me. we live in a world that tells us we can't do anything without help from something external to us (usually something we need to buy): medications, diets, new clothes, devices, etc. etc. etc. all developed by EXPERTS. i believe we are being crippled as a race by these messages and our startling willingness to acquiesce to them.

birth is just one example of how we have nascent, hidden, sacred knowledge and abilities planted like seeds in our physical bodies by evolution, and if we listen carefully and respect that ancient primal knowledge we can experience the transcendence possible in birth.

there is no telling a woman who has had a natural birth that she "can't" do anything, ever again. because she knows better. that in and of itself is a mighty good reason to suppress such experiences, from a male-dominated medical mindset.

for a brisk flurry of retorts, may i recommend this discussion at amity's by the derogated group in question--mothers who have experienced and actually advocate for natural birth?

http://www.amitymama.com/vb/amity-mama-market/318874-mother-lode-pain.html

and a longer thread where women share their feelings about the value of unmedicated natural birth is there too.

http://www.amitymama.com/vb/amity-mama-market/318958-spin-off-unmedicated-childbirth-what-did-mean-you.html

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

sibs

in these pictures jackson is reading rowan the card he made for her, which entailed an invitation to go to his dad's house (like mecca to her) with him and without me or latt, to jump on the trampoline and play together.

he was so tender and kind to her on her biorthday and he even let me take some pictures of him doing so.

she positively *delights* in him.

Posted by Picasa
jackson really looks older than 12, and i love how he's trying
to smile a bit (at my request) since i said this picture was
going to be for rowan's scrapbook. it was rowan's birthday
and she's in one of her many fancy dresses and she just adores jack. they are both growing up far, far too fast.

my relationships with my brothers seems a world apart from the ones my kids have. first, i was 6 years younger than rob, 7.5 years less than brent, and 11 years younger than scott. they moved in a sphere of reference almost completely segregated from my own. although the difference between rowan and jackson is 8.5 years, they have spent far more time together--even with jackson spending about half his time at his dad's.

i love how different my kids are. jackson is constantly looking for ways to get around, over, or under the rulebook--and rowan sees it as her duty in life to lead him back to thew path of righteousness in all things. he's shrewd and acerbically funny and smart in an out of the box kind of way, as stubborn and as strong as an ox, and she's always working for harmony and making connections and making compromises and dramatizing, and giving affection and love. they are both bound for happy lives but they are, as this picture shows so well, like light and dark sometimes. the interaction with someone so different has to be good for them both. Posted by Picasa

Sunday, October 15, 2006

a time to wean

i nursed rowan for 3 years, 364 days, and 15 hours, and it's over.

she nursed for the last time as i laid down with her the night before her fourth birthday. we had been planning this weaning for a while, and i had my fingers crossed that everything would go smoothly. what i wanted was an agreement between her and me--not a coerced weaning. so far, there have been no tears. for that i am so grateful.

it's been this way with both my kids now--jackson nursed for a couple moths past four, and weaned with no fanfare. i didn't even note his last time at the breast, and that was one reason i wanted to celebrate and document this milestone with rowan.





some pics from our last nursing. i told her how happy
i was and how grateful too to have mothered her and nursed her as a baby and toddler, and how excited i am to get to enjoy watching her growing into a little girl.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

a time to be born

Four years ago at this time I was in labor with Rowan. I thought I'd continue my time saving device of re-posting stuff and this is her birth story, written a few weeks postpartum.

Her birth was a great one. Very different from my first birth of my son 8 yrs before (this was harder) but still a good birth. It was my first homebirth/waterbirth, and was unassisted--by which I mean there were no health professionals present. The birth process was much longer than with my son. I had false labor a week before she was actually born for a full day. Then I started having contractions one Thursday morning, had them all day, and called friends (who were three hours away) at about midnight to start to my house, as contractions were at four minutes apart. As soon as they got to my house, contractions just fizzled. We all went to bed, thinking they would wake me up as they got strong again and that i needed rest. Woke refreshed and without contractions at 8:30 the next morning (Friday) . Cntrx were off and on all day, at times hard and coming closer together. Everyone left during that day and while they were gone I had great, strong, steady cntrx. Which fizzled away when visitors returned. Had some more good contractions that night. Then I got a good sleep and woke up again without them Saturday morning.

