The Big, Bad Book Review

    As promised, I reviewed the children's books we own based on gender representation. Why, you ask? Because media literacy is important to me. Because the types of media kids are exposed to shape their perception of what the world is "supposed" to be like and how people look and act. Because when that perception is limited to very strict gender roles and ideas, children don't get to experience the full range of their personalities. Because children learn to see anything outside their experience as "other" and if this isn't challenged as they grow up, can lead to some very problematic ideas and assumptions. That's why.  I ended up including 86 books in all after the rest failed to meet my initial criteria that we'll go over in a second. I'll first go over my inclusion criteria, methods, and variables and then move on to the results. Finally I'll discuss what this means in terms of parenting and strategies for mitigating some of my findings. I'll also include some recommendations for some of our favorite gender inclusive books.

    But first let's address the limitations of the information. I'm sure there are more than I'll mention explicitly, but let's at least talk about some major ones. I make some assumptions about the intent of the authors. For example, when I talk about gendered illustrations, I assume that the people in pink dresses were intended to be female. It is possible that the author was being very inclusive and actually intended those children to be male or transgender or some other expression, but given the overall tone of the books and the gender representation, I felt safe in my assumptions. Second, our book collection is not representative of all the books that exists. I get that. Furthermore, since Perrin is male, the books we were given may be skewed towards male characters due to the underlying gender assumptions of the people who bought them. Third, there is a lot of gray area in some of the variables. For instance, I don't include all the background characters, only the ones that either speak or have names. But we will get more into that in the discussion of variables....So let's get started!

Inclusion Criteria
    My inclusion criteria was pretty simple- it had to be a young children's book (so no chapter books) that had some kind of narrative. I did not include simple books that were only pictures or named objects. There had to be some degree of dialogue or interaction between characters. Like I stated before, that ended up being 86 books. There were definitely elements to some of the excluded books that were gendered and offered up discussions of representation, but for the purpose of comparing them to the rest of the books, it didn't make sense to include them.

Variables

# of Female and Male Characters Named- Pretty self-explanatory. Because these are children's books, I was fairly liberal with what I considered to be a name. For example, I counted "Mommy" and "Bunny" as being a name if it was referring to a specific character. For this and the next variable, I cut off the count at 3. So if there were 5 named males, it was still recorded as 3. I did this because the only books where this occurred were in a select few where a group of characters was acting together. The higher counts weren't really affecting the gender representation and I didn't want the large numbers to skew the results.

# of Female and Male Characters Speaking- Simple and I used the same count method as above. There was a lot of overlap between these two categories but because I was not including background characters, I wanted a fairly general criteria for which characters I did include.

#of Ambiguous Characters- I also included a count for characters that were not expressly identified as male or female. In some cases the look of the character was overtly feminine or masculine, but if they were not directly identified through gendered pronouns I counted them as ambiguous. The most interesting example was Green Eggs and Ham. Neither character is ever referred to as a specific gender, although most people I know refer to them as male. One is named Sam, but that's a fairly gender neutral name.

Gendered Illustrations- I used a simple dichotomous variable to identify which books relied on gendered illustrations. Examples include all female characters wearing bows and dresses or only female characters having eyelashes.

Franchised Character- I made a note if the character was previously established from something like a movie or parent story. For example, the Cat and the Hat was not, because the extensions of the character came after the book being reviewed. However, Clifford was, because it was also a character from a TV show. This went into to how I determined the next variable.

Gender Swapping Possible?- I determined whether or not it was possible to change the gender of the characters without it affecting the plot line of the story. If the cow in the story needed help getting milked, it wasn't gender swappable. Or if the character was previously established as a specific gender in some other genre, it was not gender swappable.

Bedschel Test- The Bedschel test was originally used to rate movies for gender diversity and representation. A movie (or in my case, book) passes if there is more than one female character, the female characters speak to one another, and they speak about something other than a male character. There is also an additional criteria of the female characters having to be named, but I used the less strict version for my purposes. I noted if the book passed outright, but if one of the characters was ambiguous and you could make the assumption they were female and it met the other criteria, I gave it a provisional pass.

