Blah, blah, blah, blah, BLAH. Plus, Bamboo

Here's what I want to know:
Why did someone come into my bed last night and strike me repeatedly with small, evil sticks?
Okay. That probably didn't happen but I feel like maybe it did.

Well, good morning world.

I just went outside to take a picture of another spring ejaculation.
(That's for you, Elizabeth. Go ahead and post that anti-spring poem.)

What you're looking at is a really bad picture of a blooming dogwood with a fig tree in front of it and an ancient live oak behind it.

Now here's another spring picture and I would advise you to click on it so that you can get the real-deal image.

Those pointy things are all bamboo sprouts. Which were NOT there last night because I went out and kicked all the ones that were up before the sun went down.
Jesus.
Why aren't we using bamboo for EVERYTHING? I know they use it to make sheets these days and paper and flooring but why aren't we using it to make energy? Somehow?

Ah, I just feel overwhelmed today. The bamboo is a good metaphor for it all. You can put on your bamboo-kicking boots and go out and blast all the shoots into eternity but you're going to get up the next day and there will be more to taunt you.
My house, my yard, my garden.
They all need attention. Okay. Let's be honest- they could all use a crew of professionals to deal with them and I'm just one old, sore woman with a pair of overalls. To be quite honest, I don't even have any bamboo-kicking boots. I just kick the bamboo wearing the most minimalist Crocs available.

And I want to go see my grandsons. This seems to be the most important thing in my world these days. Of course.

All right. I'll stop bitching. But I wanted to give you a link to an article that our Jo posted on Facebook. Here it is:

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-most-scientific-birth-is-often-the-least-technological-birth/254420/#.T2piL6ZEi6M.facebook

It's about birth and technology and it ain't no crunchy hippie shit either. Not that I have anything against crunchy hippie shit, being the queen of that way of life. Sort of. Not really. But you know what I mean. It's written by a real-life medical person and professor and was printed in the Atlantic Monthly and it just makes so much sense.

I guess I better go eat some granola.

Love...Ms. Moon

The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same

I am absolutely shaky with rage at this moment. A very quiet rage, but rage nonetheless.

Lily just called me, crying. "What's wrong?" I asked her, my mind racing to every sort of horrible reason for her to be so upset.
And then she told me, haltingly through tears, that the pediatric practice which she takes Owen to just informed her that they are no longer taking home-birth or birth center babies.

She had called them to ask what she needed to do to make sure that this coming-baby could be examined for a newborn check as soon after birth as possible. And that's when they told her. So here she is, about to give birth, without a pediatrician. And of course I'm sure she can find a doctor who will take her but the main doctor she has taken Owen to in that practice was HER pediatrician! And now she has to scramble and change and it's just one more thing and she's upset and I'm upset.

I called the office manager myself. She informed me that yes, this is a new policy and reflects the doctors' beliefs that babies should be born in the hospital where "everything is covered."
"What exactly does that mean?" I asked the woman.
"I am not sure," she said. She was defensive and I do understand that she did not make the policy although as the office manager, I think she should know the answers to these questions. I told her that I did not understand such a policy- that there is no scientific or medical evidence to support it.

I asked her to have the doctor in the practice with whom I have mainly had a relationship with for almost thirty years to call me. This is a man for whom I have had the greatest respect as a doctor and as a human. He has always treated me with respect as a mother and as a nurse and I have always felt that he gave my children excellent and sensitive care. When I was pregnant with Lily, I went to him and explained my situation- that I was having a home birth- and he said then that although he did not approve, he respected my choice and that was that.

So I am interested to hear this doctor's explanation. The office manager told Lily that they had had some problems with some babies from the local birth center and this may be true. However, I am QUITE certain that they have had to deal with problems caused by things which have happened at the hospital, too, no matter how well things are "covered" there.

This whole thing just completely enrages me. It has been proven over and over and over again that the way we deliver babies here in the US is not the safest or best way to deliver babies. Our infant and maternal mortality rates are abysmal for an industrialized nation and yet, we just keep throwing more and more unproven technology at the problem and haven't yet seemed to figure out that this may BE the problem.

