Birthing Rights ARE Reproductive Rights

So now that I'm a momma, I'm all into the online birthing communities, too. Birthing rights and all that jazz... which is really just a subset of reproductive rights. My body, my choice: I get to choose how to birth my baby. I have a right to birth in a hospital, or a birthing center, or at home. I have a right to have a midwife, and a doula, if I want them. Makes sense, no?


Women need to be informed about their choices, what options they have when they birth. They need to know the risks of epidurals, episiotomies, and whether or not these are actually necessary (or desirable). They have a right to have an IBCLC available to help with any breastfeeding issues.


As I saw tweeted the other day, "Pro-choice" and "Trust Women" doesn't just apply to abortion -- it damn well applies to birth, too. The problem is that the conversation is so often derailed into "UR A MURDERERRR!!!" by the pro-"life" side so we don't get to talk about any real issues, we just spend our time pointing out their lies and fallacies.


Most women who have had an abortion either already have children or will have them in the future (when they're ready). "Women who have an abortion" and "women who have a baby" are not two separate groups. They're a Venn diagram, with a huge overlap in the middle.


We want the same thing: respect for women when it comes to their bodies. When and how to be pregnant. When and how to birth. When and how to feed their children.


Yesterday I saw the Ronald Reagan quote about how "everyone who is for abortion has already been born." I've seen it before, and ignored it, because it's a stupid quote pretending to be "clever." Unborn entities don't have opinions, so they can't be "for" (or against) anything. Plenty of people who have "already been born" wish they had not. Oftentimes they commit suicide. Or they turn to drugs or alcohol to dull the pain of living.

And plenty more of us would not have cared if we'd been aborted. You know why? BECAUSE FETUSES DON'T HAVE COGNITIVE PROCESSES OR THE ABILITY TO CARE.


The quote was not blog-post-worthy. What was, was where I saw it: I saw this quote on a birthing rights community page.


Those same women who are appalled that a doctor would force a C-section on a woman... are saying it's okay to force an entire pregnancy on her??


Here's my (first) response:


I'm surprised to see an anti-abortion statement posted today, when yesterday there was a question from a mom about doing a D&C for a molar pregnancy. I still don't know what a molar pregnancy is (haven't had time to Google it), but I know what a D&C is. It's one method of terminating a pregnancy (usually done in the second trimester, if I recall correctly). I had one, when I was faced with an unwanted pregnancy, just over a decade ago. 

I have seen other posts (don't think it was on this page, but on another parenting/birthing-rights page) about moms seeking advice about a D&C after a miscarriage or stillbirth (to make sure all the tissue is actually out of the body, to prevent infection and/or other complications).

There are a bazillion different reasons why a woman may need to terminate a pregnancy. Sometimes it's because she's not ready to be a mother. Sometimes it's because she's not capable of being a mother -- financially, or mentally/emotionally, or physically. Sometimes it's because something is wrong with the pregnancy or the fetus -- like an ectopic or molar pregnancy. Sometimes it's because the fetus is already dead, but her body hasn't miscarried properly and removed all the tissue. I'm not and obstetrician, so I can't even begin to list all the medical reasons for an abortion.

Whatever that woman's reason is, SHE knows what's best for her. It's her body. She also knows what is best for that potential child -- deciding whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term is the first parenting decision a woman makes. Please respect her choice.

Just like a doctor doesn't have the right to force a woman to have a c-section if she doesn't want one, no one has a right to force a woman to have a pregnancy if she doesn't -- or can't -- want it.

One of the reasons the women who posted here and on other pages asking for advice on whether they should have a D&C for a doomed (or already terminated) pregnancy is because abortion has been so demonized in our society. It's a medical procedure. A necessary one. No woman makes the decision to abort a pregnancy lightly -- and any woman who would, is not apt for or perhaps capable of motherhood. Motherhood begins with pregnancy.

If you want to reduce the number of abortions that happen because of unwanted pregnancies, call your legislators and tell them to fund Planned Parenthood. Tell them to make birth control fully covered by insurance. Tell them to make hospitals stock emergency contraception in the ER for rape victims. Call your school board and your legislators and make comprehensive sex ed mandatory curriculum starting in middle school.

But don't criminalize or demonize abortion. You don't know that woman's story. You can't imagine what SHE is going through, because you are not her and you have not lived her life or survived the trauma that may be leading her to make that decision -- even for a very wanted pregnancy.


--


I went back and wrote some more comments (in response to one particularly rabid anti-choicer), which I may post here as their own mini-blogs, or I may dump in the comments here. Haven't decided yet.

But right now, my baby's calling me.


Tweet

"Selling" breast milk

From the weekly Our365 email I get about my baby's development (courtesy of the people who took newborn photos in the hospital):

Yes, of course. You'd find it right next to the gallons of blood and sperm.

First of all, we don't package and sell breast milk as if it were, say cow's milk. It's distributed by donor milk banks, you know, same as we do with blood. And sperm. 

Because there are so few donor banks (and the requirements are so strict -- I can't donate milk because I'm on antidepressants that are safe to take while nursing, but those meds prohibit me from donating), and because the fees to use donated milk are so steep and insurance companies put so many restrictions on who is "worthy" of receiving the little human milk there is available, some moms contribute to programs like Eats on Feets, or share their milk informally with a mom friend in need.

Yes, there have been instances of moms asking for a fee for this service (I don't have any links, but I saw people asking about it on one of the birth/parenting Facebook pages I follow, so it must have happened, at least once...), but it's not a money-making business, as Kristina C. makes it sound. It's "donating breast milk," not "selling" it.

And, Kristina C., if you're going to use an analogy... well... use the analogy. We donate and distribute human breast milk same as we do human blood or sperm: through banks, with medical screenings, and you must apply to receive the product. We don't sell blood or sperm at Stop & Shop either, so if your child is bleeding out after a car wreck, are you going to refuse the blood transfusion that could save hir life?

Birth Control Injection For Men

OK, I admit I did not read the WHOLE article (it's long, and I have a baby stirring in his basket, he's about to wake up and my Internetz time will be up); I saw something on Twitter or Facebook about this the other day, but that article seemed wonky, and I couldn't tell if it was a joke or not. This article has, like, sciency-talk in it and stuff.

If this is for real, then... DUDE.

If it IS 100% effective, and reversible, then... DAMN. MonkeyBoy will be strongly encouraged to get this injection when he's 13. He can reverse it when he's ready to have kids, if he and his partner choose to make babies.

And speaking of, he's awake. So I'll leave you with the article: The Revolutionary New Birth Control Method For Men. Go read, be amazed, get excited, and find that doctor in San Francisco who wants to bring this to the FDA. Let's make this happen! Soon!!

"About half of all pregnancies in the US are unplanned. Come up with a better contraceptive and the likely results are all good: fewer unwanted kids, fewer single parents, and fewer abortions."

Like parents, like fetus...

You know, maybe the anti-choicers are on to something... maybe fetuses really are sentient beings with complex thought processes after all (er... who somehow lose this ability as they squeeze through the birth canal and revert to creatures whose only thoughts are HUNGRY! WET! sleeping... HUNGRY! sleeping... WET!! HUNGRY!...)