Main Character Sex- I also noted the sex of the main character. Some books had two main characters of different genders, and some had a main character with an ambiguous gender, so there ended up being 4 different categories.

Non-human Character- This was more for curiosity's sake, but I noted how many of the books featured some non-human character (Animals, monsters, muppets, e.g.) This goes back to the idea of gender swapping and the choices made by authors.

Father/Mother- Finally I noted which books featured either a mother character, a father character, or both. If there were illustrations with a mother or father figure in the background, but they didn't meet my initial character criteria (named or speaking), I did not count them.

Results
     Ok, here is the good stuff. Most of it was pretty expected and also a little depressing. For starters, only 4 books passed the straight up Bedschel test. That's only 5%. If I included the ones that past provisionally, it only bumped it up to 9%. In addition, only 10% of the books had a female main character. Thirty percent had either an ambiguously gendered character or both, meaning 60% of the books featured a solo male character. Which is kind of odd considering that 73% of the books were gender swappable, meaning that the story wasn't dependent on the main character being male. Heck, 83% of the books featured non-human characters which I would assume leaves a lot of wiggle room gender wise.
     When we look at the characters in general, only 34% of named characters were female and 34% of speaking characters were female. In addition, 31 books featured a mother while only 16 featured fathers. If we looked only at those books that featured a sole parent, 25% of the fathers were the only parent while 61% of mothers were the sole parent.
     Finally, 40% of the books featured gendered illustrations in which characters were drawn to display gender over realistic depictions.

Discussion
    Let's start with the good news- 22% of the books have ambiguous main characters, meaning there isn't really any focus on gender, which is nice. In addition, 73% of the books were gender swappable, so even though there seems to be a tendency to default characters as male, it's easy to read the characters as female to balance things out.
    However, when we talk about representation of female characters, it's a little more bleak. The fact that there were only 9 books with female main characters was a little depressing. Even more so that in the books that did have female characters, those characters were in more supportive roles, thus resulting in the lack of Bedschel Test passes. And average occurrence of female characters was only 34%, period. I was surprised to find that one of the biggest perpetrators of female exclusion was none other than the beloved Dr. Suess. Despite most of his characters being made up fantasy creatures, the pronouns were almost always male. Even when they weren't, they were left as ambiguous. There was extremely little female representation.

In the book "The Day the Crayons Quit", all of the crayons are left genderless (which makes sense) except Orange and Yellow, which are defaulted as male. 

Another ridiculous example I found was in the Chick N Pug book. Despite referring to a future of egg laying, the baby chick was given male pronouns. Sorry, but male chickens don't lay eggs. I ended up redacting this book.

This chick is male in the book. Female erasure, plus a jab at domestic labor?

    The other trend that I noticed and had to go back and recode later on was the depiction of parents. Going through the books, there was obviously way more mothers included than fathers. But after coding what I realized was that when fathers were included, it was usually in combination with mothers. In contrast, mothers were more often portrayed as the sole parent. This is troublesome because this creates a situation where fathers are seen as part of the family unit while mothers are seen as the default caregiver. That shafts both the role of the father as parent and the role of the mother as literally anything else.

The "Bunny Book" is one of the few books that recognizes male parents and actually presents it as the career choice of this bunny. 

     So the big takeaway from all this was that there is a huge gender discrepancy in these books. Despite it being unnecessary, a huge emphasis is put on gender in children's book, but that emphasis steadfastly favors male characters over female. Children reading these books are getting exposed to the idea the males drive story lines, go on adventures, and do a large number of things while the females do very little at all. It also means female children are having to learn to identify and empathize with the opposite sex, which is a good thing. However, male children are not getting that lesson in reverse and are instead seeing themselves as the norm, the default, and the standard.

    So what can we as parents do? Well a good start is seeking out books with female main characters or characters that don't fit into traditional gender roles. You can also look for the books with gender ambiguous characters, since that seems to be somehow easier (Is it really easier for a character to be genderless than to be female? Is the feminine side of the spectrum that low down on the list?) Once again, I include gender ambiguous to be any character that is not expressly identified as male or female. I do not include style of dress and hair. I don't want Perrin to think you can assume someone's gender by their appearance or that there is one way to be a boy and one way to be a girl. Another thing you can do is to simply swap the gender of the characters. There are lots of books we have that have male characters but I simply change the pronouns as I read the books. Sometimes I even switch them back and forth each time I read the same story. Or you can take the emphasis off gender by using neutral terms like "child" and "person" rather than "boy/girl" or "man/woman".

