Hi everyone! I've been meaning to post for days but every time I get on the computer I end up getting completely absorbed in other people's blogs or weird stuff like this or this. Thanks, Cobblestone, for checking in, because it lit the small fire under my ass that was necessary to get me to write. For future reference: If you don't see me around for awhile that probably means that things are actually semi-okay in my life, because always seem to blog out my pain more than my happiness. Which is something I want to change...we'll see!
Also, thanks everyone for your thoughtful comments on my last post, and when I'm a little more somber, I'd like to delve into that discussion again. It's a good one, I think.
All kinds of things have been swirling around in my head to share with you. And then I forget them when I sit down to write, so forgive me if this feels very scattered.
Current Events
The hubbub about Gov. Spitzer. If he was using federal money to get off, okay, that's a problem. But from the little I've seen and read, the tone is one of shock and outrage that he slept with a prostitute. What? A man cheating on his wife? A politician involved with prostitutes? Is this even news anymore?
Today on "The Today Show," I caught a bit of Meredith Vieira interviewing Dr. Laura Schlesinger, along with two other "experts," about the scandal. Dr. Laura was vigorously supporting her stance that if women don't make their men "feel important and valued," they should not be surprised when their man "looks elsewhere to fill those needs." Hmmm. My first thought on this was to imagine what it must be like to live with the kind of man who would go to a prostitute to "fill his needs." My second thought was...is this 1958???
One of the other "experts" (I would include a name here but for the life of me I can't find a damn thing on The Today Show website) talked about Spitzer's "high cheekbones and large forehead" or something being a sign of high testosterone which makes him more susceptible to infidelity. So...it's either his wife or his hormones. It couldn't be that he's just an asshole now, could it? What a joke.
The lady who power-washed her two-year-old at the car wash. Sickening. I have spent the last several days trying to dodge this horrifying footage.
Salvia Divinorum becoming illegal, touted as "the new marijuana." Time to stock up, ladies. I don't see a problem with the old marijuana, let alone the new, but if it's good enough to be outlawed, I better get some socked away. I continue to be astounded at how American government continues to focus on issues that are non-issues while ignoring or bungling things that really matter to people, like the economy, war, health care.
I struggle with the reasoning behind taking away every means of mental escape from the masses--except alcohol and TV (neither of which are as fun as pot and hallucinogenics). I don't have a theory about how alcohol has managed to stay under the radar in this age of banning everything fun, but the TV issue is an easy one: it's a great way to force feed fear, which keeps people worrying about things that don't matter so that they won't rise up to change what does matter. Maybe this is why people are so much more violent and angry toward one another now? Heh, that's going to be my theory from now on. "Give us the pot and no one gets hurt!" No wonder we all need Zoloft and Xanax...which are, of course, okay because they help Big Pharma keep turning its wheels.
Here's an idea--why not just have the pharmaceutical companies take over the manufacture and distribution of the MJ, the 'shrooms, the salvia and all the other fun stuff? I'd be willing to pay a little more to have it legally, and besides, in a few years I'm sure psychiatrists would find a way to make it legitimate enough that my insurance company would foot most of the bill. Imagine that--going to the pharmacy and paying your $10 copay for your dime bag! Oh cruel dreams, you taunt me!
Breast Health. First, let me say I'm all for it. Second, I get a little uncomfortable when I hear commercials on TV about vitamins that promote "breast health," or when I see the headline I saw on CNN today, "Keeping your breasts healthy at every age." There is one reason this bothers me, and it's not because I am ashamed of the word or the appendages or anything like that. I am pissed about the double standard. I want to see a commercial for a men's vitamin that promotes "testicular health." I want to see a headline on CNN that says "Keeping your penis health at every age." Why don't we? Aren't men's testicles and peni as important as our breasts?
I think the media in general still trades on the sensationalism of talking about breasts. They've been used to sell everything else, why not use them to sell vitamins and news and cancer research fund drives? Hmm. Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way. Maybe I should just stand in awe of the power of the female breast--I mean, look how much it can do!!!
A final unrelated note: I was just involved in a shit-standoff in my Safe Haven work bathroom in the basement. I walk into an empty bathroom, empty my bladder and am just about ready to drop my load when another lady walks in and parks herself in the stall next door. I decide to hold off, hoping she's just going to pee and leave, but she pees and then....nothing. Neither of us are making a sound. Finally, I decide to abort mission and suck it back in to hopefully get some privacy elsewhere. I hate that!! Once again, I wish for a ShitStall 3. This leads me (as most things do) to Poop Stories. Since I have some new readers, I'll put out the call again--care to share your all-time favorite poop stories? If so, I'd love to read them!
Showing posts with label MiscellaneousRants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MiscellaneousRants. Show all posts
Monday, March 10, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Scenes From a Chinese Restaurant
Is that the name of a Billy Joel song?
Today I was eating lunch at a small family-run Chinese restaurant smack in the middle of our college town. I really like this place. The food is really good, you get a ton of food for $5, and the family obviously works really hard at what they do--the same six or so people are ALWAYS working. The lady at the register is one of those really cute old Asian ladies. She can barely speak English and she is so sweet. Anyway, during the lunch hour at this place, the line backs up to the door, but I'd gotten there late so it was pretty calm.
As I was eating my Shrimp With Broccoli Lunch Special, I became aware of a very annoying college-aged girl and her friend sitting behind me. She had one of those whiny, privileged voices. "I, like, just had to eat some, like, crackers before coming here because I was, like, so hungry," she droned. My Delta-Delta-Deltadar was immediately on high alert.
Suddenly, the nasalization was punctuated with a dramatic, "Oh my god!"
"What?" her heretofore mostly silent friend gasped.
"I am so done with this meal," she says. "Look. There's, like, a hair in my food."
"Oh my god," friend says.
"I am like, just so done with this food," she says. "Hello, I am like, so done with this."
A few minutes later I see her marching up to the front of the restaurant, one hand holding the hirsute meal as far from her body as possible, the other planted squarely on her hip. After flirting with some guy she knew who happened to be getting takeout, she confronted the old lady. "There's, like, a hair in my food," she says.
Old Lady bends over and looks, then looks more closely.
"Oh, so sorry," Old Lady says and takes the food away. "You want something else?"
"No, I can't eat anything now," she says.
"We give you a refund," Old Lady says. The girl doesn't even respond, just takes the money and turns around. As she marched victoriously back to her table, I, like, so wanted to, like, just ask her, like, which sorority she like, belonged to, only, like, in a really, like, bitchy voice.
She sat down and started telling her friend about how the old lady had dared offer a different meal and how she just was not going to eat anything for god-knows-how-long because of the hair. While I listened to this, I watched the young guys flipping vegetables over the hot woks, the young, frazzled-looking woman delivering the food to everyone in the restaurant, and the old lady, moving slowly behind the counter where she stood on her feet for hours at a time. I had flashes of what I imagined sorority girl's life to be like and compared it against what I imagined the restaurant family's life to be like.
And I, like, so hoped that the girl, like, tripped on like, a huge patch of ice on the sidewalk and like, totally ruined the nosejob that Daddy, like, totally funded for her 16th birthday along with her, like, totally sweet Uggs.
Today I was eating lunch at a small family-run Chinese restaurant smack in the middle of our college town. I really like this place. The food is really good, you get a ton of food for $5, and the family obviously works really hard at what they do--the same six or so people are ALWAYS working. The lady at the register is one of those really cute old Asian ladies. She can barely speak English and she is so sweet. Anyway, during the lunch hour at this place, the line backs up to the door, but I'd gotten there late so it was pretty calm.
As I was eating my Shrimp With Broccoli Lunch Special, I became aware of a very annoying college-aged girl and her friend sitting behind me. She had one of those whiny, privileged voices. "I, like, just had to eat some, like, crackers before coming here because I was, like, so hungry," she droned. My Delta-Delta-Deltadar was immediately on high alert.
Suddenly, the nasalization was punctuated with a dramatic, "Oh my god!"
"What?" her heretofore mostly silent friend gasped.
"I am so done with this meal," she says. "Look. There's, like, a hair in my food."
"Oh my god," friend says.
"I am like, just so done with this food," she says. "Hello, I am like, so done with this."
A few minutes later I see her marching up to the front of the restaurant, one hand holding the hirsute meal as far from her body as possible, the other planted squarely on her hip. After flirting with some guy she knew who happened to be getting takeout, she confronted the old lady. "There's, like, a hair in my food," she says.
Old Lady bends over and looks, then looks more closely.
"Oh, so sorry," Old Lady says and takes the food away. "You want something else?"
"No, I can't eat anything now," she says.
"We give you a refund," Old Lady says. The girl doesn't even respond, just takes the money and turns around. As she marched victoriously back to her table, I, like, so wanted to, like, just ask her, like, which sorority she like, belonged to, only, like, in a really, like, bitchy voice.
She sat down and started telling her friend about how the old lady had dared offer a different meal and how she just was not going to eat anything for god-knows-how-long because of the hair. While I listened to this, I watched the young guys flipping vegetables over the hot woks, the young, frazzled-looking woman delivering the food to everyone in the restaurant, and the old lady, moving slowly behind the counter where she stood on her feet for hours at a time. I had flashes of what I imagined sorority girl's life to be like and compared it against what I imagined the restaurant family's life to be like.
And I, like, so hoped that the girl, like, tripped on like, a huge patch of ice on the sidewalk and like, totally ruined the nosejob that Daddy, like, totally funded for her 16th birthday along with her, like, totally sweet Uggs.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Today's Musings
Today I learned that...
Two pieces of cheesy garlic bread are not enough.
I'm done fuckin' around with those generic, cheaper brands of frozen garlic bread. If it's not Pepperidge Farm Garlic Texas Toast® then it's not worth it.
It's not a good idea to broil your second set of cheesy garlic bread Texas Toasts on "hi" without watching them or setting a timer.
While you're fucked up.
And your husband is just about there in terms of getting the 3-year-old asleep.
When the smoke alarm goes off.
Things I Feel Compelled to Share With You Tonight
The thought of LilCherie, in the Grumpy Pants I made her for her birthday, standing in the snowy parking lot of the hospital this morning after finding out that her surgeon was snowed in in another city and would not be able to perform her tonsillectomy, kicking her car in anger, really makes me laugh. Now that she's accepted it, I mean. I really felt bad for her at the time. But I still wish her husband could have secretly videotaped it for me.
I read the Lunchables® post over at A Little Pregnant and it really pissed me off. But I was too much of a chickenshit to post a dissenting view, because Julie is blog royalty and I didn't figure it was really worth it. Of course now that I'm putting this on my own blog it's "out there." Oh, jeez, what are we supposed to do? It's already out there! Call the cops! It's already out there! (Random movie quote -- do you know which one it's from?) But I was excited to see that Patty from Monday Changed Everything stuck up for herself. If you read her blog you'll see that she has a good excuse. I just feed my child crap because I'm lazy and depressed.
I'm half-afraid that I'm dying of cancer because I haven't felt like eating much lately, I'm really tired, and I have several unaccounted for bruises on my upper thighs (and one on my forearm). Of course, the appetite and fatigue could be attributed to the depression, even though I'm usually a "fat depressive" (I just made that term up. Impressive, huh?). And I guess the bruises could be from beating my fists against my legs in hopeless frustration, right?
I found out tonight that when trying to disinfect a light green throw rug after a dollop of your child's almost-diarrheal poo drops on it, a bleach-based cleanser should not be your first choice. There is now a five-inch circle of my throw rug that's the same shade as Greg Brady's hair in the episode where he buys the hair tonic from Oliver. Or, baby-ate-carrots-shit orange. I couldn't have just thrown it in the washer because you know, I was just too lazy and depressed.
I'm reading a great book right now called "Mommies Who Drink," by Brett Paesel. When reading books like this, I momentarily think to myself, "I could write this well! I could be this funny! Why am I not a published, successful author?" Then I remember, oh yeah. I'm too lazy and depressed.
I'm thinking of changing the name of my blog to "Lazy and Depressed." Do you think that would pull in the readers or what? Sadly, I would be all about a blog named that. I should do a blog search...maybe it's already out there?
Today's Aha! Moment
I think I've come to a realization about how men--or at least J.--think, and why it causes a problem in relationships. I think he is mentally incapable of moving past the first most-likely outcome of an action or comment. Here are a couple examples, including the correct "Mom thought" as well:
J.'s first thought: Bubba is thirsty.
Most likely outcome: I'll give him some milk, then he won't be thirsty anymore.
Mom thought: But Bubba has to drink four ounces of juice laced with laxative so that he won't have a hard poop because is his holding his poops in and we are trying to get him to go without the hysterical drama and causing Mommy to have to take one of her anxiety pills. So, I'll give him the laxa-juice now and then milk later.
J.'s first thought: I want to make Bubba laugh, so I'll put some Toobers and Zots® (I'm lovin' that symbol tonight, by the way) up my nose and pretend they are boogers.
Most likely outcome: Bubba will laugh. Job done!
Mom thought: Bubba will think it's great, then put them up his nose, and then put other things up his nose, and then we'll be in the emergency room at 3 a.m. while some poor staff physician fishes pus-covered gravel from our child's infected nose. So maybe we'd better not model putting stuff up our noses as appropriate behavior for our 3-year-old.
J.'s first thought: It's time for Bubba to go to bed, so I'm putting him to bed.
Most likely outcome: Bubba will go to bed.
Mom thought: It's time for Bubba to go to bed, so we better get him his allergy medicine because if he doesn't get it he will be stuffy and he already has a cough; fill and turn on the humidifier because of the aforementioned cough; see if he has to go potty one more time so that he doesn't wet the bed; and bring in a glass of water and the toothpaste so we can brush his teeth.
I think you get what I mean here.
And now I guess it's also perfectly clear why, when I was having a spiral last week and told J. I felt like I was turning into my mother--the ultimate killjoy-- J.'s. answer was a sobering, "Yep."
Two pieces of cheesy garlic bread are not enough.
I'm done fuckin' around with those generic, cheaper brands of frozen garlic bread. If it's not Pepperidge Farm Garlic Texas Toast® then it's not worth it.
It's not a good idea to broil your second set of cheesy garlic bread Texas Toasts on "hi" without watching them or setting a timer.
While you're fucked up.
And your husband is just about there in terms of getting the 3-year-old asleep.
When the smoke alarm goes off.
Things I Feel Compelled to Share With You Tonight
The thought of LilCherie, in the Grumpy Pants I made her for her birthday, standing in the snowy parking lot of the hospital this morning after finding out that her surgeon was snowed in in another city and would not be able to perform her tonsillectomy, kicking her car in anger, really makes me laugh. Now that she's accepted it, I mean. I really felt bad for her at the time. But I still wish her husband could have secretly videotaped it for me.
I read the Lunchables® post over at A Little Pregnant and it really pissed me off. But I was too much of a chickenshit to post a dissenting view, because Julie is blog royalty and I didn't figure it was really worth it. Of course now that I'm putting this on my own blog it's "out there." Oh, jeez, what are we supposed to do? It's already out there! Call the cops! It's already out there! (Random movie quote -- do you know which one it's from?) But I was excited to see that Patty from Monday Changed Everything stuck up for herself. If you read her blog you'll see that she has a good excuse. I just feed my child crap because I'm lazy and depressed.
I'm half-afraid that I'm dying of cancer because I haven't felt like eating much lately, I'm really tired, and I have several unaccounted for bruises on my upper thighs (and one on my forearm). Of course, the appetite and fatigue could be attributed to the depression, even though I'm usually a "fat depressive" (I just made that term up. Impressive, huh?). And I guess the bruises could be from beating my fists against my legs in hopeless frustration, right?