Since Friday, I've been seriously wondering if instead of calling Troy Emmitt "Troy Emmitt," we should have called him "Bruce Banner." This kid has been exposed to so much sonogram radiation, I truly won't be surprised if he comes out green. (The rage part he's going to have regardless -- I mean, look at his mom. Need I say more?)

Early on (first trimester), we had the nuchal-something scan, where Troy Emmitt decided to have a thick neck and no nasal bone. Which threw everyone in a tizzy, thinking he had some chromosomal abnormality. We went to these fancy specialists, with their fancy-shmancy super-powered sonogram machine, and looked at Troy Emmitt, only to find out everything looked "normal" now. We did an amniocentesis and everything... to find out the little bugger was fine.

All that fuss, for nothin'.

But because of that abnormal scan, we've been doing biophysical profiles every week for the last [something] weeks. (We were doing them monthly before that, and maybe every two weeks... can't remember. There've been LOTS of them.)

He scores high on all the BPPs; our appointments are a lot of, "Fetus looks good, mom looks good..." I think we bore my OB sometimes. She's sick of seeing us.

BUT THEN FRIDAY, little Mr. LookAtMe!!! decided to have a "prominent aorta." Again, everyone got all worked up over this. We scheduled an emergency appointment with the specialist doctors and their super-powered sonogram machine, and made the grandmas worry all weekend long.

You know what the fancy-shmancy super-powered sonogram showed? Nuthin'.

Normal-looking aorta.

Now, Troy Emmitt, prima donna that he is, decided to turn the wrong way to make it hard for the nice doctor to get a good look at his heart (he even used this fetus-harasser vibrator thingie, to make Troy Emmitt turn around, but the boy refused to cooperate), and we're under orders to tell the pediatricians at the hospital to make sure to check for heart murmurs and other stuff after he's born, but everything's fine so far.

Here I was, thinking this fetus was just a fetus, floating around drinking his amniotic fluid (and peeing in it, and then drinking it. Yeah, fetuses are gross. They drink their own pee), and hiccuping like nobody's business, but all this time he's been actively, purposefully doing these things to call attention to himself. Just like his dad, he's a tooter-face. Attention hog. Prima donna, just like his mom.

Little stinker.

Dude's not even born yet, and he's this much trouble?

Really.

Freddy and I are in for a rough ride, aren't we? (I can hear the grandmas laughing... Are they saying something about karma...?)

#Preggo Goodie Bags: Someone Get On This

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When I went to my OB for my first pre-natal appointment, they gave me a StrongMoms bag with some swag. I love bags, it's an obsession with me, so I was THRILLED.
(It wasn't until I started reading the brochures and stuff that I realized StrongMoms is a Similac thing. So when the cats chose to pee on the bag a few weeks later, I was not too bothered about it.)
The bag contained some useful information, like the brochure from the doctor's office detailing the three trimesters, what medications were considered "safe" during pregnancy, and what I could and could not have done at the dentist. But most of the other stuff? I could have done without. (Seriously, ViaCord, HOW MANY TIMES are you going to "remind" me of my "SPECIAL OFFER!!!1!!" to bank my baby's cord blood with you??)
You know what would have ACTUALLY been helpful?

• A portable fan. Battery powered. Two, actually: one to keep on a desk (or other surface), another to wear around my neck.
• An overnight maternity catheter. Or a nine-month supply of overnight Depends.
• A bib. Large enough to cover the overgrown boobs and overgrown belly.
• Coupons for unlimited quantities of healthy, antioxidant-rich dark chocolate. Redeemable at any store, nationwide, throughout pregnancy and the child's first year of life. (Once the kid's a year old, he/she is old enough to ask you to SHARE the chocolate, so the magic's gone by then.)
• Optional: sign reading "Yes, I'm pregnant. Due in _____. My doctor says I'm just the right size, thank you."

What am I missing, ladies? What else would a USEFUL #preggo goodie bag contain?

***UPDATE***

Due to reader input, it has been decreed that the coupons for unlimited quantities of healthy, antioxidant-rich dark chocolate do not carry and expiration date. Once you get pregnant, you get free chocolate for life, for yourself and your child.

(Are you listening, Nestle? If you wanna win back the mom demographic, you'd better quit your unethical practices and get on this chocolate coupon thing.)

Letter to my 33-week fetus

Dear Troy Emmitt:

I see you have inherited your mother's impatience. (Of all your mother's traits, I guess that's not the worst one...)

I'm really, really anxious to meet you, too, but you still have to bake for another seven weeks or so. As much as I'd like you to come out and play now, you really shouldn't. So please stop trying to bust out through the walls of my uterus.

I know it's getting cramped in there, with you getting bigger and all (put on the fat you need, but don't feel a need to overdo it, okay? Seven or eight pounds is big enough). The kicking is fine, too, just keep in mind I know you're strong, you don't need to prove HOW strong you are. Your daddy will be more than happy to play Karate Kid with you once you're out, so save some of those moves for him. No need to use up all your moves now, on Mommy's organs. (She'll still need to use those after you get out.)

Anyway, just wanted to let you know we love you too, and can't wait to meet you... BUT WE DO HAVE TO WAIT. So please stop pushing on my lower abdomen -- that's not the way out anyway. In about six weeks or so we'll start making the cervix open up, so be looking for that. And make sure to stay head-down, don't try to pull any breech business, please. (Trust me, it won't be fun for you, either, so don't try it.)

Now, to keep you busy between now and then, I'll leave you with this song, that sorta makes me think about you every time I hear it:

(I loved the song before, but now that I know it features an impromptu, choreographed 80s-style dance number in a grocery store... I think this has to be my FAVORITEST SONG EVER.)

THIS is why it's not a baby until it comes out:

Because you can have a biophysical profile at 39 weeks that shows everything is going just the way it should, that you have a happy, healthy fetus, and then two days later -- with no warning, with no indications, with no reason -- you have a stillborn.

Because of my abnormal AFP screen in the first trimester, my OB has warned us that we are at a higher risk for something going wrong (read: stillbirth). This is why I'm getting a sonogram at every appointment, to make sure the fetus is moving the way he should, his heart is beating the way it should, that he's drink-breathing his amniotic fluid (and his pee) the way he should, etc. If he starts to get lazy, lethargic, or his little fetus organs don't look as active as they should, she'll want to induce labor (or go for a C-section) to get the fetus out and fix him.

Just what every pregnant mom wants to hear, right? "Hey, by the way... that baby you thought you were having? Yeah, he's likely to die, for no reason at all, before he's even born. No, we don't know what causes it. No, we don't know how to prevent it. We just know to tell you about it so you can spend the next three four months freaking out."

At our appointment Tuesday, our OB shared the above story. It happened to one of her partner's clients, just the week before.

I'm feeling better now (our appointment was Tuesday morning -- and, of course, this was the first appointment where I only took a half-day off work, same for Freddy. I really needed time to sit with him, talk about all this... but no. Had to rush to work from the doctor's office, without even time for a quick lunch); have had time to process all this and accept it. Sort of.

It's beyond infuriating that I have absolutely no control over this. I do everything I'm supposed to do. I eat good things, have severely limited my intake of processed crap, eat organic fruits and vegetables, don't eat fried crap. I rest, don't exert myself physically (picking up heavy items, etc.), listen to my body when it's tired. I've modified my lifestyle to accommodate this fetus. And now he's going to quit on me for no reason? Make me go through all this, just to wait until the last minute to die for no reason? WTF, fetus??