This is an example of where I use "child" instead of "girl" or "boy" when I read. 

   Another idea that works a little better as the kids get older is to engage them in critiquing. Asking "Why do you think only the girls have eyelashes? All people have eyelashes!" or "Why do all the boys have short hair in this book?", "Why do you think books never have boys wearing pink?". Just opening up these kinds of questions and conversations can help children to see these books as being non-representative of the world around them and are a great introduction to media literacy.

Some gendered language in Dr. Suess. Despite few female characters and almost none that are named or speak, he still manages to use hyperfeminine tropes. 

This book read "with the heart of a dinosaur, he shouldn't cry" which is bullshit, so I changed it. 

Books We Love

   Here are some of our favorite books. They are by no means perfect, but they do help give a little balance.

Dinosaur Kisses by David Ezra Stein: This book features Dinah, a female dinosaur. She tries to learn how to kiss, but instead ends up stomping and whomping and chomping everyone. It's a simple board book, but it's nice to see a female character portrayed as being physical, clumsy, and rambunctious.

Rawr by Todd Doodler: Ok, so we like dinosaur books. This dinosaur book uses no gendered language at all, although the illustrations are gendered (all the girls in dresses, all the boys with short hair). The main character is a dinosaur that is bigger than everyone else. However, we learn that even though the dinosaur is big, they can still be gentle, helpful, and kind.

Charlotte Jane Battles Bedtime by Myra Wolfe: This book features a family of pirates, so that's always cool. Charlotte is the child and she decides that going to sleep is for land lubbers, so she decides to stay up all night. She is described as "hearty" and having "formidable oomph", which is a nice change of pace from the usual adjectives describing girls.

Baby Badger's Wonderful Night by Karen Saunders: This is a father and son story; the father badger takes his baby into the forest at night to show him all of the sights. It's nice to see a father as the parent of focus, especially in a story that is tender and sweet.

Why Won't the Dragon Roar? by Rosalyn Rosenbluth and The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf:
Both of these books challenge the hypermasculine norm. In these stories, the main character is a male dragon and bull, respectively. But he doesn't like to engage in the typical male behaviors of those around him. The dragon doesn't like to roar and Ferdinand doesn't like to fight. Instead they like to spend time with their friends and smell flowers.

And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson: This book is based on a true story. It follows two penguins in a same sex relationship and how they hatch an egg to have their own baby that they raise together. It is a little hit or miss in that it definitely seems to portray opposite sex relationships as normal and the two penguins as "different", however it's a good conversation starter and a really sweet story.

Green Start Books (various authors): These books are some of our favorites. Many of them were left out of my analysis as they weren't narrative based, but we love them all the same. They are introductions to different aspects of environmentalism- gardening, animal habitats, recycling, etc. The illustrations are bit gendered, but otherwise gender isn't addressed at all. The illustrations are very cute and the simple sentences make these concepts accessible for even young kiddos. They are also made from recycled materials and include a back section with tips for activities and life style changes.

Head Shrinking

    You may have seen in our last Perrin update that Joey and I have begun some new and fairly intense therapy work. I wanted to share a little bit about that as it has been immensely eye opening and beneficial. It all started when Joey decided that maybe we should get divorced. Remember that post about how we talk pretty openly about that kind of thing? Something just wasn't feeling right for either of us, but we didn't know what it was. So we decided to do some couples and individual counseling and then reassess our family situation. Spoiler alert- we figured out that "we" weren't the problem. At least, the together "we". Our relationship in and of itself isn't really the issue. What is the issue is each of our relationships with ourselves. Let me explain-

