I have a post in the works...

It's going to be riotously amusing.  Maybe.  Or snarky.  Later today, stay tuned. 

Until then, check out this picture from the archives...

One of my favorite pictures of Ronan as a baby.  He's about 3 months old.

A Public Service Announcement

I live in Florida.  There is a LOT of water down here, to say the least.  Also, it's crazy hot.  So many many many people have pools.  We do not have a pool and this was a conscious choice and actually, kind of an effort.  I was surprised at how difficult it was to find a house, in a non-subdivision, with no pool.  Why wouldn't I want a pool?  Well, actually, I would LOVE love love a pool.  I love swimming.  I would swim every freaking day if I had a pool.  But, I also have two small children.  And down here, the number one cause of death for children under four is drowning.  So we found a house without a pool.  (but with a yard big enough that we could put a pool in in a few years if we choose!!)  Where I'm going with this is that I believe it is critical for children to learn how to swim.  Obviously there are lots of other dangers out there in the big world for children, but no knowing how to swim should not be one of them.  Both Ronan and Isla are now taking swimming lessons, learning with a certified Infant Swimming Resource (ISR) instructor.  No, they don't throw them in the pool, but it's one on one, immediate learning.  We are now in week two of swimming lessons, and as of five lessons, (ten minutes each lesson for each child), Ronan was diving for rings and Isla was turning herself over to float on her back from being face down in the water.  There have been tears.  There has been some screaming.  Isla even projectile vomited in the pool today... but I am amazed at how quickly they are learning to save themselves in the chance that they are ever near water and an adult is not watching them.  I hope that a scenario where they are unattended near water will NEVER occur and regardless of how well they learn to swim, I will not be lax about watching them near water, but I truly believe this is an important skill that they will appreciate throughout their lives.  And I do look forward to the day when we can all enjoy the water together as a family of strong swimmers and surfers and scuba divers! (as Ronan now wants to be a scuba diver at the aquarium...)

http://www.infantswim.com/

Everything I need to know about parenting I learned from Mad Men.

Art by Naoto Hattori

 Rampant alcoholism, chain smoking and humiliating your children in front of peers and other adults notwithstanding, because, of course, I can honestly say the most profound thing I might have ever heard regarding relationships with living things was spoken on Mad Men.

Last Sunday's episode involved a scene where everybody's favorite dipsomaniac, Don Draper, has taken an interesting and complicated female co-worker out to dinner.  (This woman is a psychologist who basically runs focus groups for the ad firm Don works at).  Don inquires basically how she is able to get the focus groups to open up to her, as she is quite capable of getting these groups to share with her their real feelings in an unguarded way.  Her answer was in effect, the following:

The Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveller coming down the road, and the Sun said: "I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveller to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger. You begin." So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveller. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveller wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give up in despair. Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveller, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on.

Kindness effects more than severity.

-Aesop's Fable of The Wind and the Sun

How simple is the message delivered by this one, dear fable?  

Today, tomorrow, this year - will you be the wind?  Or the sun?

What are your rights?