Now, statistically, the most likely possibility is that everything turns out fine and all this worrying is for nothing. But there's no way of knowing that. There are ways of knowing it's NOT going to be fine (if the biophysical profile comes back with poor results), but even as "good" BPP can't say that everything will be hunky-dory.

Freddy and I both had to go back to work after this appointment (the first time neither one of us took the whole day off -- I had to rush to work from the doctor's office, didn't even have time to eat lunch. Of course, this was also the day we'd done the glucose test, so I'd had nothing to eat all morning except for two hard-boiled eggs and a super-charged artificial-sugar drink), so we had no time to sit and talk about the news.

(It wasn't truly news-news, since we'd already talked at our last appointment about the need for monthly screens until 32 weeks, then weekly screens, to make sure everything was "okay." But when you throw the word "stillborn" in there, especially right after "perfectly normal screen," it changes things a little.)

Freddy and I had started calling Troy Emmitt by his real name, Blanky McBlank, when it was just the two of us. We used his real name when talking about him inside my belly, when talking about his nursery, when talking about what he'd be like when he grew up. We'd started talking about him as if he were a 100% guaranteed, real baby.

I know there's never a guarantee. Even if he's born, he could die of SIDS in the first few weeks after birth. He could catch some easily-preventable disease at the doctor's office, from some kid who's parents believe Jenny McCarthy's crap and decided not to vaccinate their kids. We could get in a car wreck on the way home from the hospital, or on the way to the grocery store, or on the way to daycare. He could get leukemia. There's a bazillion things that could happen.

But in each and every one of those scenarios, before that death happens, I have a baby to have and to hold. I can see his face, look into his eyes, hold him, hug him, SEE HIM before he's gone. I have something before he dies.

When we got home from work that day, I told Freddy, "I want to go back to calling him Troy Emmitt."

Freddy paused for a second, then said, "Okay."

I was going to explain -- I had my speech all rehearsed. But I didn't need to.

"No, I know," he said. "You know it's going to be okay, right?"

"Yes, I know."

Except we don't. But that's okay.

I can deal with losing Troy Emmitt. I know he's going to go away, eventually -- when he becomes Blanky McBlank. But I can't deal with losing Blanky McBlank before I even get a chance to meet him.

This is why it's not "a baby" until it comes out. Because too many things can happen before the fetus finishes doing it's thing. Too many -- wanted -- fetuses never become babies.

This doesn't mean the loss of a wanted fetus is not a terrible, horrible loss -- please don't be that naive or ignorant.

This means that there is a significant difference between a fetus developing inside a woman's uterus, and a baby living outside of it.

How is your pregnancy going?

It's going really well. Most of the time.

(Like, the other day, when I was driving home from work and stopped at the green light because my #preggo brain thought it was a four-way stop . Because on my way TO work the first intersection after I exit the freeway has a four-way stop sign, so of course the first intersection after I exit the freeway on my way home FROM work would be the same, right? Clearly.)

I have resigned myself to the fact that I need to write everything down, because if I don't, it didn't happen. Kind of like the dude in Memento (but I use Post-Its instead of tattoos. Can't find a decent tattoo artist at work).

I have had an extremely easy pregnancy (so far). My 24-hour sickness in the first trimester was mild; I was very picky about what I wanted to eat, but I could eat, and as long as I was munching on something throughout the day I was fine.

Freddy works at a health-food grocery store, so I have access to all sorts of healthy, organic goodies daily. He texts me before he leaves work asking me what I want to eat. And he does all the cooking (and all the cleaning, and all the laundry, and all the cat-duties...) because he is, pretty much, the Bestest Hubby And Dad-To-Be In The World.

(Seriously: I come home from work, sit on the couch, get waited on hand-and-foot, and after I pass out around 9:30 he gently wakes me up and takes me to bed. Once I get home from work, I do NOTHING.)

Troy Emmitt has been kicking healthily, but he likes to give me a few good kicks, so I make Freddy stop what he's doing to come over and feel them, and then Troy Emmitt stops. But Freddy has gotten to feel a few of them... and you should see how his face lights up when he feels those little kicks.

I also have an extremely accommodating job where I sit most of the day, so I don't have to worry about overdoing it physically or straining myself. I cannot imagine how miserable I'd be (and how stressed and unhealthy Troy Emmitt and I would be) if I were still in the classroom, teaching full-time, dealing with parents and administrators and grades and all that blah-blah...

Tomorrow we have our 24-week appointment, where I get to drink the glucose stuff to test for gestational diabetes. I'm either going to ace the test or fail it miserably... but I've been really good about getting my sugar from natural sources, so I should do well. My body's so used to processing massive amounts of sugar, I'm probably going to metabolize (or whatever you do with it) all that glucose in half the alloted time. (How does that glucose mixture compare to a bag of cotton candy, washed down with regular Coke? Anybody have stats on that?)

Last week Freddy and I started our Bradley childbirth classes, so I've been doing my exercises and counting my protein intake. I thought I was doing really well nutrition-wise, eating 65-75 grams of protein a day. Well, according to Dr. Bradley, I should be getting 80-100 grams of protein a day. EIGHTY to ONE HUNDRED grams of protein A DAY.

They give you this little chart to fill out, and though it looks a little intimidating at first, I've actually done well so far. I just have to make sure I eat, the right things, pretty much all day long.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to eat some hard-boiled eggs and get back to reading NATURAL CHILDBIRTH THE BRADLEY WAY.

Ask, and Criss shall answer.

"Tiny" #preggo rant

Let's make a deal: you abstain from commenting on my body shape, and I'll abstain from commenting on yours. Mkay?

Oh, I know... silly me! I'm pregnant! That must mean my body is now part of the public domain! (At least that's what the politicians keep telling us, isn't it?)

Well.... sorry. WRONG.

Still my body. If you want to touch it, you'd better ask permission first (and be ready to have it denied).

I'm five and a half months pregnant.

Yes, I'm sure. Yes, seriously. Why would I lie to you? What purpose could that possibly serve?

Kindly put your eyes back in your sockets.. there you go, that's it. Better?

Again, I'm really very sorry, but "You're so tiny!" is NOT a compliment. I'm effing pregnant -- I'm not supposed to be tiny, I'm supposed to be PREGNANT.

I'm very aware of my size. It's one of the reasons I asked my OB if I was big enough when I saw her two weeks ago, at my last appointment. (You know what she said? SHE SAID I WAS FINE.) I really don't need you making any comments on my weight or size, thank you. Notice how I'm not commenting on your size? See how nice that is, my NOT telling you what's wrong with your body size?

Just in case this isn't sinking in (heck, if I had to tell you the first part, I doubt you'd be clever or aware enough to get the second part without having it spelled out for you): three months from now, when I'm huge, I'm not going to need you to tell me how huge I am. I will be aware, trust me.

Also: if you meet a woman who tells you she's, say, six or seven months pregnant, and you think she looks HUGE... you don't need to tell her that. You don't need to ask her if she's sure she's only six or seven months. I can guarantee you she knows how far along she is. And that she's aware of how big she is.

All you need to do is shut your huge mouth and smile. If you must speak, congratulate her.