I found out tonight that when trying to disinfect a light green throw rug after a dollop of your child's almost-diarrheal poo drops on it, a bleach-based cleanser should not be your first choice. There is now a five-inch circle of my throw rug that's the same shade as Greg Brady's hair in the episode where he buys the hair tonic from Oliver. Or, baby-ate-carrots-shit orange. I couldn't have just thrown it in the washer because you know, I was just too lazy and depressed.
I'm reading a great book right now called "Mommies Who Drink," by Brett Paesel. When reading books like this, I momentarily think to myself, "I could write this well! I could be this funny! Why am I not a published, successful author?" Then I remember, oh yeah. I'm too lazy and depressed.
I'm thinking of changing the name of my blog to "Lazy and Depressed." Do you think that would pull in the readers or what? Sadly, I would be all about a blog named that. I should do a blog search...maybe it's already out there?
Today's Aha! Moment
I think I've come to a realization about how men--or at least J.--think, and why it causes a problem in relationships. I think he is mentally incapable of moving past the first most-likely outcome of an action or comment. Here are a couple examples, including the correct "Mom thought" as well:
J.'s first thought: Bubba is thirsty.
Most likely outcome: I'll give him some milk, then he won't be thirsty anymore.
Mom thought: But Bubba has to drink four ounces of juice laced with laxative so that he won't have a hard poop because is his holding his poops in and we are trying to get him to go without the hysterical drama and causing Mommy to have to take one of her anxiety pills. So, I'll give him the laxa-juice now and then milk later.
J.'s first thought: I want to make Bubba laugh, so I'll put some Toobers and Zots® (I'm lovin' that symbol tonight, by the way) up my nose and pretend they are boogers.
Most likely outcome: Bubba will laugh. Job done!
Mom thought: Bubba will think it's great, then put them up his nose, and then put other things up his nose, and then we'll be in the emergency room at 3 a.m. while some poor staff physician fishes pus-covered gravel from our child's infected nose. So maybe we'd better not model putting stuff up our noses as appropriate behavior for our 3-year-old.
J.'s first thought: It's time for Bubba to go to bed, so I'm putting him to bed.
Most likely outcome: Bubba will go to bed.
Mom thought: It's time for Bubba to go to bed, so we better get him his allergy medicine because if he doesn't get it he will be stuffy and he already has a cough; fill and turn on the humidifier because of the aforementioned cough; see if he has to go potty one more time so that he doesn't wet the bed; and bring in a glass of water and the toothpaste so we can brush his teeth.
I think you get what I mean here.
And now I guess it's also perfectly clear why, when I was having a spiral last week and told J. I felt like I was turning into my mother--the ultimate killjoy-- J.'s. answer was a sobering, "Yep."
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
The Vulvar Underground
Okay, I've teased you long enough, and the payoff probably isn't going to be so great. But I have a few things to say about vulvas, so here goes.
If you are a devoted reader of my blog, you may remember this post, where I posted my sorry list of ailments over the years, most of them down under. Other than the loss of my daughter, by far the worst, most psychologically damaging health issue I've had is the "periclitoral abscess." Yep, an abscess right next to my clitoris. This ailment, which arose for no apparent reason, introduced me to the mysterious world of the vulva, a world with all sorts of different parts, all with their own Latin names. I could (and maybe will, for therapeutic purposes) write entire posts about the multiple traumas that went along with the abscess, many at the hands of medical "professionals." But the purpose of this post is different, and that is, to talk about the general shame involved in vulvar disorders and, indeed, in just saying the word "vulva."
For years, I had to see a doctor regularly for this issue, which wasn't so bad because he was actually a vulvo-vaginal specialist, and he was in his 60s, so one knew that he was pretty unflappable, so to speak. He also had fingers like tree trunks, but that's beside the point. During this time I would also have to go see general practitioners for the regular stuff, and was battling infertility so I was also seeing a rotating crop of four REs. Since I was either on medication or having surgery or both for the vulvar abscess, I would have to tell them about it, and the word "vulva" seemed to stick in my throat every time (that sounds kinda dirty, doesn't it?) Moreover, it also seemed to kind of embarrass even the regular doctors. Is it just me, or do people have trouble with the word "vulva"?
During the worst of it, I was googling for whatever information I could find on this, partly for knowledge and partly because I just wanted to know that I wasn't the only freak out there who was dealing with this. I didn't find much about women with my particular issue, but I did end up reading several sites that dealt with women's personal experiences with vulvar cancer. One night, as I was reading about the shame so many other women had about this particular kind of cancer, I just became incredibly angry that we feel so embarrassed and alone whenever anything is wrong with this part of our bodies. I am angry that just saying the word "vulva" makes most women giggle with embarrassment or look completely mortified. I'm angry that this part of our body is not given the respect it deserves.
There are, in fact, women who don't even really know what the vulva is. To be clear, it is the mons pubis (the soft, cushiony part where your pubic hair starts), the labia majora (outer lips), labia minora (inner lips), the clitoris, and the opening to the vagina. Here's a good link with a diagram and also instructions on how to do a self-exam for cancer.
It irritates me to no end when I hear people refer to this part of the body as "the vagina." The vagina is completely separate and different from the vulva, but I think people are just more comfortable saying the word "vagina." The vulva is not the vagina's ugly stepsister--it is a world unto its own! It's not right to reduce our sex organs to the just the part that gives men the most pleasure. Especially when the organ that generally gives us the most pleasure doesn't even have a uniform pronunciation.
It seems that for some reason, referring to the vulva is difficult for women (and men). When it comes to sex, that can cause all kinds of problems, from simple miscommunication to anorgasmia. When it comes to health, it can mean that women may not pay much attention to what's going on "down there" and/or postpone seeing a doctor if there is something wrong. And that can kill you!
Fifty years ago, breasts were treated in much the same way. It took some brave women like Betty Ford to "come out" about breast cancer and some purposeful advocacy to get to the point where breast cancer can be discussed openly (here's a good link on the history of breast cancer advocacy). Now, as we know, it's kind of America's sweetheart of cancer awareness (which involves a whole other set of complicated issues). I wish the same thing would happen for the poor old neglected vulva. Can you imagine a "Vulvar Cancer Awareness Month," complete with it's own little ribbon (what color? Red?) Or a famous woman coming out and saying "I have vulvar cancer, and I had my clitoris and labia removed to save my life?"Or seeing special reports on the six o'clock news featuring a little graphic of a woman feeling up her vulva for lumps (her hand strategically placed over her clitoris, of course)?
And let's not even get started on research efforts that might find other ways to cure vulvar cancer, treatments that could eliminate the horrific "standard of care" which is usually hacking off the clitoris, labia, and everything else in the area (although unfortunately, this is still the primary treatment for many cancers, including breast). I know that breast cancer is many times more common than vulvar cancer, but I still wish that women didn't feel ashamed of either one. I imagine that some men (by that I mean the ones who think about stuff other than Guitar Hero and sports and all the stupid shit men usually spend their time thinking about) feel similarly about the testicular cancer/penile cancer double standard...but I have to pick my battles and since I don't have testicles or a penis, the vulva issue takes top billing for me.
So that's how I feel about vulvas. I've never really known what to do with these thoughts, so writing this post felt really great. I know I'm not the person to take up the mantle of vulvar cancer rights, but in my own small ways I try to enlighten at least a few people here and there by sharing my story when it seems appropriate, by trying not to feel or seem embarrassed by saying the word or relating my medical history, and now, by writing this for you all. I'd love to hear what you have to say about it!
If you are a devoted reader of my blog, you may remember this post, where I posted my sorry list of ailments over the years, most of them down under. Other than the loss of my daughter, by far the worst, most psychologically damaging health issue I've had is the "periclitoral abscess." Yep, an abscess right next to my clitoris. This ailment, which arose for no apparent reason, introduced me to the mysterious world of the vulva, a world with all sorts of different parts, all with their own Latin names. I could (and maybe will, for therapeutic purposes) write entire posts about the multiple traumas that went along with the abscess, many at the hands of medical "professionals." But the purpose of this post is different, and that is, to talk about the general shame involved in vulvar disorders and, indeed, in just saying the word "vulva."
For years, I had to see a doctor regularly for this issue, which wasn't so bad because he was actually a vulvo-vaginal specialist, and he was in his 60s, so one knew that he was pretty unflappable, so to speak. He also had fingers like tree trunks, but that's beside the point. During this time I would also have to go see general practitioners for the regular stuff, and was battling infertility so I was also seeing a rotating crop of four REs. Since I was either on medication or having surgery or both for the vulvar abscess, I would have to tell them about it, and the word "vulva" seemed to stick in my throat every time (that sounds kinda dirty, doesn't it?) Moreover, it also seemed to kind of embarrass even the regular doctors. Is it just me, or do people have trouble with the word "vulva"?
During the worst of it, I was googling for whatever information I could find on this, partly for knowledge and partly because I just wanted to know that I wasn't the only freak out there who was dealing with this. I didn't find much about women with my particular issue, but I did end up reading several sites that dealt with women's personal experiences with vulvar cancer. One night, as I was reading about the shame so many other women had about this particular kind of cancer, I just became incredibly angry that we feel so embarrassed and alone whenever anything is wrong with this part of our bodies. I am angry that just saying the word "vulva" makes most women giggle with embarrassment or look completely mortified. I'm angry that this part of our body is not given the respect it deserves.
There are, in fact, women who don't even really know what the vulva is. To be clear, it is the mons pubis (the soft, cushiony part where your pubic hair starts), the labia majora (outer lips), labia minora (inner lips), the clitoris, and the opening to the vagina. Here's a good link with a diagram and also instructions on how to do a self-exam for cancer.
It irritates me to no end when I hear people refer to this part of the body as "the vagina." The vagina is completely separate and different from the vulva, but I think people are just more comfortable saying the word "vagina." The vulva is not the vagina's ugly stepsister--it is a world unto its own! It's not right to reduce our sex organs to the just the part that gives men the most pleasure. Especially when the organ that generally gives us the most pleasure doesn't even have a uniform pronunciation.
It seems that for some reason, referring to the vulva is difficult for women (and men). When it comes to sex, that can cause all kinds of problems, from simple miscommunication to anorgasmia. When it comes to health, it can mean that women may not pay much attention to what's going on "down there" and/or postpone seeing a doctor if there is something wrong. And that can kill you!
Fifty years ago, breasts were treated in much the same way. It took some brave women like Betty Ford to "come out" about breast cancer and some purposeful advocacy to get to the point where breast cancer can be discussed openly (here's a good link on the history of breast cancer advocacy). Now, as we know, it's kind of America's sweetheart of cancer awareness (which involves a whole other set of complicated issues). I wish the same thing would happen for the poor old neglected vulva. Can you imagine a "Vulvar Cancer Awareness Month," complete with it's own little ribbon (what color? Red?) Or a famous woman coming out and saying "I have vulvar cancer, and I had my clitoris and labia removed to save my life?"Or seeing special reports on the six o'clock news featuring a little graphic of a woman feeling up her vulva for lumps (her hand strategically placed over her clitoris, of course)?
And let's not even get started on research efforts that might find other ways to cure vulvar cancer, treatments that could eliminate the horrific "standard of care" which is usually hacking off the clitoris, labia, and everything else in the area (although unfortunately, this is still the primary treatment for many cancers, including breast). I know that breast cancer is many times more common than vulvar cancer, but I still wish that women didn't feel ashamed of either one. I imagine that some men (by that I mean the ones who think about stuff other than Guitar Hero and sports and all the stupid shit men usually spend their time thinking about) feel similarly about the testicular cancer/penile cancer double standard...but I have to pick my battles and since I don't have testicles or a penis, the vulva issue takes top billing for me.
So that's how I feel about vulvas. I've never really known what to do with these thoughts, so writing this post felt really great. I know I'm not the person to take up the mantle of vulvar cancer rights, but in my own small ways I try to enlighten at least a few people here and there by sharing my story when it seems appropriate, by trying not to feel or seem embarrassed by saying the word or relating my medical history, and now, by writing this for you all. I'd love to hear what you have to say about it!
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
In This Post, I Reveal My Real First Name
I called my sister tonight just to say hello. It was a pretty mundane conversation for the most part. Then, in typical fashion for my family, it all went to hell in about 20 seconds. Despite all my whining on here, I must have done some kind of healing or had some kind of personality development since I left home because it seems like the older I get, the more obviously dysfunctional the rest of my family is. I mean, I am too, but at least I'm aware of it!!!
Anyway, I was telling her about how much fun Bubba is right now, how incredibly cute he is and how much I'm enjoying it. I related to her about how when we get home from work/daycare, he says "I wanna cuddle you," and we sit on the couch and watch a DVD and love on each other. He'll say "You love me Mama?" and I'll smile and say "I love you SO much!" and then he'll say "I love you too Mama!" with a big smile on his face; sometimes he'll reach is hand up and stroke my cheek. It's enchanting and magical and it's like a big huge reward for all the struggling I've had in the past three years learning how to be somewhat comfortable with motherhood and learning how to enjoy my child rather than pretty much hating the whole thing.
Her response was this: "Oh my god, Sue, don't make him into a wuss! He's gonna be such a mama's boy!" This really pissed me off. Here I am, trying to relate something positive (at last) about my experience as a mother and she just stomps on it. Nevertheless, I tried to be rational so I said, "It's taken me so long finally enjoy something about having a kid and I'm going to revel in it and enjoy it as much as I can." She said she just thought it was "weird." I asked why, and I'm sure at this point she realized she'd pissed me off, so she said she didn't know and that she was afraid of saying the wrong thing. I tried to get off the phone but she said she didn't want us to get off the phone with me being mad. I told her I wasn't mad, just felt defeated. In all honesty, I didn't want it to be a big deal because I've learned from experience that it's just not worth it in my family. So I told her I was having a hard week and that it wasn't a big deal and let's just stop talking about it. We talked about some other stuff and got off the phone with our usual "I love yous."
My sister and I have a complicated relationship (do all sisters?) She's eight years older than me and very bossy. She's an elementary school teacher and her husband is very passive so she pretty much runs the show at work and at home and it spill over into every other relationship as well. I don't think she means to hurt people; I think she's just so used to pushing everyone around that she doesn't have a filter there that the rest of us do. I also recognize the occasional bitchy, uncalled-for comment as a family trait. Christ, I did it to LilCherie last night. Still, I at least TRY to rein it in.
Obligatory Disclaimer To Address My Guilt Issues: I love my sister dearly, and in many ways she's like another mother, which is comforting at times but difficult at others. I can say that she's always been there for me, with one exception that I'll talk about some other time, and she's incredibly loyal. Generally, she's really a good person.
Like the rest of my family, and myself although I 'm working on it, she has a unique ability to turn anything upside down and inside out to make it negative, or to point out the worst possible aspect of anything you share with her. I doubt she even realizes she's doing it.
The other day I went back to my hometown, where she lives as do my mom and dad, and we were talking at dinner about Bubba's sleep issues (one of us pretty much has to sleep with him in order for any of us to get any rest). She starts going on about how "He's three years old. He's old enough to be sleeping by himself. What's he going to do when he starts getting invited to people's houses for sleepovers?" I said something about how that was a long ways off and hopefully we'd have made some progress by then; right now we're just trying to relax about it and wait awhile until he's a little developmentally older and we're a little more ready to deal with it.
At some point in the conversation she makes sure to remind us all (as if we weren't there at the time) about how her girls never had any sleep issues. They both slept through the night at six weeks (they honestly really did) and they never had to sleep with them. That helps a lot! Thanks, Sis!
I am naturally a very open, honest person and I kind of like to just let things be out in the open. I guess that's why I have to keep learning the lesson over and over and over again to never discuss anything that's important or meaningful with any of my family members. But in my defense, I shared the Bubba cuddling story with her because I thought it was charming and sweet. It never even occurred to me that she could spin it negatively.
