Michael Y’s Neighborhood

We've had a pretty good summer. It's been a busy summer! We spent two weeks out at Camp Inagehi with our 4, 2 and 1 year old children. That was crazy, but so much fun. My oldest thinks he owns the place now. We also had a great Vacation Bible School, Righteous Roundup, that my oldest is still talking about almost two weeks later. After VBS our family spent a few days out at "Papa and Nana's" house (my grandparents, my kids' great grand parents), and we got to visit more family while we were there. But the really exciting thing that happened this summer is we found out:

The baby is due early March. I'm thinking about changing up some things with this pregnancy and birth. So, we'll see how that goes. Sorry I've been so quiet on the blog, but like I said, we've been busy. ;)

Ma-Ma Sisterhood Group

Will he go potty?
Someday soon it will happen,
Maybe by college. 

Ctrl-V (PCs) or Command-V (Macs) Time! Paste whatever text you copied last.

http://www.epm.org/articles/bcp5400.html

I was emailing this article to a friend. I read some of the other posts for this Vox Hunt. Funny stuff. 

The writer of a parenting blog I frequent often recently announced she is getting a divorce. She was actually in the final stages of her divorce when she made the announcement and had initiated the process a year earlier, but upon legal advice she had kept the news hidden from her blog readers. When I read her announcement I was surprised at the level of sadness I had upon learning of this. I was particularly struck to learn that this year would have been her nine year anniversary. My husband and I celebrated our nine year anniversary this year. I don't know anything about her marriage or her husband. I can only assume that her experience of marriage has been strikingly different from my own.

She writes an advice column. Her parenting advice and compassion has at times been invaluable to me. I have come to have high regard for her judgement. I know nobody is perfect and we all have flaws. However, as much as I hate to admit it, the news of her divorce really makes me feel disillusioned about her judgement. I don't know, I'm still processing my thoughts on that one. I just can't imagine what is going on in her life that she would choose, initiate even, a divorce from her spouse. It's sad.  

I have a MySpace page that is mainly used to lightly keep in touch with people I went to high school with. When I first started to reconnect with those people I was immediately struck by how many people were divorced. How are so many people getting this marriage thing wrong, yet some how I'm seemingly "getting it right"?

I feel like Forrest Gump. I didn't come from a home that taught me what marriage was supposed to be like. I was raised by a single mother who often had relationship troubles herself. I married when I was 21 and had no idea what I was doing, much less what marriage was all about. Now closing in on 10 years I wonder where the time went. I can't say that I'm totally oblivious when it comes to my marriage. I do try to be kind and compassionate to my spouse, but by no means am I shining example of a thoughtful spouse.

I did go into my marriage with the understanding that this is the person I'm choosing for life and it's basically this person or no one else. And I married someone who shares that view. Does that make all the difference? I mean, I've known other people to at least give lip service to that idea. Maybe they did really believe it. I don't know. Then later I find that they have gone their separate ways.  

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except to say that since being married for just shy of 10 years and really getting to understand first hand what two becoming one flesh means, I now have a deeper understanding of how sad and gut wrenching divorce must be. It's easy to see it as nothing more than a breakup when you are young and have experienced nothing but dating,  but divorce is a loss so much more profound and it's so sad. Even though divorce is statistically common it American society, I just can't help but to be sad to hear of one more divorce. 

I've been doing some reading about exactly how hormone based birth control works.

In summary, according to multiple references throughout The Physician's Desk Reference, which articulate the research findings of all the birth control pill manufacturers, there are not one but three mechanisms of birth control pills:
       1. inhibiting ovulation (the primary mechanism),
       2. thickening the cervical mucus, thereby making it more difficult for sperm to travel to the egg, and
       3. thinning and shriveling the lining of the uterus to the point that it is unable or less able to facilitate the implantation of the newly fertilized egg.

The first two mechanisms are contraceptive. The third is abortive.

