One More Birth!

Ok, so there have been a few changes lately!  I'll spare you all the details and just tell you that our time in Texas was cut short and we're back in Utah!  While I'm not incredibly excited about being back, it is very good for my doula certification.  Not only are there more opportunities here, but I have family very close by that can watch my girls and will make it easier to attend births!  So now I get to focus on finishing my certification.  I have mostly everything done, now it's just paperwork, a little bit of reading and ONE MORE BIRTH!  Just one!  But I have to do it before the end of May.  I have one set for the beginning of May, but I need a cushion just in case I don't get there in time or something.

So if anyone knows of someone who is due between now and May, preferably someone who desires a natural birth, pass my name along!!!  Well, they have to be in Salt Lake or Utah County, of course...

Barbie

A while ago I read an article about the impossible dimensions of a life-sized Barbie.  "If Barbie were an actual woman, she would be 5'9" tall, have a 39" bust, an 18" waist, 33" hips and a size 3 shoe.  She likely would not menstruate... she'd have to walk on all fours due to her proportions."  (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20055694-10391704.html)

I read this article today which shows what kind of plastic surgery model Katie Halchishick would need to look like Barbie.

Barbie is clearly not someone we want to aspire to.

In comparison, I've been thinking a lot recently about how the medical industry "textbooks" childbirth.  For example, in a textbook labor, a woman dilates 1 cm per hour.  If the hospital staff doesn't see this reflected in their patients, they push augmentation (Pitocin, mainly) to reach their desired contraction frequency and intensity (shown by a readout from the monitors recording every move).  But, similar to Barbie, how many people follow this pattern?  Not many (and in Barbie's case, none).

Just like the differences of every woman's visible bodies, we each have our own unique way to birth babies.  We shouldn't be compared to the perfect textbook woman, because we're all different.

This quote from the article just about sums it up: just because our distorted image of how a body should be is medically attainable, that doesn’t mean it should be attained.

Let's face it, if Barbie can't menstruate, she wouldn't be having babies anyway - so why should we be comparing our progress to hers?

(I hope my analogy makes sense...this is why I didn't major in English!)

Email Suggestions

Update:  After a few days of brainstorming, I decided on my motto/business name.  It's A.I.M. for a Better Birth: Awareness. Intuition. Motherhood.  - as that is what I stress when I talk to others about childbirth.  It is the foundation of my beliefs.  I guess I can be kind of creative, after all.  :)  Let me know if you have any thoughts on my banner above (hard to read? should be smaller?  looks funny, etc).   I may be changing my blog address, but not yet. 


I've also posted an ad on craigslist and ebay classifieds, so hopefully I'll be able to get my last birth soon and finish my certification!  Yay!
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I've been pretty busy lately and neglecting my blog, but I'm working on getting my last birth for my certification. To do this, I need to figure out my business name...or at least an email that I can set up specifically for doula-ing.  So I need some suggestions.  I could use the same name as this blog: DouLorna, or something else.  I am really quite horrible at coming up with ideas and marketing, so any suggestions would be appreciated!  Thanks!

Book Review: Pushed

Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care by Jennifer Block is a book that I've wanted to read for quite a while.  It's difficult for me to find time to do personal reading, with being a mom and how books have a tendency to consume me...so I have to be strategic in when I start a new book.

Pushed was hard to get into at first.  There are a lot of acronyms, citations, and legal and medical terms and phrases.  Throughout the whole book I found myself reading the same sentence over and over again because of all of the "fluff," despite my knowledge in childbirth, background in science and my interest in the subject.  There was just a lot of extra stuff that was hard to get past.  Once I understood her style of writing, it got a little easier.  It was so interesting to learn how modern maternity care came to be.  She touches on most procedures: episiotomies, epidurals, forceps, c-sections, and the recent shift from midwife to OB and homebirth to hospital birth.