I've been fighting this battle for thirty-six years now. When I had my first baby, a planned home birth was considered next thing to infanticide. And yet, the hospitals were still at the stage where only the most lenient doctors allowed even husbands in the delivery room. Where babies were separated from mothers for up to 24 hours after birth. Where women were routinely shaved, given enemas and tied down for delivery. And if you dared to question THAT status quo, you were looked upon as a complete and utter nutcase.

And here we are now and oh yes, you can have people with you when the baby is born. You are not shaved or given an enema or tied down. Your baby can stay with you after delivery. BUT, Caesarian rates are so high that as a mother delivering today, your chances of dying during a delivery are higher than they were in the 1950's! Babies are regularly induced at 38 weeks for reasons I don't even begin to understand and if you DARE go past your due date by a week, you WILL be induced. And inductions lead to more interventions and more interventions lead to C-sections and why IS it that babies are being induced? Do we not think that humans can give birth to normal sized babies any more?

Oh. I am just so angry. And I am angry for Lily and I am angry for women in general who are once again being told by THE MALE DOMINATED ESTABLISHMENT that they don't know what's best for them or their children. And it also enrages me that women have NOT taken control of this situation. That we have allowed the doctors and (and this may be the bottom line cause of all the problems) the insurance companies to tell us how we should give birth to our babies. WE are the ones who have allowed childbirth to be taken away from US and given a medical procedure in its place.
Yes. God. We NEED hospitals and doctors if something goes wrong. But if nothing DOES go wrong, if birth is managed with skill and patience and respect for the process, if an educated and trained midwife is the person doing that, mothers and babies will all be better off and the doctors and the hospitals can do what they do best which is to take care of people who have actual medical problems.

I could go on for days here, seething and simmering until I explode.

I won't. I am waiting for that call but I have also told Lily that she needs to find a different pediatrician. One who respects women who choose to have their babies in the way they deem to be safest and best. As much as I respect that doctor, as long as our relationship goes back, I do want Lily to have to suffer the indignity of going to a practice where her choices are not respected. Where the science is not sound, the medical practice not sensitive to the realities of life. Even if they made an exception for her because of her long history there, I don't think she would be comfortable with them any more and if there is not trust and respect between doctor and patient, then another doctor must be found.

Which makes me so sad. I have loved going to Owen's check-ups with him and his mama. It has been a joy to have the same doctor who examined Lily after her birth and did all of her well-baby check-ups and who took care of her when she had her childhood illnesses, do the same for my grandson. To chitter and chat with that doctor, to talk about his children and grandchildren, to laugh about how quickly the time goes, about what complete fools we grandparents are. To have that relationship with him. That trusting, confident, easy relationship. To feel that my grandson's health care was in good hands. To know that Lily felt the same way.

Well, la-di-dah and let it go.

But I want to talk to him first. I want to ask him how a practice can make such a blanket policy and I want to know why it was made. To hear his explanation. And to let him know as a mother, as a parent, as a home-birth advocate, my point of view on the subject. He deserves to hear that, just as I deserve to hear what he has to say.

Pain- What On Earth's It Good For?

I've got laundry going, venison thawing, and I've re-treated Miss Penny's little head. She looks pretty good, Miss Penny does. Her wound is no longer bloody and I think it's healing. She seems relatively unaffected.

Jessie is doing well. You'd hardly know she's had surgery except for the fact that she has an Ace bandage on her knee and when she bends the knee, it makes a squishy sound, not unlike a hungry belly would make. It's a bit disconcerting to have sounds coming from your knee that usually only come from your gut and I've got a call in to the doctor's office but I think it's fine. Just being super sure. A new friend of hers is coming out for breakfast shortly and I'm looking forward to meeting him. She gets a bit giggly when she talks about him but you know Jessie- she's giggly all the time. Yesterday when we were waiting for the nurse to come and DC her IV, she asked what time it was and she was amazed when we told her. "Wow," she said. "I didn't realize it was that late."
"Time goes fast when you're doing drugs," her father said, and we all laughed so loud that we probably woke up the other post-op patients, dozing off their anesthesia.