Personally, I think it's healthy that Bubba and I are able to be that lovey-dovey with one another and I hope that it is evidence that Bubba will grow up to be a little more in touch with his emotions than his father and most other men are. I love it and Bubba loves it so that's enough for me, but I'm curious...what do you guys think? Do you think it's "weird"?
Anyway, I was telling her about how much fun Bubba is right now, how incredibly cute he is and how much I'm enjoying it. I related to her about how when we get home from work/daycare, he says "I wanna cuddle you," and we sit on the couch and watch a DVD and love on each other. He'll say "You love me Mama?" and I'll smile and say "I love you SO much!" and then he'll say "I love you too Mama!" with a big smile on his face; sometimes he'll reach is hand up and stroke my cheek. It's enchanting and magical and it's like a big huge reward for all the struggling I've had in the past three years learning how to be somewhat comfortable with motherhood and learning how to enjoy my child rather than pretty much hating the whole thing.
Her response was this: "Oh my god, Sue, don't make him into a wuss! He's gonna be such a mama's boy!" This really pissed me off. Here I am, trying to relate something positive (at last) about my experience as a mother and she just stomps on it. Nevertheless, I tried to be rational so I said, "It's taken me so long finally enjoy something about having a kid and I'm going to revel in it and enjoy it as much as I can." She said she just thought it was "weird." I asked why, and I'm sure at this point she realized she'd pissed me off, so she said she didn't know and that she was afraid of saying the wrong thing. I tried to get off the phone but she said she didn't want us to get off the phone with me being mad. I told her I wasn't mad, just felt defeated. In all honesty, I didn't want it to be a big deal because I've learned from experience that it's just not worth it in my family. So I told her I was having a hard week and that it wasn't a big deal and let's just stop talking about it. We talked about some other stuff and got off the phone with our usual "I love yous."
My sister and I have a complicated relationship (do all sisters?) She's eight years older than me and very bossy. She's an elementary school teacher and her husband is very passive so she pretty much runs the show at work and at home and it spill over into every other relationship as well. I don't think she means to hurt people; I think she's just so used to pushing everyone around that she doesn't have a filter there that the rest of us do. I also recognize the occasional bitchy, uncalled-for comment as a family trait. Christ, I did it to LilCherie last night. Still, I at least TRY to rein it in.
Obligatory Disclaimer To Address My Guilt Issues: I love my sister dearly, and in many ways she's like another mother, which is comforting at times but difficult at others. I can say that she's always been there for me, with one exception that I'll talk about some other time, and she's incredibly loyal. Generally, she's really a good person.
Like the rest of my family, and myself although I 'm working on it, she has a unique ability to turn anything upside down and inside out to make it negative, or to point out the worst possible aspect of anything you share with her. I doubt she even realizes she's doing it.
The other day I went back to my hometown, where she lives as do my mom and dad, and we were talking at dinner about Bubba's sleep issues (one of us pretty much has to sleep with him in order for any of us to get any rest). She starts going on about how "He's three years old. He's old enough to be sleeping by himself. What's he going to do when he starts getting invited to people's houses for sleepovers?" I said something about how that was a long ways off and hopefully we'd have made some progress by then; right now we're just trying to relax about it and wait awhile until he's a little developmentally older and we're a little more ready to deal with it.
At some point in the conversation she makes sure to remind us all (as if we weren't there at the time) about how her girls never had any sleep issues. They both slept through the night at six weeks (they honestly really did) and they never had to sleep with them. That helps a lot! Thanks, Sis!
I am naturally a very open, honest person and I kind of like to just let things be out in the open. I guess that's why I have to keep learning the lesson over and over and over again to never discuss anything that's important or meaningful with any of my family members. But in my defense, I shared the Bubba cuddling story with her because I thought it was charming and sweet. It never even occurred to me that she could spin it negatively.
Personally, I think it's healthy that Bubba and I are able to be that lovey-dovey with one another and I hope that it is evidence that Bubba will grow up to be a little more in touch with his emotions than his father and most other men are. I love it and Bubba loves it so that's enough for me, but I'm curious...what do you guys think? Do you think it's "weird"?
Saturday, October 27, 2007
The Worst Excuse Ever.
Yesterday, my mother came out to my house (about an hour's drive for her) to take me to the doctor to get my nose sucked out and septum splints removed after my sinus surgery. Before we went to the doctor, we dropped Bubba off at daycare. He was not in the mood to go, and as I led him into school he looked woefully back at NaNa. When I returned, I mentioned to Mom that if she wanted to, she could pick Bubba up from daycare after my doctor's appointment and keep him for the night, and J. would pick him up the next day. I was thinking, oh, I don't know, that maybe it would be really nice to have a little break since I was still feeling Miserable with a capitol M and J. was dealing with either the fallout from last week's Cold From Hell or possibly a complication like bronchitis or something of that ilk. She seemed at least open to the idea and said "Let me think about it for a little bit." Seemed reasonable.
Well, after my doctor's appointment I asked if she had decided what she wanted to do and she replies, "I better not take him. I need to go shopping tomorrow for a new frying pan."
I was so drugged up on pain meds when this conversation occurred and the frying pan excuse was so shockingly bad that I’m still not sure if I made any kind of remark immediately after she said this, but after some uncomfortable silence I do remember saying “Okay. I don’t ever want you to feel pressured into watching my kid.” Then more uncomfortable silence, punctuated by a few small-talky comments we both made to just sort of ease the tension. I was pretty desperate for her to go home, however, so I sort of urged her to go home immediately by saying “I know you’ll want to be home for lunch with Dad.” Almost like the last turn of the knife, even though I know it was unintentional, she says to me as she’s walking out the door, “Well, I hope you feel better soon…let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” As long as it doesn’t involve watching my son, I guess.
Here is where I must give you some essential background.
*My Mom does help me, Bubba and J. out a lot. Really. She's generally a very good Mom and NaNa.
*She does watch Bubba one day every week and has since he was born. This was at her request because she wanted to make sure Bubba "knew her" and that she had a good relationship with him.
*Mom is 68 years old. She's in better physical shape than I am; still, I understand that caring for a young child is tiring.
*Mom has never worked outside of the home, so since she stopped babysitting for my nieces about 10 years ago, she's been "retired." Which means, theoretically at least, that urgent shopping trips for critical items like frying pans could be carried out any day of the week.
*Before Bubba was born, there were many comments from Mom about how much fun it would be to have Bubba "come and visit NaNa and PaPa for a week!" She and Dad have taken Bubba for many one- or two-night stays, and shared a six-day babysitting stint with my sister when we went to Amsterdam. There have not, however, been any spontaneous requests to have Bubba for a week, and only one or two to have him for a night or weekend.
*Finally, I feel a disclaimer is necessary: I know I am lucky to have a mother who loves me, my husband and our child, and that she is willing to take him at all, ever, and I am eternally grateful for those things. I am still, however, a little pissed about the frying pan incident. Okay. Now I can move on and really get into the bitching.
Here’s what bugs me about this whole thing. First, if she didn’t want to watch Bubba, I wish she could have just said “I’m sorry, Depressionista, but I just don’t feel up to it today,” or “It just really tires me out to have him overnight,” or something even closely resembling the truth. But having to shop for a new frying pan???? Jesus!
Secondly, I think about all the times she said (and even as recently as last week, says) she wants to have Bubba for a weekend or an overnight but then never carries through on it unless I specifically ask (beg). What happened to the woman who just couldn’t wait for me to procreate so she could have all this quality time with my child?
Third, it sparks off a smidge of paranoia in me that wow, my kid must really be a brat. Maybe I’m delusional but I really don’t think he is (at least not any more than any other three-year-old) but an excuse like having to go shopping for a frying pan makes you kind of think twice, you know? And if, in fact, she really doesn’t like watching him because he’s a terror, I’d rather have her be honest with me and maybe give me some useful information that I could work with than making up this ridiculously stupid excuse.
Finally…she had to go SHOPPING FOR A FRYING PAN??? This is the best she could come up with after three hours, including a half an hour with nothing to do but think while she waited for me to come out of the exam room? This excuse was so bad that it was almost impossible for either one of us to pretend that it was even remotely believable.
I so wanted to call her tonight and ask her if she had found the perfect frying pan and ask her to tell me all about it. “Tell me, Mom, is it stainless steel or Teflon-coated? A Calphalon, perhaps Farberware? Ten-inch or twelve-inch?” And, in my fantasy, this final question: “Was shopping for the frying pan more fulfilling than spending quality time with your grandson?”
I really do hope that at some point, she does ask me if she can have Bubba for a night or a weekend, and I hope I will have the guts (and not be so desperate to unload my kid) that I'll be able to say, "Gee, Mom, that would be great, but we're going shopping tomorrow for a new frying pan and Bubba's really excited about it so I think we'll have to make it some other time."
In reality, I'll have to just let this slide because I know I will at some point be desperate to unload my kid and I'll have to ask (beg) her to take him again, and because I know from experience that any kind of honesty surrounding this issue will just cause more trouble than it's worth. I don't want to deal with the crying and the hurt feelings and Dad telling me how much I've hurt my mother, yada yada blah blah blah. But last night, when I was feeling sick and feverish and wanting to cry but trying not to so I wouldn't drown my poor, ailing sinuses in mucus, and this morning when I sat in the living room and did cry in spite of everything, and in front of Bubba who then asked if I was sad and brought me a tissue to wipe my tears, and as I watched my sick husband take our son out to the mall because I was feeling so horrible, and as I looked at all the laundry that needs to be done because I can't do anything and J. is expending all of his meager store of energy on taking care of Bubba...I felt really alone. And sad.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
The illusion of safety
Yesterday's shootings at Virginia Tech are on my mind. Like any normal human being, a tragedy like this shocks me, sickens me, angers me. Since the birth of my son, tragedies like this rock me at a deeper level. My first thought was of the parents of those students who were killed; I put myself in their place, receiving that phone call or waiting for hours and hours for the confirmation that their child was among the dead. It physically turns my stomach. The tears have been stinging my eyes since last night.
On November 1, 1991, I was a junior at the University of Iowa. It was a dreary, snowy Friday afternoon, and J. and I were preparing to go back to our hometown for the weekend. When he picked me up at my dorm, he told me about how he'd had to come a different route because there were all kinds of emergency vehicles and ambulances around the Pentacrest, the heart of our campus. Puzzled, but able to brush it aside in the way that narcissistic college students are able, we packed up the car and hit the road. We were no more than 20 miles out of town before announcers broke into the music and reported that several people on campus had been shot.
At first, the numbers that were reported were up to 25; later, it turned out that five people were killed, one person was critically injured, and the gunman had killed himself. We listened to the radio all the way home in shock. In the days before cell phones, there was no way to know if my brother and sister-in-law, who worked on campus, or any of our friends were among the victims; there was no way to call our parents to tell them we were okay. When we got to my parents' house, my mother's relief was palpable. Not sure when we'd left Iowa City, she'd tried repeatedly to call us, but the huge influx of calls from anxious parents and loved ones had jammed the lines.
After calling his parents, me, J., and my family sat in front of the NBC Nightly News, watching Tom Brokaw report on the "massacre" that had happened at our school. Eventually we were able to reach my brother and our friends and they were all okay. The details trickled in. The shooter was a graduate physics student from China. He was angry because his doctoral dissertation wasn't nominated for an honor. He killed the student who received it, along with three physics faculty members. He then walked across campus to an administrative building, killed the associate vice president for academic affairs, and seriously wounded a student employee, who survived but is now quadriplegic.
We returned on Sunday night to a quiet campus (in my insular world that revolved around myself, I didn't even about what it must have been like for my parents to send me back that Sunday night). Classes were cancelled the next day, and there was a memorial for the victims. Students stayed in their rooms, gathered with friends, processed the awful event. More than anything, I remember the quiet of that day and the days that followed. It seemed like time stopped for a little while. Even when classes resumed, people didn't talk much, and when they did, it was hushed.
The feeling I had then was remarkably similar to the one I have now. I felt stunned and deeply saddened, sick — but also felt as if I didn't really have a right to those feelings, because I didn't know any of the victims personally; I wasn't touched directly by the violence. Although I like to think that as a human being, we are all touched — injured — when something like this happens.
Last night I sat on my couch and watched the coverage while my two-and-a-half year old son lay sleeping quietly in our bedroom. He was there in our home, safe in our bed...but I didn't feel any reassurance. Watching the images of a bloody student being carried from a building, of the crackling of gunfire coming from a building on campus, a voice in my head said "This is the world you have brought your son into. This is the world you will send your son into. This is the world you DO send your son into."
Today, I feel a deep sense of guilt for that. That my selfishness, my desire for a child brought him here to this cruel, senseless, violent world — a world where college students are gunned down for no other reason than that they were there; a world where children are snatched from their beds, raped and murdered; a world where the president of our country talks about the tragic deaths of these college students while he sends other (often less-privileged) 19-year-olds to Iraq to be gunned down; a world where the president says that schools are supposed to be sanctuaries, while schoolchildren in Iraq face violence and death every day at his hands.
The hypocrisy of that is stunning to me. The words flying through the airwaves today are empty to me. "How can we stop this from happening again?" "Are schools in America safe?" "What needs to be done to increase security?"
The truth is that we cannot stop this from happening again. If we could, there would have been one school shooting in history and then no more. Schools in America are not safe. America is not safe. The world is not safe. Increased security will do nothing but add one more hurdle that a deranged murderer will not hesitate to overcome.
As I walked to the bus stop last night, on the same campus where I went to school and where I now work, I thought to myself how nothing really changed after the shooting in 1991. There's a memorial walkway, dedicated to one of the victims; there are anniversary remembrances and vigils that are more sparsely attended every year. But it's no more difficult for a disgruntled student with a gun to mow people down now than it was on October 31, 1991. How could it be? What, honestly, could be done?
The truth is that safety is a necessary illusion that we nurture in order to be able to function every day. When something like yesterday happens, it is momentarily shattered, and then the rationalization and the empty words and simply time and distance from the event let us build it up again. We need that illusion to prevent us from completely giving in to debauchery and instant self-gratification, to be productive, to raise our children as if, by some miracle, they will survive intact to live out their projected lifespan.
For breakfast this morning, I let my son have a cupcake, because the only words in my head that don't seem empty are these: enjoy today as much as you can.
On November 1, 1991, I was a junior at the University of Iowa. It was a dreary, snowy Friday afternoon, and J. and I were preparing to go back to our hometown for the weekend. When he picked me up at my dorm, he told me about how he'd had to come a different route because there were all kinds of emergency vehicles and ambulances around the Pentacrest, the heart of our campus. Puzzled, but able to brush it aside in the way that narcissistic college students are able, we packed up the car and hit the road. We were no more than 20 miles out of town before announcers broke into the music and reported that several people on campus had been shot.
At first, the numbers that were reported were up to 25; later, it turned out that five people were killed, one person was critically injured, and the gunman had killed himself. We listened to the radio all the way home in shock. In the days before cell phones, there was no way to know if my brother and sister-in-law, who worked on campus, or any of our friends were among the victims; there was no way to call our parents to tell them we were okay. When we got to my parents' house, my mother's relief was palpable. Not sure when we'd left Iowa City, she'd tried repeatedly to call us, but the huge influx of calls from anxious parents and loved ones had jammed the lines.
After calling his parents, me, J., and my family sat in front of the NBC Nightly News, watching Tom Brokaw report on the "massacre" that had happened at our school. Eventually we were able to reach my brother and our friends and they were all okay. The details trickled in. The shooter was a graduate physics student from China. He was angry because his doctoral dissertation wasn't nominated for an honor. He killed the student who received it, along with three physics faculty members. He then walked across campus to an administrative building, killed the associate vice president for academic affairs, and seriously wounded a student employee, who survived but is now quadriplegic.