It would be really nice if people stopped feeling the need to tell women what their bodies are supposed to look like. Pregnant or not.

Why I Chose to Have an Amniocentesis

I want a natural birth: no drugs, no cutting, no steampunk-wannabe machinery like forceps or vacuums. Biologically/evolutionarily speaking, my body was made to grow fetuses and birth them, to ensure the survival of the species; I trust God knew what He was doing when He designed my body (wide birthing hips and all), so I want a chance to do it the way God and nature intended before a doctor comes in with drugs, needles, and a scalpel. (I understand medical interventions are sometimes necessary, and if I happen to be one of the 10% or so of women who need a medical intervention, I will be very glad for the technology. I just want to find out if I NEED it before it's automatically used on me.)

Because I want a natural birth, I'm reading hippie-granola books by midwives (Ina May's Guide to Childbirth) and other natural-birth advocates/supporters (The Birth Book); and maybe that's why they seem to be slightly anti-testing. Both books, while presenting the issue in a way that respects the reader's opinion, warn against much of the tests that OBs routinely run on pregnant women during their prenatal care, including amniocentesis.

Ina May cites the risk of miscarriage due to an amnio to be 1 in 300; Dr. Sears cites it as 1 in 200. Ina May's book was published in 2003, Dr. Sears's in 1994 (my copies, at least). Partly due to these numbers (and I'd heard even before reading the books that amnios can result in miscarriage), I told myself, and family members, that I was not going to get one. (Besides, who really wants to have a huge needle stuck in their stomach? Poking holes in my uterus and amniotic sac, and disturbing my fetus?)

Even after we had the 12-week NT screen, which showed a thick neck (3.9 mm) and no nasal bone -- soft signs of Down Syndrome -- I was still against an amnio. When the bloodwork came back not denying the original findings, I was still against it.

When the doctor first told us that the sonogram showed the possibility of a chromosomal abnormality, it was a shock. It was different and it was an unknown; I can't recall exactly what happened in what order in those days, but neither Freddy nor I were worried about the possibility of a child with Down Syndrome -- the problem where the other two types of abnormalities, which are fatal 95% of the time and my doctor, who works with the Baylor Health Care System, "a Christian ministry of healing," said even that religious hospital would recommend (and perform) an abortion.

(Dear Antis: if any of you are still lurking, I know medical facts make your heads hurt... but that doesn't mean medical facts are not true. Thank you.)

I wanted confirmation that we were NOT looking at Trisomy 13 or 18 (the almost-always fatal ones, hardly carry to term); Trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome) was not a concern/problem.

It became even less of a concern as we educated ourselves on Down Syndrome and talked to people about it. A friend of Freddy's has a niece with Down Syndrome, and her words stuck with me the most: "I want to say I'm sorry, but there really isn't anything to be sorry about."

Four weeks after the initial shock, we finally had an appointment with a geneticist. I still said I did not want to have an amnio, so part of my wondered why we were even going to talk to the geneticist (the dude who does the amnio), but my OB said this guy would do a super-duper sonogram and look for other stuff as well -- plus, if we took a blank DVD they would record the sonogram -- so we went to the appointment.

At this point, Freddy and I were almost excited about having a child with Down Syndrome (as opposed to an "average", 46-chromosome kid). Through the parents of children with DS we had met, we'd gotten a glimpse into that loving and supportive community. We were no longer afraid, now that we knew more about it and understood what it would entail. Raising a kid is not all rainbows and roses no matter what kind of kid you have; you're going to have challenges no matter what. Some of our challenges were going to be different than what we had originally anticipated, but we were okay with that.

We also realized that if anyone was going to have a child with special needs, this was the family that child should be born into. Freddy's sister just got her Master's in Special Ed, and is a Diagnostician for one of the school districts around here. My mom's a child therapist. My brother's getting his Master's in [I forget the title but it's] working with children with special medical needs -- and, interestingly, he had just finished a research paper on mothers of children with Down Syndrome. My sister is a Montessori teacher, who reminded me that Maria Montessori began her method working with children with mental retardation and other special needs (and, under her care and instruction, these "deficient" children began to out-perform the "regular" children).

We have family close by to help and support us, and on top of all the informational resources built in to our family, we have the means to afford the child's medical needs (physical, intellectual, and emotional). If anyone was going to have a child with special needs, why should it NOT be us, when you look at it that way??

When we met with the genetic consultant, she went over our test results in more detail. She said that given our sonogram and bloodwork, we had a 1 in 5 chance of having a child with Down Syndrome. We had not heard those numbers before; I think (please note that what she said and what we heard could be two totally different things -- there was a big wall of emotional static through which her words had to travel) my OB said we had a possibility of having a child with Down Syndrome, and I guess I'd assumed that was doctor-speak* for "you're having a kid with Down Syndrome."

*doctor-speak being the result of years of malpractice lawsuits and if-I-say-anything-too-definitively-I'll-get-sued-either-way-so-everything-is-iffy. Please note I am not blaming doctors for doctor-speak; that's a result of our sue-happy culture. I am not blaming lawyers, either, because lawyers don't hire themselves.

A 1 in 5 chance was different. Maybe we were making all this fuss for nothing.

1 in 5 was actually a pretty small chance. 20%. We could know for sure if we did an amnio, which we could do that same day, and the lady said that the chance of miscarriage was more like 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,500; for this practice, it was closer to 1 in 1,000 because this is what these doctors do all day, every day (the higher chances of miscarriage happen when the doctor doing the amnio is not properly trained or as experienced in doing them).

So the numbers we were given at the geneticist's office were quite different from the numbers I'd had in my head before the appointment. I had a lower chance of having a child with Down Syndrome than I'd thought, and a much lower chance of complications of miscarriage from doing the amnio.

When we had the sonogram (where we forgot to give the doctor the blank DVD so we didn't get it recorded... but we're going for our follow-up on Tuesday), the doctor said everything looked like it was developing at the "normal" rate, all body parts were proportional, etc. (He also pointed out all the fetus's organs, and said they were all working well... which I'm glad he said, because I couldn't see anything he pointed at. I saw the heart, because it was blinking. Everything else? No clue... that's why I'm not a doctor.)

According to what the doctor saw in the super-duper sonogram, that 1-in-5 number seemed to be leaning toward the other 4 instead of the 1.

I hate not knowing. Not knowing the sex of the baby for those 16 weeks (12, really, since the first four I didn't even know I was pregnant yet) had been bugging me enough. I like to make plans, I like to know so I can daydream about how it's going to be.

I didn't want to go around making plans for a special needs child, tell people that we might have a child with Down Syndrome, only to find out in October that nope, just kidding! I already felt like a poser because of the few people we had told and talked to about it. Like we were walking around telling this story to get attention and sympathy when we didn't even deserve it.

(And, if I was going to have a child with special needs, I was going to go around making plans. This is why we did the NT scan to begin with -- to be prepared. If we were going to have a child with Down Syndrome, I wanted to know all I could about it. I wanted to find a pediatrician who knew all about it as well. I wanted to have physical therapy scheduled from the beginning, and anything else I might need to set up for my child. I was making plans to get my blasted last four credits for my blasted Master's so I could quit my full-time job and teach part-time at one of the local colleges, so Freddy and I could work out a schedule where one of us was home with the baby and we wouldn't need daycare, but would still have a way to, like, buy food and pay the mortgage and all.)