When a woman taking the Pill discovers she is pregnant (according to The Physician's Desk Reference's efficacy rate tables, this is 3 percent of pill-takers each year), it means that all three of these mechanisms have failed. The third mechanism sometimes fails in its role as backup, just as the first and second mechanisms sometimes fail. Each and every time the third mechanism succeeds, however, it causes an abortion.
Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions? by Randy Alcor (condensation)

I'm not trying to debate if abortion should be legal or not. I'm simply saying that there are those that would choose to have an abortion and there are those that would not. For those that would not, this is extremely troubling.

The other trouble is that many medical care providers do not use the same definition of "pregnancy" that is commonly understood by most people (and in most widely available dictionaries).

From a medical point of view, however, pregnancy does not occur at the moment of conception. It occurs, instead, when an embryo (a fertilized egg that has divided over the course of a few days) attaches itself to the woman's uterus, a stage known as implantation. It is at implantation that a woman's hormonal system begins to respond to her embryo, a response that initiates a cascade of dramatic physiological changes in her body. This means that if a sperm fertilizes an egg after a couple has intercourse, but the fertilized egg never implants inside the woman's uterus, then the woman - from a medical point of view - was never pregnant. Therefore, she can be described as having menstruated, rather than as having experienced a miscarriage or a spontaneous abortion.

Some forms of what we call birth-control implicate the distinction between the pro-life definition of pregnancy and the medical definition of the same. For example, the I.U.D. (or intra-uterine device) can operate by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in the wearer's uterus (though it can also work by preventing conception in the first place). When it prevents implantation, an I.U.D. has - necessarily - not prevented conception (and, if I were a pro-life advocate, I might accordingly say that in such instances, it does not literally fit the definition of "contra-ception").
When Does Pregnancy Begin?: A Federal Appeals Court Decision Implicates a New Abortion Question by Sherry F. Colb

The view that pregnancy begins at implantation is the view held by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). When your medical care adviser tells you that various birth control methods "do not disrupt an existing pregnancy" (as stated in the World Health Organization's "Family Planning: A Global Handbook for Providers") realize that you both may be using the same word, "pregnancy," but the definition is not the same.

How can patients be expected to give informed consent if a word with a the commonly understood definition is being used with a definition crucially different?

Neither ACOG definition has been consistently adopted by its members whose definitions are more consistent with lay and embryologist definitions. Potentially, the process of informed consent is jeopardized by these ambiguities. The ACOG is urged to reconsider its definitions.
Informed consent and the redefining of conception: a decision ill-conceived?  by J.A. Spinnato (abstract)

People most likely ask the question "Will this method of birth control harm a pregnancy?" are most likely people who would consider pregnancy to begin at fertilization and would consider any post-fertilization effects, such as inhibiting implantation, to be harmful to a pregnancy. To dismiss the commonly understood definition of "pregnancy" and play a game of semantics does not allow for informed consent and is poor care indeed.

I'm so curious to see this movie. I believe it's in theaters this weekend.

I just discovered the blog "Et tu?" The Diary of a Former Atheist and read her post How I became pro-life. Coming from an environment where pro-choice seemed like the right choice and then going on my own journey to becoming pro-life this post really resonated with me. Here's an excerpt:

The message I'd heard loud and clear was that the purpose of sex was for pleasure and bonding, that its potential for creating life was purely tangential, almost to the point of being forgotten about altogether. This mindset laid the foundation of my views on abortion. Because I saw sex as being closed to the possibility to life by default, I thought of pregnancies that weren't planned as akin to being struck by lightning while walking down the street -- something totally unpredictable, undeserved, that happened to people living normal lives.

Being pro-choice for me (and I'd imagine with many others) was actually motivated out of love and caring: I just didn't want women to have to suffer, to have to devalue themselves by dealing with unwanted pregnancies. Because it was an inherent part of my worldview that everyone except people with "hang-ups" eventually has sex and sex is, under normal circumstances, only about the relationship between the two people involved, I got lured into one of the oldest, biggest, most tempting lies in human history: to dehumanize the enemy. Babies had become the enemy because of their tendencies to pop up and ruin everything; and just as societies are tempted to dehumanize the fellow human beings who are on the other side of the lines in wartime, so had I, and we as a society, dehumanized the enemy of sex.