We returned on Sunday night to a quiet campus (in my insular world that revolved around myself, I didn't even about what it must have been like for my parents to send me back that Sunday night). Classes were cancelled the next day, and there was a memorial for the victims. Students stayed in their rooms, gathered with friends, processed the awful event. More than anything, I remember the quiet of that day and the days that followed. It seemed like time stopped for a little while. Even when classes resumed, people didn't talk much, and when they did, it was hushed.
The feeling I had then was remarkably similar to the one I have now. I felt stunned and deeply saddened, sick — but also felt as if I didn't really have a right to those feelings, because I didn't know any of the victims personally; I wasn't touched directly by the violence. Although I like to think that as a human being, we are all touched — injured — when something like this happens.
Last night I sat on my couch and watched the coverage while my two-and-a-half year old son lay sleeping quietly in our bedroom. He was there in our home, safe in our bed...but I didn't feel any reassurance. Watching the images of a bloody student being carried from a building, of the crackling of gunfire coming from a building on campus, a voice in my head said "This is the world you have brought your son into. This is the world you will send your son into. This is the world you DO send your son into."
Today, I feel a deep sense of guilt for that. That my selfishness, my desire for a child brought him here to this cruel, senseless, violent world — a world where college students are gunned down for no other reason than that they were there; a world where children are snatched from their beds, raped and murdered; a world where the president of our country talks about the tragic deaths of these college students while he sends other (often less-privileged) 19-year-olds to Iraq to be gunned down; a world where the president says that schools are supposed to be sanctuaries, while schoolchildren in Iraq face violence and death every day at his hands.
The hypocrisy of that is stunning to me. The words flying through the airwaves today are empty to me. "How can we stop this from happening again?" "Are schools in America safe?" "What needs to be done to increase security?"
The truth is that we cannot stop this from happening again. If we could, there would have been one school shooting in history and then no more. Schools in America are not safe. America is not safe. The world is not safe. Increased security will do nothing but add one more hurdle that a deranged murderer will not hesitate to overcome.
As I walked to the bus stop last night, on the same campus where I went to school and where I now work, I thought to myself how nothing really changed after the shooting in 1991. There's a memorial walkway, dedicated to one of the victims; there are anniversary remembrances and vigils that are more sparsely attended every year. But it's no more difficult for a disgruntled student with a gun to mow people down now than it was on October 31, 1991. How could it be? What, honestly, could be done?
The truth is that safety is a necessary illusion that we nurture in order to be able to function every day. When something like yesterday happens, it is momentarily shattered, and then the rationalization and the empty words and simply time and distance from the event let us build it up again. We need that illusion to prevent us from completely giving in to debauchery and instant self-gratification, to be productive, to raise our children as if, by some miracle, they will survive intact to live out their projected lifespan.
For breakfast this morning, I let my son have a cupcake, because the only words in my head that don't seem empty are these: enjoy today as much as you can.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
The Considerate Smoker's Manifesto Part II
"Guess what I did tonight," LilCherie asked while we were on the phone tonight. "I bought a carton of cigarettes." In the past, LilCherie has had a personal objection to buying a carton of cigarettes because it is an admission of smokitude that she just didn't want to make.
However, our governor signed a cigarette tax hike today that raises the cost of a pack of cigarettes by $1. The total tax on a pack of cigarettes in my state is now $1.36. How rude.
Thus, the Great Cigarette Run of 2007 was set in motion. After our call I ran out and got a couple cartons myself.
This pisses me off for more reasons than just having to spend more on my bad habit. First, there's all kinds of rhetoric being spewed about how the tax will make Iowa a healthier state, people will quit smoking, it will be good for you, Big Brother says. But it isn't about Big Brother's concern at all. If that were the case, cigarettes would be illegal. What it's really about is making money. Cigarette taxes are just an endless source of revenue for the government, and one that nobody can argue about. Well, people who smoke can argue...but everybody hates us anyway so it's not real effective.
According to this article, Governor Culver said: "With the signing of this bill, we are sending a bold message throughout the state and around the nation that Iowa takes the health care of its people, especially its kids, seriously." The article said Culver pledged the money, which was projected to raise $138 million in fiscal 2008,to expand health care coverage for children.
The idea that health care coverage for children in our state depends on people continuing to smoke rather disgusts me. Shouldn't we be able to take care of our children (and the rest of us, for that matter) with all the other taxes we pay? Isn't it a little slimy to basically say, through a tax hike like this, that we need people to keep smoking in order to give children in our state adequate health care?
Another article said "Culver said the higher taxes will help thousands of Iowans kick the increasingly expensive habit while raising money to expand health care programs." So if the taxes go up, causing thousands of people quit buying cigarettes, aren't we just going to be breaking even here? What if the tax is so successful that everyone just quits tomorrow? What about those poor kids without health care?
Pro-tax individuals would say that the reduction in smoking-related illnesses and medical costs would make up for the shortfall. I don't buy it. A lot of people who smoke pay taxes and pay their own health insurance premiums. Yes, maybe health insurance premiums go up because of people who smoke. They also go up because Cletus can't lay off the cheeseburgers, Rhonda insists on roasting herself in a tanning bed, Harold won't control his diabetes and Tiffany won't wear her seat belt. If people are so concerned about smoking-related medical costs, why not funnel the $138 million into adequate and effective smoking cessation programs? Why not? Because that would be helping those dirty, stinky, scum-of-the-earth smokers!
People in our state who smoke shouldn't have to shoulder the burden of caring for our state's children. Shouldn't this be a responsibility of every citizen? Wouldn't it be more fair to add a smaller tax onto everyone's income tax, or maybe increase the sales tax for everything just a little bit?
Now I'm going to really get myself into hot water, but the very fact that I have to pay for all the uninsured children in this state pisses me off. Don't get me wrong. I would be the first in line to support nationalized health care--for everyone. But in our current system, there are people like my husband's older sister, who hasn't worked a steady job her entire life, despite any real disability other than extreme selfishness. She's popped out her two kids, who, due to neglect and the probable prenatal drug use they were exposed to, will need "services" for the rest of their lives until they finally end up in jail or in "the system" like she is. I don't think my money--from my cigarettes, my steady job, or the goods and services I am able to pay for because of my steady job--should have to support that. It's a difficult issue because of course I don't want to see a sick kid go without medical care; but it's also hard to pay for it when I know there are people out there like my husband's sister. I'd be more supportive if the money went to increase social services to help those who really want to get off state aid do it. I'd rather have my cigarette money go toward building homes--yes, orphanages--so that those children who are being neglected and being cycled through the wheels of the welfare system could at least have a stable life and a chance to grow up away from the constant personification of irresponsibility.
In the end, there's nothing I can do about it. I won't quit smoking, I know that about myself. The revenue from the tax hike probably won't even go to help take care of children. It will probably go to such critically important projects like this one.
I guess it doesn't even matter all that much. We're all going to die from global warming anyway. Unless someone comes up with a way to reverse it and the government actually starts giving enough of a shit to do something about it...and as long as people keep smoking long enough to fund it.
However, our governor signed a cigarette tax hike today that raises the cost of a pack of cigarettes by $1. The total tax on a pack of cigarettes in my state is now $1.36. How rude.
Thus, the Great Cigarette Run of 2007 was set in motion. After our call I ran out and got a couple cartons myself.
This pisses me off for more reasons than just having to spend more on my bad habit. First, there's all kinds of rhetoric being spewed about how the tax will make Iowa a healthier state, people will quit smoking, it will be good for you, Big Brother says. But it isn't about Big Brother's concern at all. If that were the case, cigarettes would be illegal. What it's really about is making money. Cigarette taxes are just an endless source of revenue for the government, and one that nobody can argue about. Well, people who smoke can argue...but everybody hates us anyway so it's not real effective.
According to this article, Governor Culver said: "With the signing of this bill, we are sending a bold message throughout the state and around the nation that Iowa takes the health care of its people, especially its kids, seriously." The article said Culver pledged the money, which was projected to raise $138 million in fiscal 2008,to expand health care coverage for children.
The idea that health care coverage for children in our state depends on people continuing to smoke rather disgusts me. Shouldn't we be able to take care of our children (and the rest of us, for that matter) with all the other taxes we pay? Isn't it a little slimy to basically say, through a tax hike like this, that we need people to keep smoking in order to give children in our state adequate health care?
Another article said "Culver said the higher taxes will help thousands of Iowans kick the increasingly expensive habit while raising money to expand health care programs." So if the taxes go up, causing thousands of people quit buying cigarettes, aren't we just going to be breaking even here? What if the tax is so successful that everyone just quits tomorrow? What about those poor kids without health care?
Pro-tax individuals would say that the reduction in smoking-related illnesses and medical costs would make up for the shortfall. I don't buy it. A lot of people who smoke pay taxes and pay their own health insurance premiums. Yes, maybe health insurance premiums go up because of people who smoke. They also go up because Cletus can't lay off the cheeseburgers, Rhonda insists on roasting herself in a tanning bed, Harold won't control his diabetes and Tiffany won't wear her seat belt. If people are so concerned about smoking-related medical costs, why not funnel the $138 million into adequate and effective smoking cessation programs? Why not? Because that would be helping those dirty, stinky, scum-of-the-earth smokers!
People in our state who smoke shouldn't have to shoulder the burden of caring for our state's children. Shouldn't this be a responsibility of every citizen? Wouldn't it be more fair to add a smaller tax onto everyone's income tax, or maybe increase the sales tax for everything just a little bit?
Now I'm going to really get myself into hot water, but the very fact that I have to pay for all the uninsured children in this state pisses me off. Don't get me wrong. I would be the first in line to support nationalized health care--for everyone. But in our current system, there are people like my husband's older sister, who hasn't worked a steady job her entire life, despite any real disability other than extreme selfishness. She's popped out her two kids, who, due to neglect and the probable prenatal drug use they were exposed to, will need "services" for the rest of their lives until they finally end up in jail or in "the system" like she is. I don't think my money--from my cigarettes, my steady job, or the goods and services I am able to pay for because of my steady job--should have to support that. It's a difficult issue because of course I don't want to see a sick kid go without medical care; but it's also hard to pay for it when I know there are people out there like my husband's sister. I'd be more supportive if the money went to increase social services to help those who really want to get off state aid do it. I'd rather have my cigarette money go toward building homes--yes, orphanages--so that those children who are being neglected and being cycled through the wheels of the welfare system could at least have a stable life and a chance to grow up away from the constant personification of irresponsibility.
In the end, there's nothing I can do about it. I won't quit smoking, I know that about myself. The revenue from the tax hike probably won't even go to help take care of children. It will probably go to such critically important projects like this one.
I guess it doesn't even matter all that much. We're all going to die from global warming anyway. Unless someone comes up with a way to reverse it and the government actually starts giving enough of a shit to do something about it...and as long as people keep smoking long enough to fund it.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The Considerate Smoker's Manifesto
Day before yesterday, I was standing more than the required 25 feet from any doorway and smoking a cigarette while waiting for the bus. I purposely stationed myself as far away from any human activity as possible--away from the sidewalk, away from any buildings, away from the bus stop.
About halfway through my cigarette, I notice a frumpy woman walking down the sidewalk in my direction, and she clearly has me in her sites. She comes right up to me and says, "I'm not sure you are aware, but this is a smoke-free campus."
I am aware that the campus soon will be smoke-free, as our office has been involved in publicizing this change, but I also know the campus is currently still smoke-full.
"I believe the change is not going into effect until April 2nd," I say.
"Oh, you're absolutely right. Well, good luck!" she says brightly, and continues on her way.
"Um...thanks?" I say after her.
This woman is obviously very psyched about the no-smoking policy, so psyched that she can't wait another five weeks for the power trip. Someone this psyched would HAVE to know that the policy was not yet in effect, so I figure she just assumed I looked like someone who didn't know about it. Or maybe she just figured that people who smoke can't read.
I particularly enjoyed the "good luck" she tacked onto the end of the exchange. This comment provoked a real moment of esprit de l'escalier (for those who are not familiar with this term, as was I until about a month ago when it came to me via dictionary.com's Word of the Day, this is a great expression that means 'In the original it refers to that infuriating situation in which you leave a drawing room and are halfway down the stairs before you suddenly think of that devastatingly witty comment you could have made.') At the time I just threw out a half-hearted, questioning "thanks" because I couldn't figure out why she was wishing me good luck; upon more reflection, I realize she probably just assumed that I would soon be attempting to quit in order to be in line with The Policy. Silly woman.
Anyway, here's my "esprit de l'escalier" -- the witty comment I should have made.
"Good luck!" she said brightly.
"Oh, that's kind of you...it'll be tough, but I'm sure I'll still be able to find somewhere to smoke after the policy is in effect!"
I wish I had some kind of a badge or a certificate I could show proving that I am a Considerate Smoker. I understand that not everybody wants to breathe my smoke. I understand that there are many people who do not participate in my love affair with the burn in the throat and the rush of nicotine in the blood. Therefore, I do my best to be a nuisance to no one when I am indulging in my vice. Usually I smoke on the top floor of the parking ramp next to my building, because there are very rarely people there and it's the top floor--i.e., no roof and lots and lots of ventilation. I never smoke next to a door or a window, and try to remove myself several feet from sidewalks and other thoroughfares so people will not have to walk through a cloud of smoke. If I see someone coming and it looks like they will intersect with the mushroom cloud, I hold the cigarette down and do not exhale until they are out of range. If I'm in a smoking section of a restaurant and there are kids there--even if their parents are smoking up a storm--I usually refrain or seriously limit my puffing because of the guilt factor. In the summer, I even have a fan placed on my screened-in porch to blow the smoke away from my neighbor's house just in case they might catch a whiff when the wind is blowing that way.
Yet I know this doesn't matter to the Smoking Police. It seems that in the crazed puritan/public health/big brother war on smoking, the message has gone from "smoking is bad" to "smokers are bad." (By the way, I hate the word "smoker" because it labels a person as their bad habit. I prefer "people who smoke. But sometimes it's just the easiest word to use, so I've had to relax my rules here. We smokers are rule breakers anyway, you know.)
Yes, in general, we smokers are a surly bunch. I mean, why do you think we're smoking? We've got issues, man! Do you think we enjoy being ridiculed, discriminated against and looked down on? C'mon! Do you think we'd choose to be smokers? No! We were born this way!
Seriously, just because a person smokes doesn't mean he or she is the antichrist. It doesn't mean we are horrible people. You can still be friends with us. We won't try to convert you. Chances are, we don't even smoke in our own homes, so you can come over without being subjected to it. And, chances are, we have some interesting shit to say. Ever notice that at a party, everyone ends up hanging out with the smokers (or, if they aren't, they're the ones nodding off on the couch?) There's a reason for that. We're fun!
Usually, the Smoking Police legitimize initiatives like the smoke-free campus by calling it "a public health issue" or because of their overwhelming "concern for smokers." As far as the public health issue argument goes, I highly doubt that my cigarette, smoldering by its lonesome, outside, more than 20 feet away from any person, is as dangerous as the black clouds of exhaust coming from the back of the fifth bus that just pulled away from the stop. It seems to me that this kind of zealous enthusiasm would be better spent lobbying the government to require smaller, more efficient, "greener" cars, or working for greater production and use of clean energy sources. Likewise, if you're going to rag on my smoking, then make sure you don't stand too close to bus stops while you're at it, or walk through a parking ramp.