So we did the amnio.

It took two minutes, and didn't hurt any more than drawing blood, really. Even when Freddy made me laugh WHILE THE NEEDLE WAS IN MY STOMACH.

I made a point to look at Freddy, you know, for support (in case it hurt). The doctor said that it usually hurt the father more than the mom, because the father was the one looking at the needle. Which is why I thought Freddy would look AT ME, but no. He looked at the needle, fascinated... and started making faces. Like, "ZOMG, that's HUGE!" faces. Which, if you know Freddy, he was likely to do before he even saw the needle, just to mess with me.

"It looks like a beer!"

"What?"

"No, look! It looks like he's drawing a beer! It even has a head on it and everything! Just like it's coming from a tap!"

Well, if you're making me laugh while the poor doctor tries to draw some amniotic fluid from my stomach without poking the fetus, then you can expect the fluid to be a little shaken up and bubbly, I guess.

The one surprise I had when they did the procedure was that I had to rest the next 24 hours -- as in, bed rest. No going to work the next day (even though I work in an office, relaxed setting, and I sit all day). The nurse and doctor told me before they did the procedure, and they were very accommodating about letting me come back and do it another day, when I had time to arrange for time off, etc., but I wanted to get it done then (impatient? Who, me??) and I had already taken that day off work so might as well do it.

But I was surprised that I had not heard that before; that an amnio is a two-day procedure (you get it done, you rest the whole next day). My books didn't mention it, and my OB hadn't, either (not that I'd asked about the details, but still). I'm lucky that I have a flexible job and an understanding boss, so I could call in and tell her I'd be out the next day, but I realize many women do not have that option.

If I were still in the job I had last year, teaching public school, I would not really have had that option. Leaving lesson plans for being gone one day (for the appointment) would have been hassle enough -- calling my department chair to tell her I was going to be gone ANOTHER day, and no, I didn't have lessons ready? Plus, when I went back to work at this job, I had the luxury to sit all day, and take it easy. In the classroom, I would have been expected to stand for most of every class period, walking around monitoring the students, and stand in the hallway during each passing period (where kids running in the hall and playing around with their friends can easily bump into you).

What if I worked an hourly job, in retail or food service? A) That would be TWO days of no work = no pay, and B) that's a huge amount of physical strain, when the care sheet the doctor gave me said to take it easy, no exercise, for two weeks after the procedure.

Sure, I know an amnio isn't a "necessary" procedure by the strictest definition, but it was necessary for me. I had to know what I had to prepare for. No, I was not going to abort if I found out my child was going to have Down Syndrome (and by the time we met with the geneticist we had pretty much ruled out Trisomy 13 and 18; my OB said she would have seen other signs/physical deformities if the fetus had one of those abnormalities, so that was no longer an issue), but I needed to know what to prepare for. How much my life was going to change. Other pregnant people deserve that same opportunity.

They poked me on a Tuesday, and by Friday afternoon they had the preliminary results. 46 chromosomes, two of each, no extras (except for the last one; that wasn't two of the same, it was one X and one Y).

Freddy and I both felt that a part of us was disappointed with this news. We were looking forward to the challenges, and joys, unique to having a child with Down Syndrome (and I no longer have as good an excuse to stay home, so looks like I'll still be working full-time after Troy Emmitt* arrives).

*I wanted to TWILIGHT the names and call him Emmittroy, WHICH IS SO MUCH BETTER DON'T YOU THINK??? but Freddy said no.

I am glad we went through this experience. I know there are a bazillion things that could still go "wrong" with the pregnancy, and a bazillion things that could still make Troy Emmitt a child with special needs. Now, Freddy and I know we can handle it, and we found out we can handle it before post-partum depression and the stress of living with a newborn set in. If we do find out, at birth or shortly thereafter, that Troy Emmitt has special needs, we know we can cope and we don't have to go through the same shock period we already went through. (It's still going to be a shock, I'm sure, but we know we can get through it).

Also, I'm 32 years old, will be 33 when Troy Emmitt arrives. Just two short years away from the magical age of 35, when BAD THINGS happen more regularly to pregnant women. I want at least a second child. Before all of this happened, I was a little scared of trying to get pregnant again so "old," because I was afraid of the unknowns and thought that "different" was "BAD." Now I'm not scared, because I feel I can handle it, and I know Freddy, and the rest of our families, can.

My books warn against testing because the results can often be false positives (like mine was), and this causes unnecessary stress. I had a false positive, and Freddy and I did go through a period of stress, but I don't regret it. I'm glad we did the testing, because now I know more than I did before -- not so much about the fetus/future baby, but about myself, and about Freddy.

Wrandom Ramblingss and #Preggo-ness

Hello, blogosphere. How've you been? Have you missed me?

What's been going on with you? Things have been busy over here. Just... stuff. Y'know? I'll probably tell you some of it later, but not yet. Which is WEIRD for me. I don't like feeling like I have to censor myself... you're my therapy, blogosphere. You are how I process stuff. But I can't tell you certain things, or I can't tell you yet, which sucks.

But enough of that for now.

In other news, I really wanted to do Story A Day May (as featured on InkyGirl's site), but it hasn't happened yet. I always have all these snippets of ideas that could potentially make short stories, but I never take the time to write them down. This would have been a gret way to do it. If I could remember even ONE of those bazillion snippets of ideas...

I was even going to go all daring and post my stories on le blogue, for all of you lovely people to read. WHITOUT EDITING THEM FIRST. Be all raw and real and stuff. Because yes, I am that arrogant.

But my creative energy is all gone. Maybe the fetus is sucking it all up... all my creativity is going straight to my uterus, to work on creating the fetus. Has that happened to anyone else? Or am I just making excuses?

(I'm firmly in the second trimester now, so the first-tri fatigue is gone. I still sleep lots, but I can't use the "embryo is zapping all my energy" excuse anymore.)

Maybe I should just wait until after the baby is born, so I can take it to coffee houses and pubs to take advantage of the free heating and write my stories on cocktail napkins.

In other-other news, my nails are growing WAY TOO FAST. Now that the fake nails are gone, I'm left with sharp, brittle natural nails. They are ANNOYING. How do you people do this? I have to cut them every week. Or I scratch myself. And I have the cats to do that, I don't need to injure myself. Not with Gus Attack Kitteh in the house.

Speaking of #preggo-hood and its side effects, I am now an Official #Preggo. Freddy and I went maternity-clothes shopping yesterday. One pair of (work-pretty) pants, two nursing tops, two bras, and three maternity tops (on sale): $200. Not even a full week of clothing. $200. HAVING A BABY IS EXPENSIVE. And we haven't even gotten to the baby part yet!

I do have to say my boobs are very happy to be in a bra that fits. Maybe that's why I've been so cranky lately... those blasted underwires digging into my flesh.

ZOMG The Pro-Choicer is Pregnant!!!

Guess what, Internetz? I haz a fetus in my belly!

Six weeks ago, when I took the pee test and Freddy and I saw the little "+" on the EPT, I was SO EXCITED!!! (We'd been trying for a few months. I was starting to get REALLY MAD at my body for not cooperating.)