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Christopher R. Browning

I read a book in college called Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning. The book tells the story of how average people came to commit savage acts of inhumanity by the end of WWII through historical accounts and documents. I was again reminded of this book when I read this:

I was reading yet another account of the Greek societies in which newborn babies were abandoned to die, wondering to myself how normal people could possibly do something like that. I felt a chill rush through my body as I thought:

I know how they did it.

I realized in that moment that perfectly good, well-meaning people -- people like me -- can support very evil things through the power of lies.

"Perfectly good, well-meaning people" is absolutely right. To believe that the pro-choice community hates babies or hates families is ridiculous. The pro-choice mindset often comes from a position of compassion. The blog author, Jennifer F., touches on this in greater detail and makes a lot of other great points. The entire post is definitely worth a read.

For those of you have had a hospital (or outside of your home) birth, what were some of your favorite or essential items to pack?

As usual, I started to write a comment for someone's post and it just got way too long. So, I decided to write my own post.

My favorite hospital bag items:

• Carmex - my favorite lip balm, my lips always got so dry
• Snacks for Dad - "Don't you dare leave this room to go to a vending machine!"
• Cash - for who knows what (there's always something) just in case
• iPod & compact iPod Speakers - I'm not a fan of the headphones during labor and I didn't like just bringing CD's, because I didn't know what I wanted to listen to until I got there.
• Tube of Lanolin - I'm a firm believer in preventative nipple care. I don't wait until I start to feel sore. I use it after every feeding for at least the first 2 - 4 weeks. I've had difficulty with breastfeeding and that stuff has been a lifesaver for me.
  
• Preemie Clothes - I had big kids (two 8 lb, 14 oz, one 8 lbs, 9oz) and none of them fit in their 0-3 months clothes until about 6 weeks, and definitely not at the hospital. I have no idea what actual preemie moms do for clothes. After my first I made sure to bring preemie clothes to the hospital so the baby looked cute in all the pictures.
• A Gender Neutral Coming Home Outfit - Maybe it's just me, but I was always paranoid of being surprised on delivery day. So, I bring, as an extra outfit, a simple white sleeper for the baby (for pictures) just in case.
• "Adult Diaper" style underwear - I know this sounds weird (and TMI), but there can be a fair amount of blood for a time (6 weeks after my first, 2 weeks after my last) after you give birth and basically I just got sick of things leaking (on my underwear, clothes, sheets, etc). I read somewhere on a mom message board a recommendation to use these and they worked great, much better than any pad, etc. combination I could think of.
• Forgiving Clothes Home - No one really knows what they are going to look like or what size they will be immediately postpartum. So, bring clothes for you to wear home that are stretchy (like elastic waist stretchy, not like leotard kind of stretchy) and forgiving. When I went home from the hospital I always looked like I was still 5 to 6 months pregnant. Also, don't be afraid to wear your maternity clothes for as long as you want to/need to postpartum. My youngest is nine months old and I wore a maternity shirt just yesterday (and no one gave a second glance). The idea of still wearing maternity clothes even though I wasn't pregnant gave me a lot of heart ache after my first birth, but after my third I just embraced it and was much happier as a result (btw, I'm now about the same weight as before I started having kids, so it's not necessarily a weight issue, it's a how the clothes fit issue).

I just got finished reading through the blog Stuff White People Like. It is so hilarious. I never knew that I am such a white cliché.

Here are some of the reasons why I am so white:
(taken from the Full List of Stuff White People Like)

#2 Religions their parents don’t belong to
#3 Film Festivals
#5 Farmer’s Markets
#6 Organic Food
#7 Diversity
#9 Making you feel bad about not going outside [I hope I don't make other's feel bad about not going outside, but I certainly feel guilt for not going outside enough--also see #55]
#10 Wes Anderson Movies
#12 Non-Profit Organizations
#16 Gifted Children
#18 Awareness
#21 Writers Workshops
#34 Architecture
#35 The Daily Show/Colbert Report
#37 Renovations
#38 Arrested Development
#39 Netflix
#40 Apple Products
#41 Indie Music
#43 Plays
#44 Public Radio
#48 Whole Foods and Grocery Co-ops
#49 Vintage
#50 Irony
#51 Living by the Water [I would love to live by the water]
#54 Kitchen Gadgets
#55 Apologies
#59 Natural Medicine
#60 Toyota Prius [I would love to have one]
#64 Recycling
#67 Standing Still at Concerts
#78 Multilingual Children [I would love to have multilingual children]
#79 Modern Furniture
#82 Hating Corporations
#83 Bad Memories of High School

Obviously, all the items on the blog don't apply to me, but it was pretty funny to see how many of them did.