The "concern for the health of smokers" argument is especially bothersome. First, it's patronizing. Please don't be concerned for my health when I'm not! Secondly, it's bullshit. If they were that concerned about other people's health, they'd be reprimanding every person eating a Big Mac, having an alcoholic drink, riding a bike during rush hour or trying to raise a toddler.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not proud to be a person who smokes. I wish I'd never started and sometimes I wish I had the inner fortitude required to quit (more often, I just give in and enjoy it, sorry). I admire efforts to prevent kids from starting and to help people who want to quit succeed. I just get pissed off when it becomes more about a power trip than anything else.
About halfway through my cigarette, I notice a frumpy woman walking down the sidewalk in my direction, and she clearly has me in her sites. She comes right up to me and says, "I'm not sure you are aware, but this is a smoke-free campus."
I am aware that the campus soon will be smoke-free, as our office has been involved in publicizing this change, but I also know the campus is currently still smoke-full.
"I believe the change is not going into effect until April 2nd," I say.
"Oh, you're absolutely right. Well, good luck!" she says brightly, and continues on her way.
"Um...thanks?" I say after her.
This woman is obviously very psyched about the no-smoking policy, so psyched that she can't wait another five weeks for the power trip. Someone this psyched would HAVE to know that the policy was not yet in effect, so I figure she just assumed I looked like someone who didn't know about it. Or maybe she just figured that people who smoke can't read.
I particularly enjoyed the "good luck" she tacked onto the end of the exchange. This comment provoked a real moment of esprit de l'escalier (for those who are not familiar with this term, as was I until about a month ago when it came to me via dictionary.com's Word of the Day, this is a great expression that means 'In the original it refers to that infuriating situation in which you leave a drawing room and are halfway down the stairs before you suddenly think of that devastatingly witty comment you could have made.') At the time I just threw out a half-hearted, questioning "thanks" because I couldn't figure out why she was wishing me good luck; upon more reflection, I realize she probably just assumed that I would soon be attempting to quit in order to be in line with The Policy. Silly woman.
Anyway, here's my "esprit de l'escalier" -- the witty comment I should have made.
"Good luck!" she said brightly.
"Oh, that's kind of you...it'll be tough, but I'm sure I'll still be able to find somewhere to smoke after the policy is in effect!"
I wish I had some kind of a badge or a certificate I could show proving that I am a Considerate Smoker. I understand that not everybody wants to breathe my smoke. I understand that there are many people who do not participate in my love affair with the burn in the throat and the rush of nicotine in the blood. Therefore, I do my best to be a nuisance to no one when I am indulging in my vice. Usually I smoke on the top floor of the parking ramp next to my building, because there are very rarely people there and it's the top floor--i.e., no roof and lots and lots of ventilation. I never smoke next to a door or a window, and try to remove myself several feet from sidewalks and other thoroughfares so people will not have to walk through a cloud of smoke. If I see someone coming and it looks like they will intersect with the mushroom cloud, I hold the cigarette down and do not exhale until they are out of range. If I'm in a smoking section of a restaurant and there are kids there--even if their parents are smoking up a storm--I usually refrain or seriously limit my puffing because of the guilt factor. In the summer, I even have a fan placed on my screened-in porch to blow the smoke away from my neighbor's house just in case they might catch a whiff when the wind is blowing that way.
Yet I know this doesn't matter to the Smoking Police. It seems that in the crazed puritan/public health/big brother war on smoking, the message has gone from "smoking is bad" to "smokers are bad." (By the way, I hate the word "smoker" because it labels a person as their bad habit. I prefer "people who smoke. But sometimes it's just the easiest word to use, so I've had to relax my rules here. We smokers are rule breakers anyway, you know.)
Yes, in general, we smokers are a surly bunch. I mean, why do you think we're smoking? We've got issues, man! Do you think we enjoy being ridiculed, discriminated against and looked down on? C'mon! Do you think we'd choose to be smokers? No! We were born this way!
Seriously, just because a person smokes doesn't mean he or she is the antichrist. It doesn't mean we are horrible people. You can still be friends with us. We won't try to convert you. Chances are, we don't even smoke in our own homes, so you can come over without being subjected to it. And, chances are, we have some interesting shit to say. Ever notice that at a party, everyone ends up hanging out with the smokers (or, if they aren't, they're the ones nodding off on the couch?) There's a reason for that. We're fun!
Usually, the Smoking Police legitimize initiatives like the smoke-free campus by calling it "a public health issue" or because of their overwhelming "concern for smokers." As far as the public health issue argument goes, I highly doubt that my cigarette, smoldering by its lonesome, outside, more than 20 feet away from any person, is as dangerous as the black clouds of exhaust coming from the back of the fifth bus that just pulled away from the stop. It seems to me that this kind of zealous enthusiasm would be better spent lobbying the government to require smaller, more efficient, "greener" cars, or working for greater production and use of clean energy sources. Likewise, if you're going to rag on my smoking, then make sure you don't stand too close to bus stops while you're at it, or walk through a parking ramp.
The "concern for the health of smokers" argument is especially bothersome. First, it's patronizing. Please don't be concerned for my health when I'm not! Secondly, it's bullshit. If they were that concerned about other people's health, they'd be reprimanding every person eating a Big Mac, having an alcoholic drink, riding a bike during rush hour or trying to raise a toddler.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not proud to be a person who smokes. I wish I'd never started and sometimes I wish I had the inner fortitude required to quit (more often, I just give in and enjoy it, sorry). I admire efforts to prevent kids from starting and to help people who want to quit succeed. I just get pissed off when it becomes more about a power trip than anything else.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
The rant of a bitter, angry, depressed mother
Well, I couldn't let the One Year Anniversary of My Blog go unrecognized, now, could I?
Yes, folks, its been a year since the scintillating tales of Depressionista and Co. began gracing the Internet. To those of you who read, thank you; to those of you who comment, thank you even more. It makes my day to see comments here!
I have lots to blog about but not enough time, so I'm limiting myself to an article I just had to laugh at. It appeared on CNN.com today. My comments will appear in italics. My comments are bitter, angry, and completely down on motherhood, so be warned. I'm just in that kind of mood today, okay? I'm feeling so rebellious, in fact, that I'm not even going to write the obligatory, "Don't get me wrong, I love my child...." disclaimer. I know, I'm NUTS!
How to Be a Happier Mom: 8 Ways to Focus on the Positive
by Robert Barnett
Yes, folks, its been a year since the scintillating tales of Depressionista and Co. began gracing the Internet. To those of you who read, thank you; to those of you who comment, thank you even more. It makes my day to see comments here!
I have lots to blog about but not enough time, so I'm limiting myself to an article I just had to laugh at. It appeared on CNN.com today. My comments will appear in italics. My comments are bitter, angry, and completely down on motherhood, so be warned. I'm just in that kind of mood today, okay? I'm feeling so rebellious, in fact, that I'm not even going to write the obligatory, "Don't get me wrong, I love my child...." disclaimer. I know, I'm NUTS!
How to Be a Happier Mom: 8 Ways to Focus on the Positive
by Robert Barnett
Parenting.com
(Of course a man wrote this!)
(Of course a man wrote this!)
Ask a mom if she's happier now that she has a child and she'll usually say yes. (Of course. If you say no, people think you're a bad mother, which is the next worst thing after Hitler and al Qaeda). In fact, around the world, children top the list of the most enjoyable things in life. (You've got to be kidding me.) But psychologists who study happiness -- a new field in the past decade -- often report a different picture. (Happiness is a new field. Interesting.)
Being the mom of a young child (especially one under 3) is rich and rewarding, but also a real strain on your mood. (I'm still waiting for the 'rich and rewarding' part). "Moment to moment, you may be exhausted, frustrated, sometimes angry," (sometimes ready to kill yourself. Sometimes crying, sometimes rocking in a corner, sometimes curled in the fetal position) says Peter Ubel, M.D., a professor of medicine and psychology at the University of Michigan. "You may be squabbling with your spouse more. (and threatening to divorce him or have an affair). You have more negative emotions." (Yeah, that all spells 'rich and rewarding to me...how about you?') The time you spend taking care of your child may not even be the high point of your day. (No shit, sherlock.)
On their list of pleasurable activities, moms rank it lower than eating, exercising, or watching TV, according to a University of Michigan study of 900 women. In fact, kid care rates only slightly higher than housework, working, or commuting! (Umm...I like housework, working and commuting more than kid care, in general. Oh my god I'm a terrible person). "This finding shocks people," says Daniel Gilbert, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Harvard University and author of "Stumbling on Happiness." (I'm not shocked.)
"They think psychologists are saying you don't love your children. Of course you love your children beyond measure! And kids do bring joy. They bring transcendent moments in which you feel so happy that it outweighs all the hard work you've done. It's just that children do not increase your average daily enjoyment." (Do you guys agree with this? I mean, yes there are transcendent moments...but does it really outweigh all the day-t0-day crap? I guess what I'm asking is, is it worth it? I haven't figured that one out yet.)
The Happiness Paradox
One reason for the discrepancy between moms and experts: selective memory. When psychologists ask moms in a general way whether they like spending time with their kids, the overwhelming majority say they do because they're thinking of fun activities such as reading a book or playing in the park (or they're thinking that if they say no, they will be judged and shunned). When they're specifically asked to describe their actual daily routine, they remember the hours they spent struggling to get their child dressed or ready for bed. (Because that's what the day usually consists of).
Maybe, though, the cold calculus of psychological science is missing the intensity of joy that time spent with your child can bring. "There are little moments that are grand-slam home runs," says Gilbert.
Luckily, those moments can overcome your daily frustrations. "Happiness is more than just that smiley feeling," says Karen Reivich, Ph.D., a research associate in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "It's also feeling a connection to something larger than yourself. When people are in service to something bigger, they describe their lives as filled with meaning. It's not the smiley face, but when it's all over, you realize you'd do it again." (Or, in my case, it's feeling like you're really fucking up something big, so during those times when your child isn't annoying the hell out of you, you just feel worried and guilty that you're scarring him for life).
And being needed is a rewarding experience as well. "You get back tenfold everything that you put into it," says Elizabeth Howard, mom of Reilly, 2, in Anaheim, California. "I don't think people should have a child just to make them happy, but it's opened up a whole part of my heart that I didn't even know was there." (Okay, I'll concede to the opening up of the heart part. The tenfold part...not so sure about that yet either).
The first step to being a happier mom, then, is to value what you do -- to feel that it's important. The next step is to find ways to make it more enjoyable. Not only will you be doing the best thing for yourself, but you'll also become a more effective mom.
Say you're with your 2-year-old and she wants her juice in the red cup, but the red cup is missing. "If I'm in a grumpy mood, I may just say, 'Drink it in the blue cup,'" says Reivich. "But if I'm feeling more positive, maybe I'll take some red construction paper and tape it around the blue cup. I've transformed something that might get ugly into something playful and fun." (Give me a fucking break!!!! Construction paper around the cup??? Jesus Christ! Anyone whose ever taken care of a young child knows the real answer to this dilemma--you look around like a crazy person for the goddamned red cup so that you don't have to hear a) whining about wanting the red cup or b) complaints about how the kid doesn't want any construction paper on the cup. Gawwd!) The good news for all moms is this: You can learn to focus on the positive -- and learn to make it a daily habit. Here's how:
Admit when you're stressed
Ironically, once you stop expecting motherhood to feel warm and fuzzy all the time, life as a mom gets easier. "It really helps to realize that it's OK to feel frustrated, angry, tired, or irritable sometimes," says Dr. Ubel. (Please clarify 'sometimes'--greater than or less than 12 hours a day?) "You're not a bad parent. It's not even a bad parenting experience. It's just normal." (Can't normal still be bad? For instance, getting colds are normal...and they still suck.
Get enough sleep (Yeah, right. That's all I have to say about this section.)
Most of us know that money can't buy happiness, but who knew that a good night's sleep just might? That's a key finding of that University of Michigan study. "Making $60,000 more in annual income has less of an effect on your daily happiness than getting one extra hour of sleep a night," says study author Norbert Schwarz, Ph.D., a professor of psychology. So how can you sneak in that extra hour or two?
Misha Sauer, mom of 1-year-old Riley, says her husband is good about taking over on the weekends so she can sleep in or nap. "It absolutely makes a difference in the way I feel," says the Culver City, California, mom. "And I'm more willing to do something active, like take my daughter to the park. If I'm tired, the most I can do is sit there and read to her."
(Re)consider your priorities
It may sound simplistic, but one key to being in a more positive mood is to structure your day so you do more things you enjoy. "It's how you spend your time, not your money, that counts," says Dr. Ubel. "If you have any financial flexibility that lets you maximize your family time, use it now. For instance, do you really need to be the one to clean the house? How about paying someone to help out? And if that's not an option, think about how clean your house really needs to be -- do you need to make the beds, or is bed-making time better spent drawing pictures with your kids?" And if you work outside the home, consider exploring whether you can afford to go part-time rather than full-time. (So what about those of us whose priorities are paying for the house, electricity, and food? I don't have the option to go part-time, I don't have the option to get a maid or a cook. Yeah, if I did, I'd probably be a whole lot happier. Duh!)
Go with the flow
Time seems to slow down when you're doing what you enjoy, whether it's gardening or running laps. People who experience this level of engagement -- which psychologists call "flow" -- are happier than people who rarely do. And you're lucky to have a master of it right before you: your child. "To you and me, every leaf and ant is pretty much the same, but not to a two-year-old," says Reivich. "So try to actively notice things as your child does -- that ant is dragging a big piece of bread, for instance." (Fascinating!)
Bringing more of your best qualities -- your strengths -- to the often mundane tasks of child rearing can also help you feel more engaged. "One of my strengths is humor," Reivich says. "I was making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for my kids one day, and I started talking like it was a cooking show: 'Now I'm browning the bread, now I'm applying a thin layer of peanut butter.' It transformed a mundane task into something all of us could enjoy." (Okay. This is a good idea.)
One mom she knows loves architecture and got passionate about explaining the history of columns as her 4-year-old made sand castles. Her preschooler may not have gotten all the references, says Reivich, "but it was entertaining for both of them." (I can't wait until I can teach Bubba all about the finer points of "drinking coffee," writing erotica and the benefits of the Magic Bullet.)
Savor the moment
One way to nourish positive emotions is to take a moment to appreciate, well, the moment. Just map out two- or three-minute activities that you can do that day to relish that time.
In the morning, for instance, instead of trying to do ten things, take your cup of coffee to the window and sip it while your child watches a video. Notice what's going on. Will it change your life? No, but you'll probably feel calmer.
Gilbert has an even shorter version: "Take ten seconds every hour and look at what you're doing from a higher place." While you're at it, appreciate what a wonderful child you have -- those chubby cheeks, the endearing things she says -- and share that joy with someone who'll rejoice in it with you. That's another way to grab on to the good stuff and prolong your happiness.
Take the long view
Having a sense of perspective will also improve your attitude. "It gives you more patience, and it certainly awakens you to the preciousness of the moment, which is fleeting," says M.J. Ryan, author of "The Happiness Makeover" and mom of Anna, 9. She remembers the times when her daughter wanted to sit on her lap and watch SpongeBob. "Yes, I had other things to do. But I said to myself, 'How long will this last?' I'm grateful for that time with her."
If the drudgery is getting to you, think about life without children. (Yes, keep talkin'...) "You've signed on for a hard job -- it's not supposed to be fun most of the time," says Gilbert. "It's easy to get caught up in the details, but you need to step back and realize how empty your life would be without these people in it." (Okay, I'm good at that. I'm good at imagining the death of my child in order to feel grateful to have him here. Just another one of the "up-sides" to losing a child).
Reconnect with your spouse (When?)
A supportive group of friends and family is one of the cornerstones of a happy life, and for many moms, the center of that social circle is their partner. That's why it's so important to keep the lines of communication open, especially during the "diaper years" -- from infancy to around age 3 -- that experts say are the most stressful (THANK GOD...WE'RE ALMOST THERE!!!) (until your kids become teens, that is!) (Oh.) on a marriage.
