My Life

Yay! It's Friday!!

The girls had fun last night at their little sleepover. :) They made ice cream sundaes and watched a movie. From what they said, they stayed up later than Kev and I did.

Today was the Mommy Milk Meetup and once again it was fabulous! Today Shannon Gallagher, CCH CN shared about vaccinations. She presented some wonderful and factual information about them. I even learned a few things I hadn't realized about them in the research I've done. It just enforced even more my decision to stop vaccinating my children!

We'll be off to the library and a few other errands later. I'm irked because I can't find some of the library cards. Abby's is the only one I have sitting right here in front of me. Thankfully the librarian at "our" library is sweet and it's not a big deal for her to pull all of us up on the computer and do it that way. I'm so very thankful for nice library ladies. :)

The following is a little rant of mine. If you read my comment elsewhere about a certain labor/delivery issue and I hacked you off...you probably don't want to read any further. I'm just moving this here to further explain where I am coming from and hopefully open the eyes of others.

So if you don't read any more I won't be offended. :)

If the following offends you, I'm not offended and make no apologies for what I'm about to say. :)

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I read something a while ago that caused me to get on my doula/midwife soapbox. For the sake of hijacking someone elses' blog I'm moving my little rant over here. ;) Just so everyone is clear on how I feel about certain issues....one of my biggest pet peeves as a birth professional is when people use scare tactics to talk someone into doing or not doing something. Why can't we educate ourselves about issues and procedures and then give recommendations..? But like anything in life, that's what people do. "Don't buy THAT car..I had a horrible experience with the a/c system!"...."Don't marry HIM! I heard from his cousin's best friend's sister that he went to a bar last weekend."...."Why on earth are you not vaccinating your children? This girl I know online who's brother's nephew wasn't vaccinated got really sick with Polio!" Seriously. I think....well at least I hope....that as a society we are smart enough to research for ourselves and make the best decisions based on the evidence-based information we have. But sadly not everyone does that so we are fed fear-based information and make decisions off of that.

In regards to pregnancy and birth this happens a lot because birth is so personal. It's a day that lives with a woman for her entire life. And things we experience...good or bad...get passed on to expecting Moms that we know. What woman doesn't like sharing her birth experience? :) If an expecting Mom makes decisions based on stories and personal experience, if she does go on later to research and learn the truth she may deal with regret and/or anger about the birth experience she had. So why not research and empower yourself and then make a decision..? We don't go buy a car without researching it first. We don't get married without knowing as much as we can about that person. Pregnancy, labor and birth should be no different! It can be much easier to process a birth gone off the path you envisioned if you know you were informed about the risks and benefits and then made decisions based on that information, doing everything you could to get the desired outcome.

I do have some very strong opinions about certain things (ask Kahri about how I reacted when I heard her Dr was going to use Cytotec on her... ;) ). But as a birth professional I really do try to give people evidence-based and factual information. I want women to be informed and empowered, not standing on the sidelines during her pregnancy and birth being told by her care provider what is going to happen without the benefits and risks presented. If I come along behind someone who's giving information based on fear and present more factual information, it's not to make myself look like I know it all. That's far from the truth. I know about a $1 worth in a bucket of $1,000,000! Instead my desire is to simply present the truth based on the evidence.

Even with my opinions about some issues, deep down, as long as a woman is informed I really don't care what type of birth a woman chooses. I say "as long a woman is informed" because it really does irk me to see women being taken advantage of by her care provider and/or not taking an active role in her pregnancy and birth and I think it's so very important to take an active role in ones health care! I don't just limit that to pregnancy/birth either...I feel that way about all aspects of health. I digress.....my point is.....each woman has to make her own decisions about what path to go down. Each woman has to live with the birth experience she chooses to have or the experience that unfolds (since we all know birth has no guarantees). No one can make those decisions for her. And scaring a woman by sharing horrific experiences or stories filled with heresay isn't going to help empower a Mama!

An example is that approximately 80% of women receive epidurals and pretty much everyone you talk to (since the rate is 80%..lol) says, "Ohhh...get the epidural! You'll want it! You'd be crazy to do it without one!" How often do you hear someone say, "Yeah, labor can be hard and you might want to consider getting an epidural. Has your Dr shared with you the risks of having an epidural? If you're interested I was reading a while back about some of the side effects, let me know if you'd like more information. I was surprised to learn how many there are!" I bet you can count on one hand how often you've heard that. And for some of you, you're only holding up one finger because this is the first time you've heard it. ;) How much more empowering do you think the second example is than the first one? The first one only instills fear and doubt. The second one instills curiosity and the desire to read more.

Since this soapbox is about 10 feet high now......all I am trying to say is basically this.....mainstream thoughts about birth tend to annoy me.

Not really. What I'm really trying to say (even tho that above is pretty true..lol) is this.....we need to stop putting fear into expecting Moms and help empower them!!