How frustrating!!! Had I been in a hospital I bet I would have been pressured to have some interventions. After all, my first birth (natural, vaginal) was only 18 hours from first bloody show until son was born, with textbook cntrx and progression through stages--10 hours of easy cntrx, six hours of hard work, and two hours of pushing.

I was so frustrated Saturday. I had one internal check with the help of my friend that afternoon...baby had moved way down and I was FINALLY dilated somewhat (though only between three and four--after 2.5 days of off and on cntrx). Everyone left again that afternoon and it finally hit me. I was having good cntrx when me and dh were together and touching each other but not when others were around!!! Duh...of course I should have noticed that by then but just hadn't. So we really worked together during that afternoon, just enjoying our last few hours of togetherness without a baby between us. Lots of massage and holding and sweetness. Just like magic...things really started moving.

My birth pool had been up for a week now and had been filled and emptied about ten times! Finally I got in it about 7 pm. I stayed there until the baby was born at 6 am the next morning.



Labor was very hard. Felt like she was sweeping very sharp fingernails inside my cervix, back and forth. I had a distinct feeling of this sharp swishing as I felt her move. She was still moving a lot even as she descended. I'lll never know but I guess there was some difficulty there...maybe she had her hand up by her face for a long time, or was posterior. Anyway the last five hours were extremely hard. With my son I was zen mama...meditated through transition and never made a sound. Not one. Thought I'd be the same way this time! Not a chance--I was moaning and groaning, very loud. It just felt good. My two girlfriends went to sleep about ten and that's when things really cranked up! I didn't want dh to touch me anymore and I was counting the stars on this Indian mandala tapestry I have, just to get through each cntrx.

I had dh wake my friends at about two, as I was starting to need more support and things were going very fast it seemed (not really). Finally about five am I was feeling very "pushy" and I reached inside (hadn't done that since getting in the pool) and I could feel the bag of waters bulging! As I had my hand there they POPPED like a cork out of a bottle. Everyone said my expression was priceless! After that things got a bit overwhelming. I could feel her head and within half an hour she was crowning. I just didn't feel like I was stretching! I wasn't having the experience I had seen so often in squatting births (I was up on my knees in the pool) where the vagina sort of telescopes or tunnels out as the baby's head is emerging. Instead it felt like I was open about three inches across and I could feel her head pushing down everywhere. I just felt she was way too big and I wasn't opening enough! I was scared for the first time during labor and it hurt like hell and I DID NOT WANT her head to come out! I just really believed I was going to tear from top to bottom. I was crying and saying I couldn't do it (to which my very wise friend said "you *are* doing it" in this awesome calm voice...) and that the baby was too big for me (to which the same friend said, "no, it's just the right size for your body"). There I was in the pool with my hands down there on the head and really making a lot of noise and arrayed in front of me were my two girlfriends and dh, who (poor thing) has never had a baby before and has never seen me say I couldn't do anything!!!

I just remember crying out, "OHH-HH," in this pitieous way to my friend, with this very beseeching look on my face--like take this cup from me! as I was trying to push. That was my most forlorn and desperate moment ever. Then I was feeling the head and those ridges on the top of it from being squeezed in the birth canal, and I actually thought I was feeling the cord! I knew it couldn't get pinched and restrict the baby's oxygen, so I just thought to myself, dammit, just push this baby out and you can get sewn up afterwards--it doesn't matter if you tear, just get this baby here safe! So I pushed like mad and the pain was MANY-HUED but there was the head, out at last! Then I just breathed and waitied for the next contraction, and out came the little slippery body quite easily, as I remembered with ds, and I lifted her above the water.

I still didn't know it was a girl b/c the cord was a bit short and I was holding her so I could only see her back...afraid to turn her over or put her to breast for fear of tugging the cord.The placenta came out with the next cntrx and then I saw that she was a she and put her to the breast and she was pink and so beautiful. I had thought I would call ds (8.5 yrs) in to see the birth but I was so crazy during pushing that i didn't want to. His dad (my ex) was spending the night there at our house to be Jack's special person...so they came in at this point and everything was so happy and wonderful.