     We found a fantastic therapist who we see individually and then together as a couple. What she is having us work on is digging down into who we are and why we are that way and what needs to change for us to live healthy functioning lives. We have done some therapy/counseling work in the past, but it mostly centered on tools to deal with our individual quirks and issues. The therapy we are doing now is getting down to the core of who we are. What are thoughts are and where those thoughts come from and how they affect our lives and interactions. This has been the most mind blowing part for me. You don't realize how much of you take for granted when it comes to who you are. You just assume "that's the way things are" or "that's just who I am", when in reality a lot of that is baggage that you have accumulated and learned through out your life. These lessons and experiences overtime shape our thoughts about things, and those thought trigger emotions, and then those emotions affect our behavior and actions. So what we think is a simple X occurs and I do Y, is actually much more layered and nuanced. Something may occur, and that "data" gets filtered through our complex systems of thoughts and emotions and when it is played out in our behavior may not look at all related to the original stimulus. Because a lot of the times it's not. 

    Here is an example- I had been wanting to get the garage door fixed for a while. It's been broken for about a year and it's a pain in the ass to drag our bikes and things through the house instead of just opening the garage door. At some point I asked Joey about getting it fixed and he kind of just didn't really say much. He didn't say yes. Well this came up in our couples therapy as Joey suggested spending money on something and I was upset because I would rather have spent the money getting the garage door fixed. Our counselor asked Joey why we couldn't fix the garage and his response was "I don't know; I guess I just never thought about it." So she asked me, had I told him that I wanted it fixed? I told her about the time I asked and that I never really got a response. So her question to me was, why didn't I ask or bring it up again? Maybe Joey just didn't realize it mattered since I only mentioned it the one time. This was a huge learning moment for me. My reaction- "But I asked and didn't get my answer, so it's over. That was the end of the conversation about the garage." See, I didn't realize until that conversation that I have some sort of "rule" in my head that you can only ask for things once. The answer you get is the answer you get and that is that. To ask again is rude and disrespectful and nagging and annoying.  So I was feeling bummed about the garage because Joey didn't understand that it was important to me (which "made" me feel unimportant) and I felt like I was powerless to do anything about it because I used up my one asking time and that was that. So I felt sad and frustrated and angry all because of this completely imaginary and arbitrary rule that I picked up from somewhere. But in reality (objective reality, not the reality in my head), Joey was perfectly fine getting the garage fixed once he understood that I cared a lot about it. We even decided to go ahead with the skylight I had been talking about, too. 

    The lessons get even more nuanced and layered than the above example, but you can see how these "rules" and thought and emotions we have cloud our relationships with others and ourselves. Another big part of it is esteem. Learning to have true self-esteem. That you are worthwhile and valuable simply because you exist. That was mind blowing for me as well. So I am working really hard on learning how to voice my thoughts and advocate for myself, and to stop censoring myself for the perceived comfort for others. That is the other big lesson for me so far- I am not responsible for other people's feelings. And other people are not responsible for mine. I don't have to "let" others "make" me feel bad. That is their own issues about their own thoughts and emotions and realities and doesn't have anything to do with me. And I don't have to worry about "making" other people feel bad. I am learning to have a healthy emotional boundary where my reality is protected from other people and is also free to be expressed. 

    Anyway, maybe all of this seems really obvious to you. But even really simple things- like asking for something more than once- never ever occurred to me. Because my reality was built where those things weren't options. So now I am learning to be more aware of my thoughts and emotions so that I can examine the validity of them and decide whether or not I should hold onto to those ideas or whether they are just baggage that I need to discard. If you are interested more in the things we are learning about, feel free to chat with me about it. We have been reading through a books and listening to workshops by Pia Mellody, who does a lot of work on codependence, which is essentially the issues that I talked about above as well as many other common problems. Basically it's learning to how to take of yourself as a functioning adult- recognizing your wants and needs and getting them met with the help of others. It's very interesting stuff and I'm amazed by how much I notice these mechanisms at work around me now. It's also been incredibly valuable for parenting purposes. It really helps you be aware of what "rules" you are instilling in your children. 

Cheers!

Baby-Not-So-Wise

    I received a request for a post about baby scheduling, or rather the nuances between attachment parenting approaches and baby scheduling approaches. This can be a surprisingly hot-button issue and the theory behind it can get a little complicated, so to start I want to lay out some basic premises.