"You can't say, 'I'll handle the relationship later,'" says Reivich. "A healthy and realistic goal is to ask, 'What are some small, manageable things we can be doing to keep our connection to each other strong during this rough time?'"
For instance, she and her husband try to have a glass of wine together at night once a week, after their four kids (all under age 9) are in bed. "It's not a date-- we don't need a baby sitter-- it's just 15 minutes. But it's a change to sit together and unwind, and sometimes a chance to dream." (About life without four kids under the age of 9).
When she works with couples, Reivich helps them figure out what they can do for a couple of hours together that interests both of them. With one couple, one partner was very curious, the other really appreciated beauty, so they spent an afternoon museum hopping. (Wow...I wish I could get paid $175 an hour to tell couples to go to the museum together. I wonder if they were also instructed to go to the movies and eat dinner at a restaurant! That's some pretty original stuff!)
"It can be as easy as going food shopping together," she says. Once you make little steps, it's easy to move on to bigger ones, like a night out. Even discussing how stressed you both are can help. "It's affected our relationship a lot; we've both noticed it," says Sauer. "If you can both just say, 'Raising a kid is hard,' putting it out there diminishes the strain." She and her husband are working on having more time together-- by themselves. "We just went on our first date since the baby was born," she says.
Another way to strengthen your connection is to practice what shrinks call "active constructive responding." When your spouse comes home and shares some good news, don't just say, "That's nice." Ask questions that let him tell you about his day, even for a minute or two. At least for that minute, the two of you will be celebrating what's good about your lives.
Say thanks
Feeling grateful is a mood booster. It can be as simple as saying grace every night or finding new ways to acknowledge others.
"When our extended family gets together for a birthday, we go around the room and say one thing we appreciate and the one thing we like best about that person," says Elizabeth Howard. (We do something like this at Thanksgiving, where we all go around and say what we're thankful for. My family always complains about it, so last year I just gave them cards explaining how I'm grateful for each of them. At least one person then said, "I'm grateful we don't have to go around and say what we're grateful for this year!)
Another effective way is to put what you're thankful for down on paper: Write the three best things that happened today. It might be something positive that happened to you, your kids, your spouse or friends, or in the world. It might just be something funny that your child said at breakfast. Experts say that if you do that every day for two weeks, your feelings of well-being will increase. (My therapist wants me to do this too.)
Of course, even if you do all of these things, you'll still have bad days. But at least you'll be less likely to think there's something wrong with you. And the more you engage in positive thinking, the more you'll realize how much happiness is under your control. Not all of it, but perhaps more than you were aware of.
"When I started to research happiness, I thought it was a feeling, and you had to wait to have it happen to you," says Ryan. "But feelings follow thoughts -- they don't precede them. I think of happiness as three things -- enjoyment, satisfaction, and fulfillment. Mothering can give us any one of those at any given moment -- if not necessarily all of them at the same time!"
Robert Barnett is the former health editor of Parenting.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Dear Abby: You Suck
Today I checked in on Aurelia's blog and found mention of an infuriating Dear Abby question and response today. I clicked over and ended up sending my own letter to Abby. I know Abby is a moron, but unfortunately a lot of other morons listen to her advice, so I felt compelled. I'm including it all here.
The offending letter and response:
The offending letter and response:
And my response:DESK PHOTO OF STILLBORN BABY CREATES AWKWARD OFFICE ISSUE
DEAR ABBY: I am writing on behalf of my friends at work. We have a co-worker, "Madge," who had a stillborn baby last year. It was tragic. Our problem is, she keeps a photo of the deceased infant with its little eyes sewn shut on her desk in plain view, so that if we must interact with her (we have an open cubicle layout) we have to see it.Is this appropriate? Ninety percent of the employees here are women. Most are appalled. Others say, "Well, it's all she has."
Madge is expecting again, and we are rooting for her and the baby. However, in addition to all this, she is mean and gossipy. Madge tells everyone what to do and how to do it -- which is not in her job description. I hope that when the baby arrives she will soften and not be so bitter. But, Abby, how on earth do we blow off that photo? -- APPALLED IN THE MIDWEST
DEAR APPALLED: While a person's desktop is usually private territory, I agree that the photograph you describe is inappropriate in an office environment. Because Madge feels the need to keep the picture of her stillborn baby close, it should be kept in her purse with other family photos, or in her desk drawer.
How very sad that poor woman must be. The person who should deal with this delicate problem is the boss or the supervisor.
Dear Abby:
I was saddened by your response to "Appalled in the Midwest," whose coworker keeps a photo of her stillborn child on her desk. You advised that the photo is "inappropriate in an office environment" and that the coworker should keep the photo hidden.
I had a daughter who was born at 21 weeks gestation and lived for only nine minutes. I keep her photo on my desk at work alongside the photo of my subsequent, and thankfully healthy, son.
To "Appalled in the Midwest" and the other 90 percent of her coworkers who are "appalled," I say suck it up. Any awkwardness or distress they feel when looking at this photo pales in comparison to the devastating pain this woman has experienced and is still experiencing.
Perhaps rather than being concerned about how to "blow off that photo," Madge's coworker should direct her energies to understanding what it must take for Madge to just get up in the morning, let alone come to work with such insensitive coworkers.
One of the most distressing things about losing a child in pregnancy or infancy is the thought that people will forget that this child existed. Keeping photos or other reminders hidden adds to this distress and implies that there is something shameful about our dead children.
My daughter is not grotesque and is not shameful. If people aren't able to see the beauty of such innocent little lives when they look at our photos of them, then they are the ones who should be ashamed.
Furthermore, whether or not this woman is mean, gossipy or bitter is irrelevant. I sincerely hope the woman's current pregnancy is a success, but regardless of the outcome, some understanding, sensitivity and compassion from her coworkers would go a long way toward making Madge more agreeable at the office.
There are organizations that help educate the general public about the emotional effects of pregnancy and infant loss; one of the best is SHARE Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support, Inc. You can access information at their website, www.nationalshareoffice.com/ I suggest that "Appalled in the Midwest"— and you, Abby — start learning about how to really help those who have suffered the tragic loss of a child in pregnancy or shortly after.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Poor! Huh, good god yall, what is it good for?
Absolutely nothin'! Say it again!
Yesterday I paid bills and realized I have $377 dollars left for the rest of the month. J. and I have separate accounts, so it's not like I'm going to have to support the whole family on that for the next 25 days, but it is supremely depressing. Especially since I am also in debt.
A substantial amount of the money we earn goes to three places: house, daycare, and car payment. Then there's are our payments on our debts and the health insurance, which we basically have to pay for since it's taken out of J.'s check.
We both have good, stable jobs. I have a four-year degree; J. has a two-year degree and has worked his way up to a decent position at his job. We have one car, a Saturn Vue; our house needs siding, new windows and carpet; our furniture is almost 100 percent hand-me-down (or handmade, and free, from my father). I honestly cannot remember the last time I bought a brand-new piece of clothing for myself (for Bubba, well, I splurge a little there...if buying stuff at Target is considered a splurge). My point is, we do not live extravagantly at all, but obviously we live beyond our means. The depressing thing is that according to our "means," we should be living in a one-room apartment, driving a 1977 Pacer and sending our kid to Abuse-a-Lot Childcare Center.
J. and I have had money issues ever since we first got married--the main issue being we never have enough. I'm not going to detail all the reasons why we are in the jobs we are and why it would not be advantageous for us to relocate or switch jobs, but trust me that we are kind of stuck in our current position until J. finds a better job in the area or until his grandma dies.
Is there anyone else out there waiting for someone to die so that you can have a little bit of financial freedom? I know this is so crass, but I'm all about being honest, even if it makes me look bad. J.'s parents both died in 2000, and we got a bit of money from their estate which allowed us to put a decent downpayment on our house (which we've since borrowed against) and pay off our credit cards. We said we'd never use them again....and of course we did, and here we are now with a brand new pile of credit card debt. Fucking credit cards!
Because J.'s parents died so young, whatever estate they were going to inherit from J.'s grandma now passes to J. and his two sisters. She's no millionaire, but she's comfortable. Part of her income comes from piece of land that was placed in a living trust for his grandma but was willed to J.'s dad so it is technically now "owned" by J. and his sisters.
J.'s grandma is 97 years old. She lived on her own until last month, when knee replacement surgery and small heart attack forced her to stay with her 70-something daughter.
J. and I both "joke" about how grandma is never going to die, and conversely, try not to worry too much about our debt because once she does kick off, we should be able to pay it off. But it's pretty depressing to think that someone has to die for us to be debt-free.
Obviously, J. doesn't have the closest relationship to his grandma. While always a decent person, she definitely favored J.'s biological sister over J. and his other sister who were both adopted. And, J. and I rationalize, how much fun can it be to be 97 years old? Your husband's dead, one of your two kids is dead, most of your friends are dead, you're in pain a lot, it's hard to move around and do stuff...etc.
I was thinking last night about how every generation wants the next generation to do better than they did. That led me to thinking about Tingle and LilCherie, who are definitely doing better than their parents did. Me, not so much. I don't know if this is due to Tingle's and LilCherie's financial skills or the fact that my parents made substantial money and I know theirs struggled. In any case, I do feel somewhat like a failure in this regard. It occurred to me that "doing better than your parents" is a somewhat arbitrary measure of success, but still it bothers me that two intelligent, responsible and educated adults make less money than my dad did all by himself, even though he never went to college.
Is it more difficult to live these days? Are things more expensive than they used to be? Do we just think we need more stuff than people did back then? What's the deal?
I remember, shortly after getting married, the shock of how much it cost to live. That first year, we were borrowing money from relatives to pay our rent and eat. We looked at Christmas as an opportunity to have a free meal and scam some leftovers that might last us a few days so we wouldn't have to buy groceries. Once, during a week of especially dire straits, I went to the local "cheap" food store. This will say something about my family: I had never been in one before. My mother had never bought a generic-brand anything.
I walked in and looked at the exposed ceiling, the cement floors, and the huge sign over the door that said "CASH ONLY!!!!" I looked around at the shoppers, and I'm ashamed to say I judged them, who mostly looked disheveled and...."poor." I turned right around and never went back. Not even to this day.
To walk into that store would have been admitting that I was poor, and "poor" wasn't--and still isn't--a label I could live with. Even though it's probably closer to the truth than any other I could come up with. There's such shame in this country about not having a lot of money. You can exchange stories about sex or intimate medical stuff or your sexual orientation but don't you dare talk about how much money you make--or owe!
I don't know I'm just elitist or if my attitude is just a leftover from my fairly pampered upbringing, but I know that I never want to be perceived as poor. And that's probably why I use my credit cards and rack up debt and end up waiting for an elderly relative to die so that I can get out from underneath it all. At times like this I often think of the wise LilCherie, who told me recently: "Your childhood just needed to be shittier, then things wouldn't seem so bad now. It worked for me."
When I was about 13, we had a gift exchange in our Girl Scout troop. My partner, Angela, was a fringe-dweller of my social group and was what you would call a "sad sack." I went to her and asked her what she wanted for Christmas. "A friend," she said pathetically. Thrown off by the answer, I thought for a moment and then said, "Well, I can't buy one for five dollars, so what else do you want?"
"Some leg warmers, I guess," she answered.
Nope, you can't buy friends--or a lot of other things that I am truly thankful for.
Yesterday I paid bills and realized I have $377 dollars left for the rest of the month. J. and I have separate accounts, so it's not like I'm going to have to support the whole family on that for the next 25 days, but it is supremely depressing. Especially since I am also in debt.
A substantial amount of the money we earn goes to three places: house, daycare, and car payment. Then there's are our payments on our debts and the health insurance, which we basically have to pay for since it's taken out of J.'s check.
We both have good, stable jobs. I have a four-year degree; J. has a two-year degree and has worked his way up to a decent position at his job. We have one car, a Saturn Vue; our house needs siding, new windows and carpet; our furniture is almost 100 percent hand-me-down (or handmade, and free, from my father). I honestly cannot remember the last time I bought a brand-new piece of clothing for myself (for Bubba, well, I splurge a little there...if buying stuff at Target is considered a splurge). My point is, we do not live extravagantly at all, but obviously we live beyond our means. The depressing thing is that according to our "means," we should be living in a one-room apartment, driving a 1977 Pacer and sending our kid to Abuse-a-Lot Childcare Center.
J. and I have had money issues ever since we first got married--the main issue being we never have enough. I'm not going to detail all the reasons why we are in the jobs we are and why it would not be advantageous for us to relocate or switch jobs, but trust me that we are kind of stuck in our current position until J. finds a better job in the area or until his grandma dies.
Is there anyone else out there waiting for someone to die so that you can have a little bit of financial freedom? I know this is so crass, but I'm all about being honest, even if it makes me look bad. J.'s parents both died in 2000, and we got a bit of money from their estate which allowed us to put a decent downpayment on our house (which we've since borrowed against) and pay off our credit cards. We said we'd never use them again....and of course we did, and here we are now with a brand new pile of credit card debt. Fucking credit cards!
Because J.'s parents died so young, whatever estate they were going to inherit from J.'s grandma now passes to J. and his two sisters. She's no millionaire, but she's comfortable. Part of her income comes from piece of land that was placed in a living trust for his grandma but was willed to J.'s dad so it is technically now "owned" by J. and his sisters.
J.'s grandma is 97 years old. She lived on her own until last month, when knee replacement surgery and small heart attack forced her to stay with her 70-something daughter.
J. and I both "joke" about how grandma is never going to die, and conversely, try not to worry too much about our debt because once she does kick off, we should be able to pay it off. But it's pretty depressing to think that someone has to die for us to be debt-free.
Obviously, J. doesn't have the closest relationship to his grandma. While always a decent person, she definitely favored J.'s biological sister over J. and his other sister who were both adopted. And, J. and I rationalize, how much fun can it be to be 97 years old? Your husband's dead, one of your two kids is dead, most of your friends are dead, you're in pain a lot, it's hard to move around and do stuff...etc.
I was thinking last night about how every generation wants the next generation to do better than they did. That led me to thinking about Tingle and LilCherie, who are definitely doing better than their parents did. Me, not so much. I don't know if this is due to Tingle's and LilCherie's financial skills or the fact that my parents made substantial money and I know theirs struggled. In any case, I do feel somewhat like a failure in this regard. It occurred to me that "doing better than your parents" is a somewhat arbitrary measure of success, but still it bothers me that two intelligent, responsible and educated adults make less money than my dad did all by himself, even though he never went to college.
Is it more difficult to live these days? Are things more expensive than they used to be? Do we just think we need more stuff than people did back then? What's the deal?
I remember, shortly after getting married, the shock of how much it cost to live. That first year, we were borrowing money from relatives to pay our rent and eat. We looked at Christmas as an opportunity to have a free meal and scam some leftovers that might last us a few days so we wouldn't have to buy groceries. Once, during a week of especially dire straits, I went to the local "cheap" food store. This will say something about my family: I had never been in one before. My mother had never bought a generic-brand anything.
I walked in and looked at the exposed ceiling, the cement floors, and the huge sign over the door that said "CASH ONLY!!!!" I looked around at the shoppers, and I'm ashamed to say I judged them, who mostly looked disheveled and...."poor." I turned right around and never went back. Not even to this day.
To walk into that store would have been admitting that I was poor, and "poor" wasn't--and still isn't--a label I could live with. Even though it's probably closer to the truth than any other I could come up with. There's such shame in this country about not having a lot of money. You can exchange stories about sex or intimate medical stuff or your sexual orientation but don't you dare talk about how much money you make--or owe!