Rowan Ts'eh (pronounced "say") was 21 inches, 8lbs. She is named for the Rowan tree, which in pagan lore was the origin of the first woman on earth. Ts'eh is a nickname for a character in Leslie marmon Silko's wonderful book Ceremony. In Pueblo myth, she is the grandmother spider who weaves the world by spinning her web of storytelling.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

r & r



we took jackson to play tennis for the first time and he really enjoyed himself. my favorite thing about these pictures is how perfectly they capture the *constant* motion that jackson really embodies. it was a pleasure to watch him on the court, because he has that kind of natural althletic fluidity and agility that usually i associate with kids i went to school with who hung out at the country club. i'm not sure i have ever seen him perform poorly at a sport, and it's like a miracle that the child of two dexters like me and his dad could have somehow produced such a specimen.

he was grinning in almost all the pictures i took.

he's taking boxing now too although there's no real contact between any of the kids until he's much further into learning all the mechanics of the sport...poses, moves, etc. i like that he's involved in a sport that is co-ed. there are two girls in his class. Posted by Picasa
we were hoping that the recent chilly night we had here would herald bug death day. but no such luck. the good thing about mosquitoes hanging around until it starts to get cold is that you have more skin coverage by way of clothing.


we played with daisy for a while with the huge inflatable ball that she chases and herds like a sheep, which is pretty entertaining. then we cleaned up the garden and put a lot of green matter into the compost, which was great since we've been putting mostly brown stuff (like leaves) in lately. a good mixture of both is essential to optimal compost apparently.


then latt started blowing the gigantic bubbles and daisy
went nuts chasing bubbles and rowan was just delighted to be there. such a sweetheart.






































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Wednesday, October 04, 2006

beautiful words

my goodness a beautiful poem makes me happy. and the fact that it was in a textbook was just icing on the cake. beauty really is everywhere.

The Seven Of Pentacles
Marge Piercy

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, afterthe planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

oleander

i see you're still alive, my hardy little blog.


here we are of late... a hiking trip. lots to see and do. the trail ran along war eagle creek so we saw several water birds of different kinds.
















know anything about autoethnography?

"an ethnographic description written by a member of the culture."
oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth370/gloss.html
what a great definition.

we had to write one recently in my field methods class (all about how to actually *do* sociology). we got it back today and i thought i'd share. apparently time is going to be so limited in grad school that i can only cross post stuff i wrote for school now. :roll eyes:

Where I’m Coming From: A Radical Autoethnography

The study of subcultures, countercultures and deviance fascinate me. After all, the human animal, like our primate cousins, seems biologically predestined to seek and enjoy membership in the broader community. This biological blueprint is legitimized, codified, and reified through cultural experiences that seek to bring individuals “into the fold”—from pre-school to church to clubs, to sororities and festivals and baseball games, the social sphere is a powerful magnet, pulling us into belonging. Yet for many, the benefits, though myriad, of belonging, are somehow not sufficient (and perhaps not even necessary.) Or, put another way, the disadvantages of membership in a group may outweigh the difficulties inherent in being an outsider. It is this push/pull experience that I can’t stop thinking about. Particularly since, with each day that passes, I find myself more alienated from the culture I was born into, nurtured on, and raised to join.

It’s true that I have problems with authority. I left my less than ideal family and its explosive scenes at 15, and I was kicked out of two high schools in the next eighteen months, getting a full scholarship to college based on my GED scores. The last time I was kicked out, it was because I refused to stop advocating vociferously for the rights of an unjustly accused and punished girl who just happened to be my only real enemy. It has always been the case that conforming for the sake of conforming is anathema to me. But these experiences were the nascent stirrings of something in my general paradigm that would mature, over time, from mere youthful rebellion against the powers that be, to a radical rejection of mainstream American behaviors, values, attitudes, and beliefs. The ambivalence this standpoint creates in me is something I struggle with every day. Whoever said, “If you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention” had more than a great idea for a bumper sticker. That well-turned phrase articulates one of the themes my heart has inexorably turned toward over the last fifteen years. But not the only one. The sweetness of this world speaks to me too, and the sorrow that is its dark twin. And a voice I can’t silence--and more and more, don’t want to silence--tells me the world doesn’t have to be this way.