So, let's say you are pregs.  You're going to have a baby.  YOU are going to have a baby.  A baby who will become YOUR child that YOU are going to take care of, feed, clothe, respect, love, cherish, coo over, mistily gaze upon from time to time in story circle at the library because, "omigosh, I can't believe that is my precious peanut clapping and laughing with the other kids.  Mine. Thankyousomuchforgivingmethisgift!" - uh, I digress...  Where was I?  Okay, yeah, you're going to get to the point where said babums is going to exit the womb.  Now.  Is the HOW your child exits your choice?  Or not.  Well, I recently stumbled upon, then tweeted the shit out of, this nugget o' outrage, regarding a woman who gave birth to her daughter at home (homebirth!! OMG!), then had her removed from her custody and placed into foster care (and eventually her mother's care) because she refused to have the recommended c-section due to her daughter's breech presentation.  (just like me!!! except I rolled over and signed the consent forms in my "I can't believe this is what is happening ativan-infused haze").  So, this family has their daughter taken away from them when they took her into the emergency room a few hours after birth because she seemed particularly fussy.  Apparently during the birth, her shoulder's became stuck for a bit causing a mild shoulder distocia and some nerve damage that now seems to have completely healed according to medical tests.  So.  Okay, I'm not going to go into specifics about breech birth, is it safe to do at home, or vaginally, or not, whatever.  I know of some people who have successfully and without issue homebirthed, and hospital birthed breech babies, as well as several who have, like me!, had a scheduled cesarean for breech.  I also have a friend of a family member who recently lost her baby trying to deliver breech at home.  But I also know of some people who have lost a baby trying to deliver normally, in the hospital, with no idea why things went wrong.  Everyone has a story and everyone knows someone (or knows someone who knows someone) to whom the worst imaginable happened.  It happens.  Is that fair?  No.  But is that life?  Yes.  Would I be so blase if it happened to me, or a family member or friend?  No.  But trust me, I'm not blase about it at all.  Being all up on this mother thing, I'm confronted with stories of pregnancy, birth and child loss on a daily basis, and trust me, I cry.  I feel it and when I was pregnant, I worried, 'would that be me, too?'...  And, like every other mother out there, I worry still... "will I lose them someday in some freak accident?  A terrible disease?  How can I make sure 100% that they will grow up, live a long life, grow old, be healthy and happy and love and laugh for years and years and years and years long after I'm gone?!" I cannot.  Nothing is 100%  No birth is 100% "safe".
What am I getting at here?  Where am I going with this?  Ah, in a nutshell, I think how you give birth should be YOUR choice.  And, if you dig even slightly, by dig, I mean, "google", you can find lots of cases where parents have had their child taken from them for refusing a c-section, only to give birth just fine to a healthy baby.  What is that?  A pissed off power play?  Taking away your choices makes a pregnant woman not much more than cattle.  What if her daughter had not been breech and she was born at home and suffered a cord accident; would that be her fault as well?  What if no one knew the baby was breech?  What if ultrasounds become mandatory?  What if you choose to give birth to a baby you know has profound physical defects and you refuse to submit the child to "possible life saving surgeries" that carry more risks than benefits?  Once you get on this slippery slope of chipping away at how and where a woman can birth, you are really opening the door to a maelstrom of problems. It seems like as women are slowly having their eyes opened to the benefits of a more natural and gentle birth experience, the medical establishment is fighting hard to counter women and beat them down to submit to their mystical and all-knowing ways.  Why this struggle?  How did we get here to where we are so easily coerced into huge decisions by virtual strangers like baa baa sheep?  And of course, this doesn't just apply to childbirth, but to many facets of our lives.  I mean, women have been able to vote for less than 100 years in this country.  Um, excuse me?  We still make less money for equal work than men.  We MAKE PEOPLE and yet, we are still considered ill equipped to decide whether or not we want to trust our bodies to bring them forth without a myriad of interventions.

Sure now, I realize there are lots and lots and lots of lifesaving technologies that have saved hundreds of thousands of women and children over the years.  It is to the incredible skill of some physicians that a sweet girl I know is alive today, with her triplets, because complete previa and placenta acreta rendered it completely impossible for her to deliver naturally.  I'm not raising the flag of "burn down the hospitals!  birth all babies at home!" (Um remember, I've got not one but TWO scheduled c-sections under my belt - literally, bwahhahahah) I am suggesting that we women aren't stupid.  Proper prenatal care should be a cooperative effort and the birth decision should ultimately be the mother's if she is of sound mind.  Vaginal breech birth is not some crazy myth that never happens.  It's just a crazy myth here.  In the USA.  And if you happen to deliver a healthy baby (breech or not!) at home with no problems, then you (are crazy! lolololol) and just got lucky.  OMG, you are SO lucky.  Like, you totally dodged the inevitable death bullet that was heading your way when you took that on!  Whew!  Are you like, totally relieved and thinking, "I'd never do THAT again!"?

But, if something DID go wrong, it's all your fault, and you should have your baby taken from you because you clearly don't love them enough to birth "the right way".  If you were in the hospital, and something did go wrong (because OH YES IT HAPPENS PEEPS) you would hear nothing but, "Oh my, I'm so sorry, there was nothing that anyone could have done, obviously".  "Tragic, so tragic".  "I'm sure that they did everything they could".  Or, "you'd better SUE THE SHIT OUT OF THEM!"

To summarize with bullet points.
- how a woman births should be decided by she and (if applicable) her partner with guidance by whomever she chooses as a health care provider (midwife, OB, Shamen - kidding)
-Unless pregnant woman is completely mentally unsound to make a decision where it is obvious that the baby is in danger (or mom is in danger) due to complications that are known, then she should be left to decide how to birth her child.
-OB's need to treat their patients like their clients.
-Sad things happen during birth sometime.  Even today in the era of the c-section and ultrasound and all the other medical marvels we have.  Nothing is 100%.
-The more we hear about women having their children taken away because they refused some kind of medical intervention or another, the more dissonance we are going to have between the medical community and patients who ask questions.  This will inevitably lead to laws being passed that completely strip away a woman's rights when it comes to what happens to her body.
-when did we stop trusting ourselves?

Don't Miss next week!  Going to Jail for Miscarrying!  and Birth Rape!