9 posts from 2007

I am at home in rural Wisconsin visiting my family for a few weeks. My son is thrilled to be playing with the donkeys and sheep and my baby is happy to have so many extra adults around to hold him and play. My brother is soaking up as much information on babies as possible - he changed his first (cloth) diaper yesterday and he was a pro. Babywearing while farming, how to politely get people to give you gifts that fit your politics and principles, morning sickness, etc. - we have been chatting about it all.

I found my Birthplan from 2002 tonight and thought I would share it in case it is useful to anyone else. We were giving birth in a hospital with a midwife in a birthing suite for the midwife clients. Everything was perfect and the staff were all so respectful. My son, August, was born July 11, 2002 at 11:21 pm weighing 8 pounds 14 ozs and 21 1/4 inches long. He was born without medications or interventions (excepting a AROM at 9.5 cm to help with a lip - it still did not dialte and the midwife had to manually move it aside to prevent damage). 

When my grandparents were having babies, my grandfather was wholly outside of the process -- it was only at the end when the gender of the baby was announced that he had any role at all. He did not actively participate in pregnancy, there were not childbirth education classes, he did not have a role in the birth, and, largely, he was outside of the parenting of the newborn. He was a great man, but at that time, this was his role. 

It is hard to believe that my little baby is almost 7 months already. We had a Christamas celebration with my siblings today and all the kids were playing together. Clay seems so grown up in so many ways and just deliciously playful. It's amazing that he is already this old. Here are a few pictures from 2 days ago.

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This is such a  thoughtful looking face, I love it.

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Here is my other baby - now a 5.5 year old.

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That is him at about the same age that Clay is now and here he is with Clay a few weeks ago:

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There is so often this emphasis on information and on knowing more. With my first I had most of the tests, two ultrasounds, lots of doppler heartbeats, and I also turned down many available screenigs. What troubles me about this notion of 'information' is the sense that is it value-nuetral and benign when in fact these are forms of information that all but demand response in so many cases. Further, it is information that is so often wrong. Rapp's book Testing Women, Testing the Fetus speaks so nicely to this issue of testing being presented as simply information when it is so much more than that for the women who end up with the test results. 

Exemplifying the very naturalized Western beliefs about procreation and reproduction, David Schneider tells the following humorous story of his fieldwork with the Yap, a Pacific Island culture that views pregnancy as a reward from happy ancestral ghosts, not the result of sexual intercourse. Schneider recalled:

One fine day, walking along a path I did not often take, I came upon four large men removing the testicles of a small pig. Always the anthropologist, I did not assume that I knew why; I asked. Makes the pig grow much bigger, they said. But, said I slyly, could a sow ever get pregnant from such a boar? Not from that one! they affirmed. It needed a boar whose testicles had not been removed. I was unnerved, I admit. So I went back over the whole matter slowly and carefully. Castrate the pig and he grows larger than if he is not castrated. Right! But a castrated pig cannot get a sow pregnant. Right! And then they added once again, if you want a sow pregnant you must get a boar which has not been castrated. They copulate, the sow gets pregnant, the pigs are born. But, I protested, everyone has been telling me that coitus does not make women pregnant. That is correct, they said. But they were puzzled, and so was I. We did not understand one another. I had presented them, I felt, with logically inconsistent statements that fairly cried out for some explanation. They could not see what my problem was since they had provided me with the full array of necessary, correct facts and to them there was no problem. So we kept at it until I again put the contradiction to them, if you castrate a pig he cannot get a sow pregnant. Surely that proved that that copulation causes pregnancy! But suddenly one man saw what my problem was, for he put it plainly and emphatically: “But people are not pigs!” Once that point was made, the rest followed in happy, logical order. I had obviously assumed that biological processes operate for all animals and had included [hu]man[s] among them. But they had assumed that no one but a fool would equate people with pigs. [in Tsing 1995:117]

I am reading tonight about this distinction and the medical focus on informed consent in the absense of a focus on making informed choices prior to giving consent. This really resonates with me both in my experiences as a laboring woman and also in my experiences with other women. Helping someone to make an informed choice is a much greater level of educational commitment because it requires first making sure they are aware of an understanding the full range of choices before giving consent to the specific treatment or procedure being offered/considered. I am sitting with the distinction tonight as I contemplate doula work, educating women/parents, and my own reflective practice. 

I have abandoned my old blogging site in favor of this new one. Same great info with a new look :)