But we couldn't tell anyone, until we got medical confirmation form a real doctor and a real sonogram. Why? Two reasons:

• stupid Glee, and it's "hysterical pregnancy." I don't even know if that's a real thing, but I really, really wanted to be pregnant. So what if, instead of actually being pregnant, my stupid body was playing a REALLY MEAN TRICK on me? What if the missing period and hugely swollen and painful breasts were JUST A JOKE?
• okay, let's say I was really, truly, honest-to-goodness pregnant. WHAT IF THE STUPID EMBRYO HAD GOTTEN ITSELF STUCK IN THE FALLOPIAN TUBE and never made it to the uterus??

Paranoid much? Yes, very. Thank you.

Turns out not only am I REALLY actually pregnant, but the fetus is hanging out in the uterus, right where it's supposed to be.

BUT WHAT GUARANTEE DO I HAVE THAT IT'S GOING TO STAY THERE?

Do you have any clue the number of things that can go wrong with a pregnancy? DID YOU KNOW VITAMIN A IS BAD FOR YOU?? (Well, not you -- it's bad for fetuses. If you're reading this blog post you've already made it out of your mother's uterus, so vitamin A is fine for you.)

It's a VITAMIN, for crying out loud! How can a VITAMIN be bad?

You know what else is bad for fetuses? Herbal tea.

Let me say that again:

HERBAL.  TEA.

Bad for you.

(Again, not you. Bad for fetuses.)

Did you have any idea? Because I didn't.

Until I read the section of this pregnancy book about foods that are or are not bad for you, which are myths and which you really do need to avoid. And herbal tea was one of them. AND IT WAS NOT A MYTH.

Sure, it said it small doses it was fine -- BUT HOW CAN HERBAL TEA BE BAD? EVER?? It's freaking tea, for crying out loud! And it's the wimpiest of teas, at that!

And you know what I found out yesterday?

My pre-natal vitamin only has 400 mcg of folic acid.

Do you know how many mcg of folic acid I should be getting, according to Fit Pregnancy magazine? 600 mcg. 

And do you know when is the MOST CRUCIAL period when the embryo needs to get the right amount of folic acid? Weeks 6-10. Which means I have two days to make up a 200 mcg deficiency for the last month. Or my fetus will develop some horrible neuro tube defect, and it will all be MY FAULT.

At least, Utah would definitely say so. Utah would probably call my behavior "reckless." For not double-checking the dosage on the pre-natal vitamins my OB/GYN prescribed. Or something -- hey, where there's a will, there's a way, right, anti-choice?

(Oh, also? Two Sundays ago, at church, I took communion wine. It was just an automatic motion, they gave me the tiny vial of wine and I took it, instead of pointing to the tray of grape juice vials. What would Utah think of that?)

You know those really annoying information-overload bing commercials? I'm kind of like that right now, with pregnancy complications. I've read so many stories of things that can go wrong in a pregnancy, especially in the third trimester, that I'm one big panic ball. I am fully aware of all the things that can go wrong -- actually, I'm fully aware of a fraction of the things that can go wrong. I know there are a bazillion other things that can go wrong that I don't even know about yet. Stuff doctors don't even know about, and can't predict or explain.

This is why we call it a fetus. It's not a baby until it comes out, and it coming out, becoming a baby, is not a given. At all.

I really, really want this fetus to become a baby. You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this baby. Freddy and I picked out names before we were even married. This "baby" has been alive for years, even though it was only (physically) conceived in February. And I have to wait until October to find out if it's going to materialize into a real, live, human baby.

It's going to be a long seven more months.

Stolen Words Wednesday: Sean James and Al Joyner Respond to the Tebow Super Bowl Ad

Day 14: From The Onion: New Law Requires Women To Name Baby, Paint Nursery Before Getting Abortion

When I first saw this tweet, I almost passed out -- until I saw "via @TheOnion." Then I felt a little better.

I watched the video, which I'm embedding below, and while part of me wanted to share it, part of me didn't (and I'm still not entirely sure I'm going to publish this). I know The Onion is doing it's social-commentary-through-satire and that they are pointing out the ridiculousness of all the many, many laws mandating what a pregnant person* must do before being allowed to get an abortion (viewing a sonogram, mandatory waiting periods, and other crap I don't want to bother remembering).

The problem is that when in reality we do have such preposterous laws (or proposed laws; the most ridiculous ones have thankfully been defeated), the joke walks a fine line. "Crisis pregnancy centers" send you home with diapers and baby booties and onesies so you can "think over" what you're going to do with your unplanned pregnancy. So how far off are we really from painting a nursery?

I also hesitate to post it because of the language used (which is the language anti-choicers use all the time). We all know that a fetus has the potential to develop into a baby, but the fetus is not a baby. And it's not an "unborn baby," any more than I am an undead corpse; it is a developing fetus, one that could develop complications (or maybe already has). It is a parasite.

A baby is a living, breathing, autonomous human being (dependent, but autonomous -- it breathes on its own, eats and digests on its own. It can't hold the bottle, but it sucks and swallows and digests all on its own. For the purposes of this specific situation, that's an autonomous being); a baby has already been born and it is no longer part of the "incubator," no longer attached to them and dependent solely on them for survival -- a baby is dependent on someone, but since it is not attached to any one person's uterus, any other person, besides the person from whose uterus it came, can assume the caretaker role.

Many people who have an abortion do want children, and love children and babies, but for a wide variety of reasons, cannot carry that pregnancy to term at that point in their life. Therefore the flippant talk of babies and nurseries in the Onion video, as if the fetus were already a baby, can be triggering for those people who had to make a difficult choice -- for their sake and the sake of that potential child.

(This was supposed to be a short, quick blog post, showing you a funny video. Well, so much for that...)

So, if you want to watch it, there it is. The joke is very well done; I just wonder how long it'll take before we see this conversation play out seriously on Fox News.


New Law Requires Women To Name Baby, Paint Nursery Before Getting Abortion

*First I wrote "woman," but that's an incorrect generalization, as A) I meant cis women, not all women, and B) trans men can also get pregnant.

The ELCA and abortion, courtesy of @justsnapd8

Last night I posted a link to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America's Social Statement on Abortion, since @KushielsMoon had asked me for it. I had heard a while back that the ELCA (Lutheran denomination of which I am a member) was pro-choice, but I had never looked much into it. Until last night.

Reading the statement, I was quite proud of my church. The wording, though cautious to make sure it doesn't tick off the antis, shows great respect for the woman, and an understanding of what pregnancy means for her. Every time the fetus is mentioned, the woman and her life and rights are also mentioned.

So I posted this:

@justsnapd8 decided to RT my Tweet, changing it to this:

As you can imagine, this yanked my chain. First of all, READ THE DOCUMENT. Second of all, READ THE DOCUMENT AND DON'T LIE. My church deplores the circumstances that lead a woman to be faced with an unwanted pregnancy, but it understands that abortion is a morally justifiable choice.

We went back and forth on this, but she wasn't able to follow the conversation. It was too taxing to be asked to back up her claims with, you know, accurate statements and facts (those silly things we pro-choicers always go on and on about).

So, I guess after she got some sleep, she wrote this blog post. Where she spent most of her time copying and pasting Tweets between @ProChoiceGal and me, instead of talking about the ELCA's statement.