I don't know I'm just elitist or if my attitude is just a leftover from my fairly pampered upbringing, but I know that I never want to be perceived as poor. And that's probably why I use my credit cards and rack up debt and end up waiting for an elderly relative to die so that I can get out from underneath it all. At times like this I often think of the wise LilCherie, who told me recently: "Your childhood just needed to be shittier, then things wouldn't seem so bad now. It worked for me."
When I was about 13, we had a gift exchange in our Girl Scout troop. My partner, Angela, was a fringe-dweller of my social group and was what you would call a "sad sack." I went to her and asked her what she wanted for Christmas. "A friend," she said pathetically. Thrown off by the answer, I thought for a moment and then said, "Well, I can't buy one for five dollars, so what else do you want?"
"Some leg warmers, I guess," she answered.
Nope, you can't buy friends--or a lot of other things that I am truly thankful for.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Fired up again, about the breastfeeding issue
Hello dear readers,
Sorry for my absence--I've been doing a lot of writing elsewhere lately.
I came across this article today on the BBC website. I'm also posting it here because I hate it when I get to a blog late and the link is no longer live.
***
I have many observations and questions about this story and this study. Lest you get the impression that I'm anti-breastfeeding, I'd like to make it clear that I'm not, I'm just a) defensive and guilty because it didn't work for me and b) pissed off at how mothers who choose formula for their babies are made to feel like shit. And it really makes me angry when studies and stories like the one above feed that guilt.
Questions About the Study
1. The researchers note that part of the pain relief benefit that nursing babies received might be due to maternal proximity rather than the breastmilk itself. That leads me surmise that the babies in the other group, the control group, must not have been held by their mothers--otherwise the maternal proximity factor would have been the same in both cases.
So...I'm left to assume that one group of babies was held by their mothers and nursed while they received the needle prick, while the other babies were swaddled or given a pacifier but were not in contact with their mothers. Gee, I wonder which babies would cry loudest? Doesn't really seem like a fair test, does it? According to the article, "The Mount Sinai team assessed pain by measuring changes in heart and breathing rates, and the length of time a baby cried after receiving the needle prick." Were the mothers of the control group babies allowed to pick up and comfort their babies after the needle prick?
2. I wonder what the results would have been if the infants had been bottlefed while being held by their mothers? Wouldn't that provide a truer picture of whether or not breastfeeding itself held pain-relief benefits?
3. The ultimate finding of the article is that babies "would do just as well by being breastfed" as they do sucking on a sugary pacifier. I don't know about you, but to me, this revelation just doesnt't seem worth the medical research dollars invested in it. How about spending those funds on research to prevent premature birth, for instance, which leads us to the following sentence....
4. "The researchers say that breastfeeding could possibly help relieve pain for premature babies who need to undergo many painful intensive care procedures." Maybe....but many, if not most, premature babies are too premature to suck. They either are simply too small and weak, or the sucking reflex is too immature to allow them to feed that way. So the most premature infants--who are also the ones undergoing the most painful procedures--would probably not be able to breastfeed anyway. Again, if the researchers had compared breastmilk to formula, rather than nursing to isolation, they might have some useful knowledge here, because although a premature baby may not be able to suck, he or she is often able to still get breastmilk or formula.
Comments About the Article
1. The title. "Breastfeeding 'kills baby's pain' it shouts. No modifiers in sight. But we don't really know that, do we, because it could just be closeness to a mother that kills the pain, right? How about a headline like this: "Breastfeeding relieves baby's pain more than lying alone in a hospital crib?"
2. The author (unnamed in the article) does give him or herself a little wiggle room in the subhead by using the words "may" and "natural." That's commendable. On the other hand, he or she had to throw "ultimate" in there. For someone reading the article quickly--like a new parent--the words that stand out are "breastfeeding," "ultimate" and "painkiller."
3. The author of the article writes "The researchers also found that giving babies a sugar solution seemed to be effective." The words "seemed to be effective" are a little tentative, don't you think, especially when this is what the study abstract really says: "Pain indicators such as change in heart rate, duration of crying time, proportion of cry time, Premature Infant Pain Profile scores and Douleur Aigue Nouveau-ne scores were significantly in favor of breastfeeding group compared to placebo/no intervention/positioning group but they were no different when compared to glucose group."
(emphasis added).
4.Interestingly, the study abstract also states that "Heart rate changes and Neonatal Facial Coding Scale scores were significantly in favor of supplemental breast milk group compared to placebo. However,when compared to glucose or sucrose group supplemental breast milk group had significantly higher heart rate changes and duration of crying. (emphasis added).
So to me, it looks like the real finding of this study is the glucose or sucrose is actually a better painkiller for infants than breast milk. You wouldn't get that from the BBC article, though, would you?
5. The next paragraph in the BBC article after the note about the sugar solution starts with the word "but." "But researcher Dr Prakeshkumar Shah said: 'Based on this review we concluded that for a neonate undergoing painful procedure breastfeeding is superior to no treatment, placebo, or swaddling alone for relieving pain.'"
The conjunction "but" indicates that two contrasting ideas are being joined together. So when reading these two paragraphs, the reader is led to believe that the sentence beginning with the word "but" will tell us that breastfeeding is better than a sugar solution. It isn't, but if reading quickly, the reader may not realize that sucrose and glucose are absent from the list of treatments inferior to breastfeeding. Again, someone skimming the article would probalby see the words "But" "breastfeeding" "superior" and make the conclusion that breastfeeding is superior to sugar. When really, it isn't.
I know this is long, and if you've stayed with me, I thank you. This is just an example of how the media insidiously judges and coerces people through bad reporting and/or reporting with an agenda. The agenda of this article was clearly to add another star to the "breast is best" chart. I think it's irresponsible to present this as objective reporting, especially about an issue that has become such a hot button topic, mainly because articles like this, commercials featuring pregnant women riding mechanical bulls, and any number of other breastfeeding-centric propaganda that are making women feel like they have to breastfeed or they are bad mothers. It's polarizing. The "breast is best" agenda slots women into two categories. Breastfeeder=good. Formula-feeder=bad. On 20/20 last week, reporter Elizabeth Vargas actually went so far as to say that if women choose not to breastfeed, they could be "risking their babies' lives." Give me a break.
Let me know what you think. Thanks for reading!
Sorry for my absence--I've been doing a lot of writing elsewhere lately.
I came across this article today on the BBC website. I'm also posting it here because I hate it when I get to a blog late and the link is no longer live.
Breastfeeding 'kills baby's pain'
Breastfeeding may be the ultimate natural painkiller for newborn babies.
A review of research found that breastfeeding newborns helps relieve the pain from a needle prick used to screen their blood for disease.
Breastfed babies appeared to experience less pain than those who were swaddled, given a pacifier, or a placebo. Comfort from a mother's presence may be key.
The Cochrane Library review, by Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, was based on data from over 1,000 babies.
The researchers say that breastfeeding could possibly help relieve pain for premature babies who need to undergo many painful intensive care procedures.
However, they stress that their study did not test the impact of breastfeeding on the pain associated with repeated procedures.
The Mount Sinai team assessed pain by measuring changes in heart and breathing rates, and the length of time a baby cried after receiving the needle prick.
Comfort
The researchers say that the key to the effect of breastfeeding may be that an infant simply draws comfort from the close proximity of its mother.
Alternatively, breastfeeding may help to divert attention away from the pain of a needle prick.
They also suggest that the sweetness of breast milk may be a factor.
Another theory is that breast milk contains a high concentration of a chemical which could ultimately trigger the production of natural painkillers called endorphins.
The researchers also found that giving babies a sugar solution seemed to be effective.
But researcher Dr Prakeshkumar Shah said: "Based on this review we concluded that for a neonate undergoing painful procedure breastfeeding is superior to no treatment, placebo, or swaddling alone for relieving pain.
"As it is the most inexpensive, safe and advantageous from other perspectives, it should be offered to all neonates to relieve procedural pain when possible."
Dr Tony Williams, an expert in neonatal care at London's St George's Hospital, said: "Newborn babies are often given dummies soaked in concentrated glucose to help reduce distress during painful procedures.
"This study shows that babies would do just as well by being breastfed."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/5190306.stm
Published: 2006/07/19 08:55:13 GMT
© BBC MMVI
***
I have many observations and questions about this story and this study. Lest you get the impression that I'm anti-breastfeeding, I'd like to make it clear that I'm not, I'm just a) defensive and guilty because it didn't work for me and b) pissed off at how mothers who choose formula for their babies are made to feel like shit. And it really makes me angry when studies and stories like the one above feed that guilt.
Questions About the Study
1. The researchers note that part of the pain relief benefit that nursing babies received might be due to maternal proximity rather than the breastmilk itself. That leads me surmise that the babies in the other group, the control group, must not have been held by their mothers--otherwise the maternal proximity factor would have been the same in both cases.
So...I'm left to assume that one group of babies was held by their mothers and nursed while they received the needle prick, while the other babies were swaddled or given a pacifier but were not in contact with their mothers. Gee, I wonder which babies would cry loudest? Doesn't really seem like a fair test, does it? According to the article, "The Mount Sinai team assessed pain by measuring changes in heart and breathing rates, and the length of time a baby cried after receiving the needle prick." Were the mothers of the control group babies allowed to pick up and comfort their babies after the needle prick?
2. I wonder what the results would have been if the infants had been bottlefed while being held by their mothers? Wouldn't that provide a truer picture of whether or not breastfeeding itself held pain-relief benefits?
3. The ultimate finding of the article is that babies "would do just as well by being breastfed" as they do sucking on a sugary pacifier. I don't know about you, but to me, this revelation just doesnt't seem worth the medical research dollars invested in it. How about spending those funds on research to prevent premature birth, for instance, which leads us to the following sentence....
4. "The researchers say that breastfeeding could possibly help relieve pain for premature babies who need to undergo many painful intensive care procedures." Maybe....but many, if not most, premature babies are too premature to suck. They either are simply too small and weak, or the sucking reflex is too immature to allow them to feed that way. So the most premature infants--who are also the ones undergoing the most painful procedures--would probably not be able to breastfeed anyway. Again, if the researchers had compared breastmilk to formula, rather than nursing to isolation, they might have some useful knowledge here, because although a premature baby may not be able to suck, he or she is often able to still get breastmilk or formula.
Comments About the Article
1. The title. "Breastfeeding 'kills baby's pain' it shouts. No modifiers in sight. But we don't really know that, do we, because it could just be closeness to a mother that kills the pain, right? How about a headline like this: "Breastfeeding relieves baby's pain more than lying alone in a hospital crib?"
2. The author (unnamed in the article) does give him or herself a little wiggle room in the subhead by using the words "may" and "natural." That's commendable. On the other hand, he or she had to throw "ultimate" in there. For someone reading the article quickly--like a new parent--the words that stand out are "breastfeeding," "ultimate" and "painkiller."
3. The author of the article writes "The researchers also found that giving babies a sugar solution seemed to be effective." The words "seemed to be effective" are a little tentative, don't you think, especially when this is what the study abstract really says: "Pain indicators such as change in heart rate, duration of crying time, proportion of cry time, Premature Infant Pain Profile scores and Douleur Aigue Nouveau-ne scores were significantly in favor of breastfeeding group compared to placebo/no intervention/positioning group but they were no different when compared to glucose group."
(emphasis added).
4.Interestingly, the study abstract also states that "Heart rate changes and Neonatal Facial Coding Scale scores were significantly in favor of supplemental breast milk group compared to placebo. However,when compared to glucose or sucrose group supplemental breast milk group had significantly higher heart rate changes and duration of crying. (emphasis added).
So to me, it looks like the real finding of this study is the glucose or sucrose is actually a better painkiller for infants than breast milk. You wouldn't get that from the BBC article, though, would you?
5. The next paragraph in the BBC article after the note about the sugar solution starts with the word "but." "But researcher Dr Prakeshkumar Shah said: 'Based on this review we concluded that for a neonate undergoing painful procedure breastfeeding is superior to no treatment, placebo, or swaddling alone for relieving pain.'"
The conjunction "but" indicates that two contrasting ideas are being joined together. So when reading these two paragraphs, the reader is led to believe that the sentence beginning with the word "but" will tell us that breastfeeding is better than a sugar solution. It isn't, but if reading quickly, the reader may not realize that sucrose and glucose are absent from the list of treatments inferior to breastfeeding. Again, someone skimming the article would probalby see the words "But" "breastfeeding" "superior" and make the conclusion that breastfeeding is superior to sugar. When really, it isn't.
I know this is long, and if you've stayed with me, I thank you. This is just an example of how the media insidiously judges and coerces people through bad reporting and/or reporting with an agenda. The agenda of this article was clearly to add another star to the "breast is best" chart. I think it's irresponsible to present this as objective reporting, especially about an issue that has become such a hot button topic, mainly because articles like this, commercials featuring pregnant women riding mechanical bulls, and any number of other breastfeeding-centric propaganda that are making women feel like they have to breastfeed or they are bad mothers. It's polarizing. The "breast is best" agenda slots women into two categories. Breastfeeder=good. Formula-feeder=bad. On 20/20 last week, reporter Elizabeth Vargas actually went so far as to say that if women choose not to breastfeed, they could be "risking their babies' lives." Give me a break.
Let me know what you think. Thanks for reading!
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Honestly sir, it's only a few ounces of formula...I wasn't intending to sell it...
When I was pregnant with my second child — Bubba, our only living child — I worried from the point of conception onward. Hell, I worried BEFORE the point of conception, about whether I'd make a follicle large enough to be fertilized, whether J.'s sample would be good enough, whether the timing would be right.
I spent 34 weeks just waiting for the point in time when it would be safe for Bubba to leave my body. It wasn't safe in there, I surmised. At six weeks, I'd had a big bleed and major cramps that convinced me I was miscarrying. At 11 weeks, there was a concern about low amniotic fluid, and we wouldn't know for sure if our baby had kidneys until the 20 week ultrasound.My cervix could give out at any moment, as we'd experienced with Hope, so every day I had with Bubba safely in my uterus felt like borrowed time. At 30 weeks, it started to go, and I had steroid shots to try to get his lungs developed as much as possible. At 31 weeks I was put on modified bedrest, at 32 weeks put on full bedrest, at 33 weeks admitted to the hospital for full bedrest at 8 cm. dilated. At 34.5 weeks the inevitable finally happened.
When I started having contractions the week he was born, the nurses, as a matter of course, started talking about starting up the "terb" -- terbutaline, a tocolytic drug to stop contractions. I'd had some terb a few times already, and it always quieted things down without much in the way of side effects for me. But at 34.5 weeks, I said no. I also said no to bedpans and, when the nurses were gone, I would get up and walk around my room a few times, or even sneak out to get a soda from the snack station on the floor. Countless times the nurses gave me the speech: "Every day inside you is better for the baby." But I never felt that way. I knew he needed to be in there for a reasonable length of time, but at 34.5 weeks, I felt it would be safer for him to be on the outside, where umblical cords couldn't wrap around his neck, where his heart couldn't just stop beating without someone knowing about it, where he couldn't suffer birth trauma or detached placenta or any of the mysterious and fatal complications of coming into this world. I had zero faith in my body.
When he was finally out -- at a healthy 7 lbs. 12 oz. -- and off the oxygen within 24 hours, I relaxed briefly in the knowledge that at least I had finished this part successfully. At least I had managed to carry our baby long enough for him to make it in this world.
Like most other women today, I started off with grand illusions of how life would be with my long-wanted, finally-here little baby. Breastfeeding was important to me. I never got to go to any of the classes because I was on bedrest during the time we'd signed up for them, but I figured the hospital's lactaction consultants could help me out and I'd done my reading. I figured that it had been done for how many thousands of years--it couldn't be that hard, right?