The Business of Being Born

I've finally gotten to see this movie. Wow. Having gone through three hospital births there were so many moments in the movie where I was like "yes, exactly." When they talk about the domino effect of hospital interventions, in my experience that is extremely true. Just stupid things like "let's start the IV, just in case." After that it is SO EASY to pump in a drug based on an expert authority's recommendation.

I saw it on DVD and there was some extra footage that I image you wouldn't get to see in the theater. In one of the followup interviews with a homebirth couple the mother talks about how she reached a point in her labor that if there were pain medications available, she would have taken them. What the homebirth midwife refers in the movie to as a "rock and a hard place." Man, I know that place! The homebirth mother says "but I had it easy, I was at home." Wow. She set herself up in an environment where she could get through the pain, the worst pain, without medication and she did. She went on to talk about how she could freely move around, remove all her clothes because nothing felt comfortable (she said her mother kept giving her a robe for modesty's sake--heh!), and squat whenever and wherever she wanted, because she was at home. Even if the hospital "officially" says you can do that, that's just not how things happen. I remember going to a hospital childbirth class before my first child was born and seeing a video of this woman with no clothes on in labor moving around, squating and doing all kinds of stuff in a hospital room. When I got to that same hospital in labor I most certainly did not get "let's change your position to manage your pain," I got "let's start an IV, let's strap this monitor to you and this monitor to you, now lift your legs I need to check you, lie down on your back...."

I got a taste of what a natural birth is like with my last birth, because my epidural did not work. I managed my pain, a drug did not. Don't misunderstand, at that moment I really wanted that drug to manage my pain, but that just wasn't how things played out. I have a history of that also.  With my first birth I had partial numbing on one side and with my second I had an tolerable level of numbing from the epidural. I have never been one of those people that as a result of an epidural couldn't feel or move her legs. No, I was always in pain, just less pain (sometimes). Because of this history, I mentally prepared myself to (as I told myself) "not loose your marbles" if the epidural doesn't work. "Keep your game face on."

This last time I told the staff clearly and repeatedly that the epidural wasn't working. When the staff started feeding me the all too familiar lines "give it 20 minutes, lay on your back, lay on your left side, lay on your right side, bla, bla, bla" I thought "I'm not doing this again." I gave it five minutes of excruciating, lying on my back pain and sat up and said "This is ridiculous." The nurse then scolded me and said "Well, it's never going to work now because you're sitting up and the medicine is just going to all go to your bottom" (whatever that means!). So I said "It's NOT working. I have to deal with this and I can't lying on my back. I don't care." And it was not discussed again.

Since then I've discussed my history with epidurals with a few different health care providers and they seem to think that (as I understand it) pain medicine runs through me pretty quick. I never thought to correlate the two until after, but I also have a history of dentists not believing me when I tell them "I can still feel that!" and then give me line "it's just pressure." You gotta love that. Right, like I (along with everyone else on the planet) don't know what pain is. Anyway, even though I did have pain medicine and IV fluids (and who knows what else) in me I still got that super high after the birth that I didn't get with the other births. I just remember feeling like I have to get up and go. I have things to do and energy to do it. I guess it was because I had to deal with the pain and I was dealing with the pain. I had a lot of pain with my first birth, but I wasn't dealing with it, things were very much out of control for me. I felt like I was being dragged along to places I did not want to go with my first birth. I clearly remember after my first birth having a very fearful and shell-shocked notion of "I don't know if I can do this again." Thankfully, time heals a lot.

I still don't know if homebirth is something I can/will do in the future. But after seeing this movie and doing some more reading on it (both pro and con), I know at least some part of me really wants to.