The following is my response (which I copied and pasted here because I doubted it would survive comment moderation on her blog. Alas, it did, but I was going to write about the ELCA's statement anyway, and after writing my response I realized it said most of the stuff I was going to blog. So here it is):

The ELCA's statement is a 12-page document, and you quote three paragraphs? Don't you think you're missing something?

I know you're used to taking things out of context, but the second part of my Tweet to @ProChoiceGal, where we're talking about our church choices, is kind of relevant and important. If you're interested in truth and honesty, then post the second half of my sentence.

But since you like to deal in isolated quotations, let me give you a few more from the ELCA's statement (emphasis mine):

"The language used in discussing abortion should ignore neither the value of unborn life NOR THE VALUE OF THE WOMAN AND HER OTHER RELATIONSHIPS."

"A developing life in the womb does not have an absolute right to be born..." "The concern for both the life of the woman and the developing life in her womb express a common commitment to life. This requires that we move beyond the usual 'pro-life' versus 'pro-choice' language in discussing abortion."

The ELCA is NOT part of your "pro-life"/anti-choice camp. Even if you only read the quotes you cherry-picked, the church clearly accepts a woman making a choice to terminate a pregnancy. It does not say abortion should be avoided or outlawed, it says "Abortion ought to be an option only of last resort." It says abortion should be an option available to women! Does that sound like an anti-choice organization to you?

Now, to clarify, if you take the time to look at your Twitter stream, you will see that you are the only who told me to look at Section III. That section says (emphasis mine):

"We also deplore the circumstances that lead a woman to consider abortion as the best option available to her. We are moved particularly by the anguish of women who face unintended pregnancies alone. The panic and isolation of such pregnancies, even in the best of circumstances, can be traumatic. Poverty, lack of supportive relationships, immaturity, oppressive social realities, sexism, and racism can intensify her sense of powerlessness. The prospect of having and caring for a child can seem overwhelming.

"We confess our sin as a community of faith. We often have fallen short in respecting God's gift of life and IN PROVIDING CONDITIONS MORE CONDUCIVE FOR BRINGING NEW LIFE INTO THE WORLD."

Regarding sex, it does say, "Marriage is the appropriate context for sexual intercourse." Notice it says "appropriate," not "only." And it follows that with (emphasis mine): "We affirm that the goodness of sexual intercourse GOES BEYOND ITS PROCREATIVE PURPOSE." Alas! Sex JUST FOR FUN without the intent of conceiving IS ALLOWED!

"Whenever sexual intercourse occurs apart from the intent to conceive, the use of contraceptives is the responsibility of the man and of the woman." These statements go against your "pro-life"/anti-choice beliefs in several ways:

-sex outside of marriage is acknowledged and not condemned.

-sex for fun, too; it's not solely for procreation.

-birth control is encouraged.

-the use of birth control rests on BOTH parties' shoulders (i.e., the "blame" is not placed solely on the woman, like most anti-choicers like to do).

But there's more! If we turn the page, we find this:

"Our congregations and church schools ought to provide sex education in the context of the Christian faith." Wow! Sex ed! Look at that!

"It is especially important that young men and young women be taught to exercise their sexuality responsibly." Notice it doesn't say they should be "taught abstinence-only" -- it says they would EXERCISE their sexuality. They are allowed to be sexually active, but we must teach them how to do so RESPONSIBLY.

"It is important that those who counsel persons faced with unintended pregnancies respect how deeply the woman's pregnancy involves her whole person -- body, mind and spirit -- in relation to all the commitments that comprise her stewardship of life."

"This church recognizes that there can be sound reasons for ending a pregnancy through induces abortion." Doesn't this go against the "pro-life"/anti-choice core beliefs???

"What is determined to be a morally responsible decision in one situation may not be in another... We also need to consider the conditions under which the pregnancy occurred and THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE PREGNANCY FOR THE WOMAN'S LIFE." (emphasis mine)

Regarding politics and law (emphasis mine): "What is legal is not necessarily moral, and WHAT IS MORAL SHOULD NOT NECESSARILY BE ENACTED INTO LAW. LAWS CANNOT ENFORCE CHRISTIAN LOVE, but in principle and application they should be just."

"In our attempts to influence the shaping of public policy, WE SHOULD NOT DISREGARD THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS, but work faithfully through the public process by which justice is sought for all."

"Prevention of unintended pregnancies is crucial in lessening the number of abortions. In addition to efforts within church and home, THIS CHURCH SUPPORTS APPROPRIATE FORMS OF SEX EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS, COMMUNITY PREGNANCY PREVENTION PROGRAMS, AND PARENTING PREPARATION CLASSES. WE RECOGNIZE THE NEED FOR CONTRACEPTIVES TO BE AVAILABLE, FOR VOLUNTARY STERILIZATION TO BE CONSIDERED, AND FOR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OF NEW FORMS OF CONTRACEPTION." (emphasis mine)

Again, doesn't that sound like the OPPOSITE of what the "pro-life"/anti-choice side fights for??

"Because of our conviction that BOTH the life of the woman and the life in her womb must be respectd by law, this church opposes:

-the total lack of regulation of abortion;

-LEGISLATION THAT WOULD OUTLAW ABORTION IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES;

-LAWS THAT PREVENT ACCESS TO INFORMATION ABOUT ALL OPTIONS AVAILABLE TO WOMEN FACED WITH UNINTENDED PREGNANCIES;

-LAWS THAT DENY ACCESS TO SAFE AND AFFORDABLE SERVICES TO MORALLY JUSTIFIABLE ABORTIONS;

-mandatory or coerced abortion or sterilization; -laws that prevent couples from practicing contraception;

-LAWS THAT PRIMARILY INTENDED TO HARASS THOSE CONTEMPLATING OR DECIDING FOR AN ABORTION."

Again, I have a hard time hearing the "pro-life"/anti-choice argument there... because IT IS PRO-CHOICE.

It even addresses laws about spousal or parental notification or consent: "While we strongly affirm family communication and support, the law should recognize that in some cases husband or partner involvement in the decision could be unwise or dangerous (e.g., if the relationship is broken or violent). If the law requires parental consent when the woman is a minor, it should specify other trusted adults as alternatives if parental involvement is inappropriate or unsafe."

I recommend that anyone wanting to know the full story read the actual document, all of it; it can be found here. After reading the full document, can you honestly tell me the ELCA is not pro-choice?

It's Banned Books Week! What are you reading?

Did you know it's Banned Books Week? Well, if you didn't now you do. (You're welcome.)

This morning I started Lois Lowry's THE GIVER. This is one of those YA classics that's always been at the bottom of the To-Read list, but for some reason it never drew me to it. The cover was not particularly fascinating (an old man's face), and if I did read the back-cover description it was vague enough that it didn't grab me. But as I was loading up my MP3 player with audio books, I saw this title, and added it to the list.

I have a nice 30-minute commute to work, which is good, but this morning it still wasn't long enough. I didn't want to get out of the car, even though I was already late for work (I had to drop Indy off at the vet again this morning. Yes, AGAIN. That cat will be the death bankruptcy of me).

(WARNING: potential spoilers ahead)

The story takes place in a world where people live in communities and if they do something bad, or get too old, or don't fit in, they are "released." (At first I took that literally, that they were banned from the community and had to fend for themselves out in the probably post-apocalyptic wild, but then the penny dropped and I realized "released" was a euphemism.)

