My excuse is that I've been overwhelmed with the 2011 shit storm of misogynistic politics and can't handle writing about it all. For example: South Dakota and Nebraska thought it would be fun to legalize the murdering of abortion providers, while Utah thinks it's a gas to prosecute women as murderers for having miscarriages.
You see? I can't even comment. It's just too much to handle. Ok, one comment about Utah: Whether or not you agree with abortion, whether or not it is legal and safe, it is a truth of human experience that women will find a find a way, any way, to terminate unwanted pregnancy. But if women had access to safe abortion, they wouldn't be so tragically desperate as to subject themselves to intentional violence. This bill says a great deal about how much these politicians value women's lives.
But recently, there has been very, very good news! Planned Parenthood's budget was NOT cut last week! Ina May came to town! Doctors defended homebirth! And I've attended some truly beautiful births this year.
I witnessed a vaginal twin delivery in which baby B was footling breech. Baby A slipped out like butter, and before the doctor could try a manual version (to turn Baby B), it's teeny little foot poked out. Then its cute tush! It was magical.
I spent all night long with a mother, rocking her baby down. As the sun rose and the snow fell, she felt her baby coming, and whispered, "He's coming, he's coming." Magical.
Ina May came to town to promote her new book, Birth Matters: A Midwife's Manifesto. She bestowed upon us some true gems of hilarity, common sense, and wisdom, including this little query, directed toward anyone skeptical of the normalcy of vaginal birth: "Why do we all think that only men's thingies can get really big and then really small again? Ours can, too."
She also shared this video of an elephant giving birth, complete with elephant CPR. It's intense and graphic (as Ina May said, a two year pregnancy requires a LOT of amniotic fluid), but incredibly beautiful and life-affirming.
Ina May also told us to blog more. Yes, Ina May, I will. I will blog more. I will blog the good word! Such as news like this: a year or so ago, some American doctors published a study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (AJOG) that claimed that neonatal mortality rates were higher among planned homebirths than hospital births. Earlier this month, some other doctors took another look at that study and realized it was completely flawed. And by the way, these other doctors happen to be Canadian and Dutch, hailing from two nations where homebirth rates are higher, c-section rates are lower, and infant and maternal mortality rates are lower than ours. So I'm more likely to believe the doctors whose patients are dying less. Here are their conclusions in Medscape and AJOG.
Ina May came to town to promote her new book, Birth Matters: A Midwife's Manifesto. She bestowed upon us some true gems of hilarity, common sense, and wisdom, including this little query, directed toward anyone skeptical of the normalcy of vaginal birth: "Why do we all think that only men's thingies can get really big and then really small again? Ours can, too."
She also shared this video of an elephant giving birth, complete with elephant CPR. It's intense and graphic (as Ina May said, a two year pregnancy requires a LOT of amniotic fluid), but incredibly beautiful and life-affirming.
Ina May also told us to blog more. Yes, Ina May, I will. I will blog more. I will blog the good word! Such as news like this: a year or so ago, some American doctors published a study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (AJOG) that claimed that neonatal mortality rates were higher among planned homebirths than hospital births. Earlier this month, some other doctors took another look at that study and realized it was completely flawed. And by the way, these other doctors happen to be Canadian and Dutch, hailing from two nations where homebirth rates are higher, c-section rates are lower, and infant and maternal mortality rates are lower than ours. So I'm more likely to believe the doctors whose patients are dying less. Here are their conclusions in Medscape and AJOG.
Finally, I got to spend an hour talking about myself with a fellow rad Barnard chick a few weeks ago, and now the fruits of that conversation are forever imprinted on the scrolls of the internet. More specifically, in an article in Yale's feminist blog, Broad Recognition, about how doula work takes feminism in a pretty different direction than we've seen before. It's going to later be part of an exhibit at Concrete Utopia called "i am not a good enough feminist" (I effing love that title).
I think that's enough information and links to satisfy your birth brains for now. Don't fret, there will be more soon!
You are blossoming into a strong, beautiful writer. Yeah!!!! I'm looking for a book sometime.
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