It’s modernity I have issues with. And I know what an easy statement that is to rebut, what a straw man it may seem I’ve propped up before you. I’ve heard the eye-rolling arguments. You don’t like electricity? Clean water? Mattresses? An abundance and variety of foods to choose from? Germ theory? Antibiotics? An average life expectancy of 75 years? And what can I say? I’d be a hypocrite to say these things aren’t good, at least in their proper place, so I’m supposed to just sit down and shut up. But it isn’t that easy. It isn’t that easy to dismiss my feeling, no, my surety, my absolute certainty, that modernity, despite its ease and its efficiency and all the trappings that make life so much softer than our human ancestors could have dreamed of, is a monster. Anthony Giddens called it a juggernaut—the moving machine we built but can’t get off of, hurtling out of our control, changing the world, and us, whether we like it or not.

I’m probably not being clear. If you aren’t in the place I am--and I’ve learned not to expect that anyone is--I haven’t said anything sensible yet. What’s wrong with me anyway? I don’t think a laundry list of what I can’t accept about modern mainstream reality will really bear witness in an eloquent or effective way. Of course I don’t like strip malls…who does? And I haven’t had a television with channels and programming since my oldest child was born. What’s more, I believe that in a world where consumption has become a compulsory national pastime, practicing a gratitude-based perspective like simple abundance and learning to become a producer of one’s own food, clothing, and entertainment is as important as learning math and science. Does that really tell you the uneasy, fractured place I find myself? But these snapshots only refer to the trappings of the age, and my dis-ease, in truth, is rooted in something more integral, more inherent about the state of modern human civilization.

Let me put a finer point on this discussion. I am a radical. I embraced that term only after I learned that “radical” comes from the Latin radicalis "of or having roots," from L. radix, or "root." It wasn’t until after 1800 that the term began to connote reform, and even later, about 1920, that it began to mean “unconventional.”
1 My most deeply held beliefs and values are an outgrowth not of a desire to differ, but rather of my having metaphorical, philosophical roots. I believe that human groups hit the apex of evolution about 50,000 years ago, and that it’s been a slow but sure decline into the nadir ever since.

I believe Jared Diamond when he says that agriculture was the worst mistake in human history, judging by declines in life expectancy, child mortality, height, bone density, and general well-being.
2 And I was astounded to learn that the number of hours of work per day needed to provide the calories necessary for life are lowest among hunter-gatherer groups.3 But how could such a remote abstraction—that humans lived better long ago—possibly have an effect on my personal perspective of the world? After all, I am a well-educated woman in the most modern culture in the modern age. What existential angst could possibly trickle down through a million years to have a real impact on me today? Herein lies my ambivalence and my uneasy occupation of the space, the age, and the way in which I live.

I don’t valorize the “noble savage”. Please don’t misunderstand me. And I don’t have plans to outfit myself with stone-age hand tools, put my child on my back, and trek into the bush to eke out an anachronistic existence. But I do choose to take many, many lessons from our Pleistocene roots, and where those decisions intersect with the average mainstream American is the difficult terrain that forms the terra firma of this autoethnography.

Perhaps the best way to really get at the kinds of choices I am referring to is through a “rich description” of them. One domain in my own life that has been strongly influenced by my appreciation of our species-specific roots is the way in which I parent. When I share that I had my last child at home, unassisted, without a doctor or midwife present, I can see the shock this causes—despite the fact that this is how women bore babies for millions of years. When I nurse my three year old after she falls and needs comforting at the park, I see responses ranging from discomfort, to defensiveness, to outright disgust, though anthropologists say that based on a number of life history factors, a normal weaning age for hominids is somewhere between 2.5 at the earliest and 7 years, at the latest.
4 I have received so many negative remarks while carrying my babies and toddlers in a sling as I go about my daily activities—no one seems to realize that the practice of infant-carrying is not only what our human brains have evolved to expect in infancy, but was the common experience of 99.9% of human babies, until very recently. When I eschew cribs, strollers, playpen, walkers, and a million other gadgets and gear meant to distance my young children from my body, I feel, despite my certainty that I know what is best for my children, the negative perceptions of those around me, who think I am either judging them for doing differently, or unhealthily attached to my children, or both. Co-sleeping with my young children never failed to get staggeringly negative responses, despite the fact the cross-cultural research indicates that even today, a majority of the world’s cultures see shared sleep as normal—and it is certain that all human groups shared sleep with their children in our recent and ancient past. When I leave the “child’s physician” line blank on my daughter’s preschool forms, I steel myself for the questions that are laced with concern, puzzlement, and judgment. We don’t use allopathic care or physicians as a matter of course, I say, explaining that I consult an herbalist friend, or my own books and knowledge, when my children need support for their already good health, and that they are rarely sick since we don’t use antibiotics and breastfeed long enough to fully facilitate the development of a normal strong immune system. Until I worked diligently with state representatives to create a philosophical exemption to the Arkansas law that requires vaccinations mandated by the state, I had a choice of keeping my unvaccinated children out of pre- and public school, or filling out forms fraudulently, claiming that I was compliant with a law I deeply disagree with. When I need to let someone know that my children don’t regularly eat wheat or dairy because, based on the research I have become familiar with, both are highly allergenic and likely to cause systemic, chronic problems, I don’t even get as far as explaining that both foods have only been part of the human diet for a few thousand years, and therefore we didn’t evolve or adapt to expect to ingest them. I usually stop well before then because I see the completely flabbergasted, uncomprehending stares. One that you may currently find on your own face as you read. And these are just a representative sample of the parenting decisions I make as a reflection of my understanding and agreement with ancient human practices.