Here was something that struck me yesterday:
Jessie had originally thought that maybe she'd just as soon get an epidural for her surgery and remain awake for it, rather than to undergo general anesthesia. The anesthesiologist agreed that he could do that and then he proceeded to tell her all the things that can go wrong with an epidural- the wet tap, the headaches, the long recovery time, the precipitous drop in blood pressure that can occur, and so on and so forth.
"But really," he said, "We do them all the time. The risks are very low."
But it made me think about how quickly they offer epidurals to women in labor, and how quickly women in labor agree to them- as if they were being offered something magical without any consequences to consider. The pain of childbirth, as it were, is something so horrible and intolerable that risks are considered minor in comparison when talking about the relief of such pain.
Huh, I thought and Jessie opted for general anesthesia.
When my friend and neighbor, Ms. Petit Fleur, was in labor, I remember the anesthesiologist coming into her room and announcing that he was going to be her new best friend as he set up his equipment. And indeed, anyone who relieves you of the pain of childbirth does, at the time, seem like a miracle worker, a magician, and yes, your new best friend.
I don't recall the risks of the epidural being discussed in so much detail on that day and if it had been, would Ms. Fleur have been able to pay attention? Or would her husband who was so concerned with the pain she was experiencing that he only wanted her to be relieved of it?
No. Not really.
I feel a bit guilty about that- I was there and I could have been her advocate and tried to help her explore other ways of dealing with the pain but I hated seeing her in such distress, too. Every woman in labor cannot possibly believe that this amount of pain is normal, that it doesn't signal some sort of problem. And that's where a birth coach comes in- to remind her that yes, it is normal, all is well and that she can deal with it and that her baby is fine and soon she will be holding him in her arms.
Ms. Fleur ended up having a completely lovely birth and perhaps would not have been in such pain to begin with had they not induced her labor and then augmented it with pitocin which causes contractions of unnatural force. But that's what happens in so many cases. "They" decide that you need to have that baby NOW and a woman who is 41 weeks pregnant will agree to almost anything to get that baby out.
And so it goes.
One intervention leads to another and the next thing you know, your plan for a natural, drug-free birth has been completely left behind and the anesthesiologist is your new best friend.
But why should women have to experience pain in labor? You wouldn't get knee surgery or a tooth removed without drugs.
But the thing is is that childbirth is not surgery or a medical condition at all if things are going normally, which most doctors have forgotten. A baby is neither something needing repair or removal. Not in the sense that a tooth is. And that things have evolved in the way they've evolved to allow women to give birth on their own. And yes, the pain is part of it. I've written about this before and what I think is that when the baby is born, the pain is immediately over and that this is important. Your first sight and touch of your baby corresponds with the complete cessation of the pain and somehow, deep in the brain, a connection is made that says, Baby equals salvation.
And instead of an anesthesiologist being your new best friend, your baby is.
With the added bonus of knowing that you and your baby have done the most amazing thing in the world and that your body is stronger and more powerful than you ever could have imagined.
Not to mention that fact that the pain creates a desire in a woman to move in such a way that the baby is constantly put in a better and more efficient position to be born, unlike being flat on her back with monitors all over, her legs unable to support her due to having had an epidural.

Well, those are my thoughts today. And I know darn well that a woman can give birth to a baby with an epidural and make a bond with that child which is as fully formed as any. All I have to do is look next door to Ms. Fleur and Harley to see that.

I am glad that modern medicine is there for the mothers who need it and also for situations where knees need repairing. I am. Believe me.
I am just so grateful that in giving birth to my children I didn't need it. My babies and I were a team, working and moving together and the midwives where there to help ease them into this life.
Their births were the most powerful and healing experiences of my life and I would not be who I am without those experiences.