Spouses and children are assigned; one male and one female child per family unit. Regardless of when you are born, you "graduate" to the next age in December, with everyone else born in your same year. The Rules dictate at what age you can learn to ride a bike (when you become "a nine"), and, when you become "a twelve," the Elders decide what your job will be.

One of these jobs is "nurturer." These are the people who take care of the children from birth until that December, when they are assigned to a family. Of course I wondered where the babies came from... Were they all conceived in vitro? Did they have slave women, trapped in a dungeon somewhere, who were constantly artificially inseminated to populate the community?

What made it so hard to get out of the car this morning was that just as I turned into the campus's parking lot, Jonas's little sister Lilly mentions that the baby Father has brought home from his nurturer job (the baby's having trouble sleeping through the night, and he wants to take care of the baby at home overnight to see if that helps -- otherwise the baby will have to be "released") has light eyes, just like Jonas. Jonas only knows one other person, besides this new baby, who has light-colored eyes like him; Lilly says, "Maybe he has your same birth mother."

Aha! So it's not in vitro grown in test tubes, like Brave New World babies were. Who are these birth mothers? Where are they? Do they live in the community, or are they hidden from view, because pregnancy is dirty (the result of Cardinal Sin)?

I have to wait until 5:00 to find out...

Want some commentary on women's health care?

Plywood sign on the side of the highway. Yes, that is stenciled in spray paint. Need I say more?

The difference between a miscarriage and an abortion

Thanks to a discussion with my uncle on Facebook, I realized I never wrote this post when I was doing my month of reproductive-rights posts. So here it is.

When I was student teaching, the kids were working on biographies of different Hispanic figures. One group was researching Frida Kahlo, and they asked me what the Spanish word for "miscarriage" was. I looked it up, and the dictionary just said "aborto" which, as you can tell, is the word for "abortion." I looked in several other dictionaries, but there was no separate word in Spanish for "miscarriage," which infuriated me.

I know technically, medically speaking, "abortion" refers to "a termination of pregnancy" and that a miscarriage is the termination of a pregnancy, but word have meaning and they have context. A miscarriage is a spontaneous abortion: it happens naturally, without the woman knowing or wishing it. When we speak of "an abortion" we refer to the choice a woman makes to terminate the pregnancy. There should be a separate word in Spanish to show the difference between these two events, because they are entirely different.

Speeding is speeding, right? But don't you agree there is a HUGE difference between someone going 2 miles over the speed limit in a residential area and someone going 20 miles over the speed limit in that same residential area? One is a slip of the foot that will not have any serious effects on your reaction time if you need to stop, the other is a blatant disregard for laws and the safety of the children in that neighborhood.

A miscarriage happens to a woman who has already decided she wants to have that child. To her, it is a child, because she wants it. To her, that is a life, that is her child. To that woman, and to her family, that loss is as great as if that child had already fully formed and come out of the womb.

An abortion is something a woman goes through voluntarily. Not always because she wants to, but she does make the choice to do it and she knows why she's making that choice. It may not be the way she wanted things to be, but it's the best option of the ones offered to her. Most of the time that woman does not consider that fetus inside of her to be a life. She does not want the child, for many reasons and almost never simple ones.

There are times a woman who very much wanted that child must have an abortion, but she still chooses to go through the procedure, because of medical reasons (the details of which I won't go into because I'm not a medical doctor and I won't pretend to talk about things I know nothing about, and I know the list of possible medical complications, for the mother and the fetus, is long). She then makes the choice knowing this is the best thing she can do for her potential child. While I have no personal experience with this myself, this woman does [EDIT: another eloquent post on late-term abortion and what it means]. I think she they says it pretty well. Clicking around a little, I found this post by a woman who does happen to be a medical doctor. If you want to go into the gory details of how pregnancy can kill you, read her post.

But back to my point: when a woman suffers a miscarriage, she has a completely different experience than a woman who chooses to have an abortion. There is no way you can compare the two.

A woman who suffers a miscarriage was pregnant with a wanted child. This is the opposite situation of a woman facing an unwanted pregnancy.

When a woman miscarries, she is a victim of her body. She suffers physical pain as her body bleeds the fetus out of it, and she suffers emotional pain as she mourns the loss of that wanted child. That fetus was a child to her, it was her son or daughter, because she wanted it to be.

When a woman has an abortion, she is taking control of her life. She is taking control of her body, either to terminate an unwanted pregnancy -- a fetus, not a child to her -- or to do what's best for that would-be potential child, because her doctor has informed her the child would not survive anyway.

When you miscarry, you are a victim. Something bad and painful has happened to you.

When you have an abortion, you are acting. You are taking control of your body and your life.

Abortion is a choice. The word itself grants empowerment. This is one of the reasons why we use that word to describe our movement; women are taking control, making their own choices, instead of doing what someone else expects us to do.

You cannot compare a miscarriage to an abortion because of how they happen: you are helpless when a miscarriage decides to happen to you; you are in control of the abortion.

A woman who has had a miscarriage has had something taken from her; a woman who has had an abortion has not lost anything because either she didn't want it to begin with, or she knew she wasn't going to be able to keep it (because of medical complications).

This is why the emotional responses to a miscarriage and to an abortion are also completely different. You cannot compare them.

Now, sadly, there are some women who are pressured, coerced, or forced into having an abortion (by a boyfriend who doesn't want a kid, by parents who don't want the scandal, by the abusive step-father/uncle/teacher who raped her and doesn't want to go to jail, etc.). These women are not making the choice on their own, they are being forced to make the choice by someone else.

These women do suffer a loss. They have control taken from them, and are forced to do something they do not want to do, even if at the time the person forcing her is sweet-talking his way into making her feel that this is what she wants to do. (If you have never been on the receiving end of an abusive relationship, then maybe you don't understand what I'm talking about, but that it hasn't happened to you doesn't mean it doesn't happen.)

These women have an entirely different experience than the woman who miscarries or the woman who chooses an abortion. A woman forced into having an abortion suffers the loss, and feel the guilt, since "she did it" -- even though the didn't, because she was manipulated and forced into making the choice.

When a woman is forced to have sex, we don't call it sex anymore. We call it rape. It becomes something different.

Let's realize that the vast majority of women who have abortions thought their decision through and they suffer no "emotional scarring." Some women are scared, pressured, coerced, or forced into making a decision without thinking it through, and/or without being able to have a frank, honest conversation with someone who knows what she's talking about on this issue. Because the topic is so polarized, because supporting a woman's right to choose is so "taboo," because the issue is clouded by rhetoric and propaganda and the yelling of people who have no business talking about this because they will never, ever have to face the decision themselves, women who need more counseling, women who need a forum where they can talk openly about their unintended and maybe unwanted pregnancy don't really have anywhere to go.

If we were really concerned about these women and their emotional wellbeing, we'd cut all the crap and let doctors, nurses, and trained professionals talk to these women. We'd stop feeding them lies and rhetoric and propaganda, and we'd give them a chance to have open, honest, candid, and medically-accurate discourse on the issue.

Crisis Pregnancy Centers: spreading misinformation and religous misguidance on your tax dollar

Video stolen from RHRealityCheck.org. Please go here to read the full article.

These places make my blood boil. That's all I can say about that.