Well, all my breastfeeding expectations pretty much went out the window within the first 24 hours. Bubba needed oxygen to live, so he didn't get to "crawl" up to my breast and start happily nursing within minutes of birth. The nurses gave him a pacifier before I got down to see him the next morning, and instead of being pissed I was just happy to see that he was sucking it, because sometimes premature babies don't really have the sucking reflex down yet. I tried nursing for the first time about 24 hours after he was born. His method was suck, suck, sleep. And I mean sleep. He had jaundice, so he was tired. No amount of cold washcloths on his head, baby sit-ups, foot-tickling, nipple-forcing or jostling could bring him out of it.
After the lactation consultants had run out of ideas, they got me nipple shields, which seemed promising at first but alas were not enough. Bubba was just too damn tired and lazy to do it, and you know what? So was I.
The scene at home was this. Bubba wakes up screaming, hungry. I try to breastfeed. He resists, shaking his head from side to side. Squirt milk onto lip as enticement. Bubba latches on to the very end of my nipple--not nearly enough to do the job. Detaches and cries. Finally, with much forceful nipple-pinching and shoving on my part, manage to get the gargantuan thing into Bubba's mouth. Suck, suck, sleep. Or, suck, suck, detach, scream. Get out Lanolin and stick nipple shields on and try it again. Same story as above. Try this for 1/2 hour to 45 minutes. Warm up bottle of pumped breastmilk. Feed Bubba. Pump breasts for another 1/2 hour. Maybe an hour off, and then....start all over again.
After about 3 weeks of this, I gave up on trying to get him to suckle. I decided I would just pump and give him that in a bottle. Bubba loved his bottle. He sucked it right down without issue. Every now and then I'd try to stick him back on the boob, only to meet with severe protest. During the day, when I was home alone with Bubba, I'd have to somehow figure out how to pump for half an hour several times a day, being unable to pick him up if he cried or change his diaper unless I stopped the pumping session and tried to resume later, knowing that this was not good for my milk supply. I clearly remember trying to hold both boob cones over my breasts with one hand while holding a crying Bubba on my lap with the other...and I think I was crying as well.
I really did mourn my inability to feed my son. I remembered when I first got the news that I would lose Hope and the ob/gyn was explaining to me what would happen afterwards. My tears finally made their way through my shock as she told me my milk would still come in, even though there would be no baby to drink it. When that did indeed happen, it was possibly the most difficult part of the whole experience -- having milk but no baby. Now, with Bubba, I had a baby but he wouldn't do it, and this was probably my only chance. Yes, I did feel like a failure. So many other women seemed to have enough tenacity or patience or whatever it took to make it through the adjustment phase and go on to nurse their kids until kindergarten.
When Bubba was six weeks old, and my postpartum depression was in full swing, I had started becoming lazy about my pumping sessions. I started stretching out the night sessions to two a night, then one a night, then just doing it before I went to bed and when I got up. Needless to say, my supply went down. I panicked a little for a few days and pumped with renewed vigor, but still Bubba started getting more and more formula, and he didn't seem to notice the difference. My conviction was waning.
Then I got sick. Just a bad cold, but it made me feel like crap. I was also still bleeding from childbirth; still lactating, however feebly; still pumping half-heartedly; getting up at night with Bubba (although J. did A LOT of that); staying home all day with the baby and not realizing just how bad my postpartum depression was, figuring I was just a freak for not being able to TAKE IT when Bubba would cry for hours at a time from gas or hunger or general dissatisfaction. I was, in a word, a mess. One night I stumbled out to the living room in my sour-milk-smelling shirt that I'd had on for two days, tissues in hand to mop up the snot that was streaming out of my nose, a feverish sweat on my brow, and just stood there looking at that goddamned pump. I could not do it. I could not hook myself up to the milking machine one more time.
Of course, I did, a few times over the next week when I would get engorged. But that really was the end. Bubba would be a formula baby. I had only lasted six weeks.
But I guess I can feel shitty about it forever. Check out this article in the New York Times. Looks like Bubba will likely suffer from any number of ailments, from lower IQ (funny how they don't mention how much lower, huh?) to diabetes to asthma. Shit, I might as well have just fed him "New Shitty Mom Formula from Enfamil, Now With Traces of Cyanide and Mercury!"
I know there are women out there who absolutely cannot nurse. They've had mastectomies, maybe, or they really don't make enough milk. Or, heaven forbid, they've adopted a child. I guess all parents who create their families through adoption get to feel crappy too? Then there are those of us out there who could have done it, if only we'd been selfless, heroic, tenacious, and GOOD enough to do it. I fall into that category.
I am so sick of feeling bad about this, but I know I will. Forever. I mean, it doesn't keep me up at night, but when I come across an article like that, I get defensive, I get angry, and I get guilty. And I wonder why I hear so many articles trumpeting the benefits of breastfeeding and so few--hardly any, in fact--about other factors that affect a child's IQ and health, such as having their fathers involved in their lives, or having quality, affordable daycare.
Look, we all know at this point that "breast is best." It's been shoved down our throats as much as the babies'. If the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is so set on making sure that all babies are breastfed,to the point where it compares formula feeding to falling off a bucking bronco in a bar while 9 months pregnant, then it had better start putting forth some options for the milk machines--oh, I mean mothers--who need help. I'd start by sending out a nurse for a home visit, maybe. Or how about lactation consultants who actually have something worthwhile to suggest? How about decent PAID maternity leaves so women wouldn't have to worry about that part of the equation while try to exclusively feed their children, or even subsidized daycare near every workplace so it would be logistically possible to do it after a mother returns to work. Just as likely to happen is this idea: maybe the government could set up a wet-nurse program, or even employ a legion of super-producer lactating moms whose milk could be sold in the grocery store alongside the formula. Or better yet, why not have the government just pull formula off the shelves? That would force the issue, wouldn't it?
Then, once they've guilted/forced every mother into nursing her child, the U.S. government can start figuring out how to make sure each nursing mother is eating a healthy diet, not smoking, and not taking any sort of prescription or illicit drugs that might harm her baby. Or making sure that mothers of babies with wheat or dairy allergies aren't sneaking in a pancake or a scoop of ice cream now and then.
Yep, I'm bitter. I'm sick of living in a country where the government feels it is accceptable to use guilt and shame to coerce women into a desired behavior. Women are more than vessels and feeding machines for babies. But in the long run, when it comes down to it, that's pretty much how our government looks at us. I wonder how much of our guilt complexes can be traced back to the paternalism and judgment rained down on us from our government. Ever notice men don't feel this way? Think about it--have you ever seen a public service announcement showing little orphaned children whose fathers died because they didn't check their nuts for cancer? Or children failing at school because their fathers didn't have a clue what was going on in their kids' classrooms? Or a PSA about how children whose fathers didn't support their mothers are however many percents more likely to fail in life?
That's my rant for today.
I spent 34 weeks just waiting for the point in time when it would be safe for Bubba to leave my body. It wasn't safe in there, I surmised. At six weeks, I'd had a big bleed and major cramps that convinced me I was miscarrying. At 11 weeks, there was a concern about low amniotic fluid, and we wouldn't know for sure if our baby had kidneys until the 20 week ultrasound.My cervix could give out at any moment, as we'd experienced with Hope, so every day I had with Bubba safely in my uterus felt like borrowed time. At 30 weeks, it started to go, and I had steroid shots to try to get his lungs developed as much as possible. At 31 weeks I was put on modified bedrest, at 32 weeks put on full bedrest, at 33 weeks admitted to the hospital for full bedrest at 8 cm. dilated. At 34.5 weeks the inevitable finally happened.
When I started having contractions the week he was born, the nurses, as a matter of course, started talking about starting up the "terb" -- terbutaline, a tocolytic drug to stop contractions. I'd had some terb a few times already, and it always quieted things down without much in the way of side effects for me. But at 34.5 weeks, I said no. I also said no to bedpans and, when the nurses were gone, I would get up and walk around my room a few times, or even sneak out to get a soda from the snack station on the floor. Countless times the nurses gave me the speech: "Every day inside you is better for the baby." But I never felt that way. I knew he needed to be in there for a reasonable length of time, but at 34.5 weeks, I felt it would be safer for him to be on the outside, where umblical cords couldn't wrap around his neck, where his heart couldn't just stop beating without someone knowing about it, where he couldn't suffer birth trauma or detached placenta or any of the mysterious and fatal complications of coming into this world. I had zero faith in my body.
When he was finally out -- at a healthy 7 lbs. 12 oz. -- and off the oxygen within 24 hours, I relaxed briefly in the knowledge that at least I had finished this part successfully. At least I had managed to carry our baby long enough for him to make it in this world.
Like most other women today, I started off with grand illusions of how life would be with my long-wanted, finally-here little baby. Breastfeeding was important to me. I never got to go to any of the classes because I was on bedrest during the time we'd signed up for them, but I figured the hospital's lactaction consultants could help me out and I'd done my reading. I figured that it had been done for how many thousands of years--it couldn't be that hard, right?
Well, all my breastfeeding expectations pretty much went out the window within the first 24 hours. Bubba needed oxygen to live, so he didn't get to "crawl" up to my breast and start happily nursing within minutes of birth. The nurses gave him a pacifier before I got down to see him the next morning, and instead of being pissed I was just happy to see that he was sucking it, because sometimes premature babies don't really have the sucking reflex down yet. I tried nursing for the first time about 24 hours after he was born. His method was suck, suck, sleep. And I mean sleep. He had jaundice, so he was tired. No amount of cold washcloths on his head, baby sit-ups, foot-tickling, nipple-forcing or jostling could bring him out of it.
After the lactation consultants had run out of ideas, they got me nipple shields, which seemed promising at first but alas were not enough. Bubba was just too damn tired and lazy to do it, and you know what? So was I.
The scene at home was this. Bubba wakes up screaming, hungry. I try to breastfeed. He resists, shaking his head from side to side. Squirt milk onto lip as enticement. Bubba latches on to the very end of my nipple--not nearly enough to do the job. Detaches and cries. Finally, with much forceful nipple-pinching and shoving on my part, manage to get the gargantuan thing into Bubba's mouth. Suck, suck, sleep. Or, suck, suck, detach, scream. Get out Lanolin and stick nipple shields on and try it again. Same story as above. Try this for 1/2 hour to 45 minutes. Warm up bottle of pumped breastmilk. Feed Bubba. Pump breasts for another 1/2 hour. Maybe an hour off, and then....start all over again.
After about 3 weeks of this, I gave up on trying to get him to suckle. I decided I would just pump and give him that in a bottle. Bubba loved his bottle. He sucked it right down without issue. Every now and then I'd try to stick him back on the boob, only to meet with severe protest. During the day, when I was home alone with Bubba, I'd have to somehow figure out how to pump for half an hour several times a day, being unable to pick him up if he cried or change his diaper unless I stopped the pumping session and tried to resume later, knowing that this was not good for my milk supply. I clearly remember trying to hold both boob cones over my breasts with one hand while holding a crying Bubba on my lap with the other...and I think I was crying as well.
I really did mourn my inability to feed my son. I remembered when I first got the news that I would lose Hope and the ob/gyn was explaining to me what would happen afterwards. My tears finally made their way through my shock as she told me my milk would still come in, even though there would be no baby to drink it. When that did indeed happen, it was possibly the most difficult part of the whole experience -- having milk but no baby. Now, with Bubba, I had a baby but he wouldn't do it, and this was probably my only chance. Yes, I did feel like a failure. So many other women seemed to have enough tenacity or patience or whatever it took to make it through the adjustment phase and go on to nurse their kids until kindergarten.
When Bubba was six weeks old, and my postpartum depression was in full swing, I had started becoming lazy about my pumping sessions. I started stretching out the night sessions to two a night, then one a night, then just doing it before I went to bed and when I got up. Needless to say, my supply went down. I panicked a little for a few days and pumped with renewed vigor, but still Bubba started getting more and more formula, and he didn't seem to notice the difference. My conviction was waning.
Then I got sick. Just a bad cold, but it made me feel like crap. I was also still bleeding from childbirth; still lactating, however feebly; still pumping half-heartedly; getting up at night with Bubba (although J. did A LOT of that); staying home all day with the baby and not realizing just how bad my postpartum depression was, figuring I was just a freak for not being able to TAKE IT when Bubba would cry for hours at a time from gas or hunger or general dissatisfaction. I was, in a word, a mess. One night I stumbled out to the living room in my sour-milk-smelling shirt that I'd had on for two days, tissues in hand to mop up the snot that was streaming out of my nose, a feverish sweat on my brow, and just stood there looking at that goddamned pump. I could not do it. I could not hook myself up to the milking machine one more time.
Of course, I did, a few times over the next week when I would get engorged. But that really was the end. Bubba would be a formula baby. I had only lasted six weeks.
But I guess I can feel shitty about it forever. Check out this article in the New York Times. Looks like Bubba will likely suffer from any number of ailments, from lower IQ (funny how they don't mention how much lower, huh?) to diabetes to asthma. Shit, I might as well have just fed him "New Shitty Mom Formula from Enfamil, Now With Traces of Cyanide and Mercury!"
I know there are women out there who absolutely cannot nurse. They've had mastectomies, maybe, or they really don't make enough milk. Or, heaven forbid, they've adopted a child. I guess all parents who create their families through adoption get to feel crappy too? Then there are those of us out there who could have done it, if only we'd been selfless, heroic, tenacious, and GOOD enough to do it. I fall into that category.
I am so sick of feeling bad about this, but I know I will. Forever. I mean, it doesn't keep me up at night, but when I come across an article like that, I get defensive, I get angry, and I get guilty. And I wonder why I hear so many articles trumpeting the benefits of breastfeeding and so few--hardly any, in fact--about other factors that affect a child's IQ and health, such as having their fathers involved in their lives, or having quality, affordable daycare.
Look, we all know at this point that "breast is best." It's been shoved down our throats as much as the babies'. If the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is so set on making sure that all babies are breastfed,to the point where it compares formula feeding to falling off a bucking bronco in a bar while 9 months pregnant, then it had better start putting forth some options for the milk machines--oh, I mean mothers--who need help. I'd start by sending out a nurse for a home visit, maybe. Or how about lactation consultants who actually have something worthwhile to suggest? How about decent PAID maternity leaves so women wouldn't have to worry about that part of the equation while try to exclusively feed their children, or even subsidized daycare near every workplace so it would be logistically possible to do it after a mother returns to work. Just as likely to happen is this idea: maybe the government could set up a wet-nurse program, or even employ a legion of super-producer lactating moms whose milk could be sold in the grocery store alongside the formula. Or better yet, why not have the government just pull formula off the shelves? That would force the issue, wouldn't it?
Then, once they've guilted/forced every mother into nursing her child, the U.S. government can start figuring out how to make sure each nursing mother is eating a healthy diet, not smoking, and not taking any sort of prescription or illicit drugs that might harm her baby. Or making sure that mothers of babies with wheat or dairy allergies aren't sneaking in a pancake or a scoop of ice cream now and then.
Yep, I'm bitter. I'm sick of living in a country where the government feels it is accceptable to use guilt and shame to coerce women into a desired behavior. Women are more than vessels and feeding machines for babies. But in the long run, when it comes down to it, that's pretty much how our government looks at us. I wonder how much of our guilt complexes can be traced back to the paternalism and judgment rained down on us from our government. Ever notice men don't feel this way? Think about it--have you ever seen a public service announcement showing little orphaned children whose fathers died because they didn't check their nuts for cancer? Or children failing at school because their fathers didn't have a clue what was going on in their kids' classrooms? Or a PSA about how children whose fathers didn't support their mothers are however many percents more likely to fail in life?
That's my rant for today.
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