Toward the end of the book, however, I started to get less interested.  Part of it had to do with the fact that I was trying to finish the book on the day it was due, but she just started to get into politics, which can hardly hold my interest.  Two chapters ("Criminalized" and "Rights") focused on one midwife or story.  Block explains how some midwives have to avoid the law in order to practice, and she follows a midwife on her endeavor to give women the kind of birth they want, despite not being licensed (she was, but then she didn't renew her license because of local laws, and she had to fly "under the radar").  It was interesting...just a lot of detail.

The chapter "Rights" touched a lot on abortion, a topic that was mentioned - and supported - a few times throughout the book.  I've always considered myself to be pro-life, with few exceptions of when abortion should be allowed.  I'm also an advocate of women's rights, at the very least when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth.  But what I didn't realize is that these rights are connected.  This paragraph from the book is what generated this conflict I have with my beliefs:

Even Amber and John Marlowe, who narrowly escaped a court-ordered cesarean, see the right to a physiological birth in the context of their rights as citizens of a democracy.  Their belief in this is so strong that the couple, who believe in the Bible and believe that abortion is murder, traveled to Washington, DC, in April 2003 to march in the pro-choice "March for Women's Lives."  John Marlowe told me they marched because after Amber's ordeal, they realized that if the government can restrict a woman's right to abortion, then it can force a woman to have a cesarean.  "We don't believe in abortion for any reason, period.  But we marched pro-choice because this is America.  Are we going to be a majority that gives up our choices to a doctor or a politician?"

I'm not saying this changes my opinion on abortion - that will not change, mostly because it is a religious belief.  But it does scare me that we are losing our rights to be able to birth as we choose.

Throughout this book, future scenarios kept popping into my mind: everyone forced into a c-section because OB/GYNs are too scared to attend, or under-skilled in, vaginal deliveries (much like how breech, twins, or VBACs are now); and having to go "underground" in order to have a vaginal birth, a midwife, or a birth out of the hospital.  This is where maternity care is headed, and this book shows that we're not that far off.  I always wonder what kind of birth my daughters will choose when they have children of their own.  Of course, I would like them to choose a natural birth with a midwife, preferably out of the hospital.  But in 20 years, they may not have the freedom to choose their birth experience.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about modern maternity care - how things became standard procedures and how we arrived where we are today.  It is not, however, a beginner's guide to the natural childbirth "movement" and childbearing rights.  It definitely is an eye-opener to how twisted/perverted/corrupted/brainwashed (take your pick) our maternity care and providers are.

Suggestions?

I don't know how many people actually read my blog, or even care (honestly, that's not why I write, so I'm ok with it!), but for those who do read: do you have any suggestions on things you'd like me to write about...questions on specific childbirth topics, concerns, anything really that's related to childbirth - please feel free to leave me a comment!


Don't feel like you have to - I have a list of things I will write about eventually, but if someone has something specific then I'll put that topic at the top!

One Step Closer!

I just finished my last module for my online breastfeeding class!  Hooray!!!  Check that step off the list, now it's just getting births and doing paperwork...which is probably the hardest part, lol!  Oh well...it will happen soon.  I've just got to figure things out first.  But yay on being one step closer!

Tokophobia

I'm currently reading Pushed, by Jennifer Block, and I learned a new word today.  Tokophobia: fear of childbirth or pregnancy.  There are two types, primary and secondary.  Primary tokophobia is the fear and deep-seated dread of childbirth which pre-dates pregnancy and can start in adolescence.  Secondary tokophobia is due to a previous horrendous experience regarding traumatic birth, poor obstetric practice or medical attention, postpartum depression or other such upsetting eventings, which renders them emotionally unable to have more children.


I'm sure that there are people who actually suffer from this - I've read that about 10% of women have this phobia.  I'll admit, I've had some form of it as I got closer to having each of my babies.  But the part that makes me sad is that it could be avoided with positive birth experiences, doctors who would view birth as a natural process and not an accident or law suit waiting to happen, and hospitals who would get all those machines off of the laboring woman!


I'm really enjoying this book - it's so eye-opening!  I'll write a review when I'm done...which will soon because the book is due back to the library on Saturday, lol.