When others learn that I hold similarly radical views about other facets of my life—regarding work, politics, consumption, the family, the community-- it doesn’t make things any easier. No one, except a handful of mothers I know in real life, and a more sizeable group of mothers I know only know via online interaction, “gets me”. Worse, many who are more conventional write me off as a freak, or convince themselves that I must be judging them and their own choices, and proceed to reciprocate. Do you have any idea how hard it is to make friends with people when your children don’t play with the same types of toys they do, when you have absolutely no knowledge of a mainstream pop culture that others constantly refer to, and even your diet is radically different from theirs? One is forced to either express no preferences whatsoever, thus failing to maintain consistency in one’s own and one’s children’s lives—or to haltingly, falteringly, attempt to explain a life so far down the road less taken that it can’t even be perceived, or seems to be a veritable fist in the ear of the listener. There is often no common ground to be found—and where values and norms diverge wildly, community doesn’t exist.


My desire to understand this place I find myself in has led me to a certain kind of research. I don’t kid myself—I know that, in part, my work with Attachment Parenting (AP) mothers is an effort to create theoretical buttresses that support my own precarious sense of identity. Like me, they are American, generally middle-class, well-educated women who mother in ways so strikingly different from the mainstream that they appear to have more in common with hunter-gatherer mothers than with their own sisters and neighbors. Understanding how they manage the internal ambivalence and external stressors (like disapproval and sanctions from those around them), and what compels them to choose to do so rather than simply acquiesce to cultural norms and values is not only important to the fields of feminism, deviance, and parenting. It’s also very important to me, for very personal reasons. Perhaps this is the case with all researchers who choose to analyze a group or behavior that they themselves are a part of or practice. I’d like to know what causes me to think and act the way I do, despite the difficulty it causes me. I’d like to know if the shared meanings among AP mothers constitute a kind of countercultural or sub-cultural disaffiliation with mainstream ideology, like I experience. What’s more, and perhaps most important of all—and I see now what I most need to divulge in this essay--moving through this world like an ash-smeared, wild-eyed ascetic out of the wilderness has a certain appeal, but it is community that calls us home. That said, community, in a modern world that has so much to disagree with, may have less to do with geographical and spatial and kinship ties and more to do with shared norms, values, and mores, . My research reassures me that no matter how alienated I feel from the world around me, I know that “out there”—spread out over the 50 states in America—there are at least 1500 women who understand. Despite my sense of utter separation from the world, I know there are those who know where I am coming from, and what I’m getting at.

1 Online Etymology Dictionary (2006). Search for word “radical.” Retrieved 10 September, 2006.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=radical
2 Diamond, J. (1987) "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race". Discover, May: 64-66. Retrieved 10 September, 2006.
http://anthropology.lbcc.edu/handoutsdocs/mistake.pdf#search=%22jared%20diamond%20the%20worst%20mistake%22
3 Sahlins, M. The Original Affluent Society. Retrieved 10 September, 2006. http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
4 Dettwyler, K. (1995). A Natural Age of Weaning. Retrieved July 20, 2006.
http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detwean.html