   First of all, there is no one right way to go about everything. No one book or parenting approach is going to make complete sense to anyone person. You have to find what works for your family and that is almost always going to be a mix of different approaches and strategies. The problems occur when people approach different books and tool sets like some sort of religious text that cannot be deviated from-- that's not likely to work for anyone.
  So, the two approaches that I was specifically asked about were attachment parenting and Babywise in terms of scheduling infants. These aren't exactly comparable because attachment parenting is a very broad philosophy of child rearing (though for whatever reason people like to focus on specific tools) while Babywise is a specific book. For the purpose of this post, I will compare the attachment approach with an equally broad approach I'll call "scheduling" that I will explain later. However, I feel like the specifics of Babywise need to be briefly addressed.
  Now, as I said above, most people aren't going to follow everything single thing in a single book. I'm sure there are people out there who have read Babywise and even used parts of it and would still consider themselves attachment parents. And I know for a fact that there tons of people willing to avow that they followed Babywise and it saved their life, or marriage, or whatever and their kid turned out "fine". But I will never be able to recommend Babywise to anyone and in fact can only advise against it on the basis that it has been linked to some very problematic outcomes in infants. Specifically, the American Academy of Pediatrics  issued a statement in 1998 stating concern because Babywise was associated with "reports of dehydration, slow growth and development, and failure to thrive."  That PSA aside, let's dive right in to different approaches to infant scheduling.

   The first thing to keep in mind is that there is a big difference between schedules and routines. Routines are simply doing things in a specific order. I wake up, I feed the dog, I pump, I get ready, I eat breakfast, I feed Perrin, he takes a nap...etc. It doesn't really matter what time I wake up, my morning routine looks pretty much the same. Routines are pliable and can be adjusted or tweaked depending on a given situation. Schedules on the other hand are much more rigid. I wake up at 7:15. I have to be at work by 9:00 a.m. Dinner is served promptly at 6:00. Now of course there are some things, like the job example, that must operate on a schedule. But the distinction is important to note for the rest of this post.

  We'll start with the attachment/evolutionary/anthropological approach. Whatever you call it (I prefer anthropological parenting), the basic premise is that children thrive best when their needs are responded to and met in a developmentally appropriate way in order to foster a secure connection between the care giver and child. That connection becomes the foundation for their relationship with themselves and others and therefore a healthy attachment leads to a healthy well-rounded individual. The key things to keep in mind for our current discussion are 1) meeting needs and 2) developmental appropriateness.
  There is definitely lots of gray area between attachment parenting and other approaches and often some overlap. Attachment parenting and scheduling aren't mutually exclusive. However, for arguments sake I'm going to define "scheduling" as approaches that minimize flexibility and focus only on the physical (think eat, sleep, poop) needs of infants. There is also a common trend among these approaches to describe infants in behavioralist terms.
  Although not entirely accurate, it may be helpful to think of these two approaches as ends on a spectrum with one extreme being a completely baby-led approach where you rely on the babies own cues all of the time and the other extreme being a rigid schedule that you never deviate from. Neither of these extremes is likely to be optimal. You need to find a balance that works for you. When making this decision, there are a few things to keep in mind. Namely, we need to start off having realistic expectations. It has been my experience that often times parents who struggle the most with infant behaviors aren't really dealing with anything that different from anyone else. The issue is usually that they went into parenting with very unrealistic expectations of how infants behave and what "normal" looks like.

Babies are not adults. Mindblowing, right? But seriously...stop and think about this for a moment. There are some things that are just not going to be developmentally appropriate for an infant.

Babies can't tell time. Schedules are never going to be appropriate for infants because babies can't read clocks. It is that simple. Expecting a baby to do the same thing at the same time everyday isn't going to work out for anyone. When it comes to "time", babies suck even worse because their circadian rhythms aren't developed yet. It takes a while for them to get in sync with the day/night cycle and to learn to pace their environmental cues with the time of day.

Babies sleep cycles are much shorter than adults (about half as short). That means they have twice as many light sleep stages, or twice as many opportunities for night waking. While this may be inconvenient for us it is very, very convenient for baby. Waking often helps make sure the brain is staying alert enough to keep regulating things like body temperature, heart rate, and breathing protecting the baby against SIDS. It also gives them the opportunity to eat more frequently, keeping their blood sugar stable, ensuring a good milk supply, and keeping up their caloric intake.

Babies don't have "wants". Babies wants and needs are the same, and they are not just physical. Infants need touch and human contact to develop properly and thrive. They need emotional comfort. An infant is not cognitively developed enough to "manipulate" a caregiver. If they want something, it's because they need it, not because they are trying to scam you.

Babies can't talk. Babies have certain cues to let you know when they are getting hungry or sleepy (rooting, yawning, etc.) and at the end of the day,  crying is a babies number one communication tool.

Babies don't have object permanence. If they aren't looking directly at something, they are not aware of its existence. They have no concept that you are just in the other room. If you aren't there, for all they know they are completely alone.

Babies don't understand delayed gratification. They can't tell you in advance when they need something. If they have a need, it is immediate. Delaying response to that need isn't "teaching" them anything. On a physiological level, their cues (such as crying) may wane over time as they fail to elicit an appropriate response. But there is no cognitive learning taking place.

Babies change. As an adult, it's easy to get used to a status quo. We get to wear the same clothes for years without buying new sizes. We like the same things. We have the same abilities. Not a whole lot changes. Babies are constantly changing. Growing, teething, developing motor skills, language...it never ends. Expecting a baby to act the same today as he did a month ago is only ever going to end in disappointment. There is always something new happening and that can easily throw a wrench in even the most entrenched patterns of behavior. And these changes aren't always linear. Regressions in eating and sleeping habits are common.

    So knowing these things, it's easy to see how expecting much in the way of schedules in unlikely to work out for baby. But babies don't exist in a vacuum. They have families and other family members have to get shit done sometimes. I get that. This is where finding balance comes in. However, that balance will work out for everyone the best when we keep our expectations reasonable. This is one reason why routines may be a good compromise. Getting a good routine down will ensure that  you know how to accomplish X tasks in Y amount of time. Then, you can start, stop, and pause your routine as needed when other non-flexible needs get in the way. You know baby likes to wake up, poop, then eat and you know you have to be at work at 9. Maybe that means most days you both wake up at 6. Let baby play while you get ready, change his diaper and feed him, then take him to daycare at 8:30. But what if one day he doesn't wake up at 6? Maybe this means you go ahead and get ready without him. At 7:30 he wakes up, but you are already done getting ready so you go ahead and drive to day care, giving him the ride to wake up and do his business, then feed him at daycare before heading to work. See? You can maintain the routine and still keep somethings scheduled while including enough flexibility that you don't have to wake a sleeping baby and have a cranky monster pants on your hands later that day. Now are there going to be sometimes you have to wake a sleeping baby or miss a nap? Of course. But what is important is that needs are getting met.
   What is worrisome is when we start saying that certain needs aren't as important. Just because a baby is fed and diapered doesn't mean he doesn't need something. He may have some emotional needs. And those needs may occur at inopportune moments. Babies don't know that adults like to sleep for 8 uninterrupted hours every night or that your favorite sitcom comes on at 8:30. So knowing what we know about babies' needs and what is appropriate behavior, what is a parent to do when trying to balance baby and the rest of their life?

   As I said before, this is incredibly situational. You have to find what works for you. That being said, I think one thing that everyone should keep in mind is the "golden rule"- treat your baby how you would want to be treated. I don't know about you, but I'm not one of those people who can just fall asleep anywhere. I need it to be dark and quiet, and if I'm not tired it's just not going to happen. I don't like to eat when I'm not hungry and if I am hungry I don't particularly like to put off eating. Some nights I wake up and can't sleep or feel like getting a snack. And sometimes I just have a bad day. I'm in a bad mood and I don't know why or I just feel sad. I can't imagine coming home and telling Joey that I feel sad and just need a hug or some cuddle time, only to have him ignore me.  Or to have him tell me that since I'm not hungry I'm "fine". Or to have him tell me that he doesn't have to deal with me between 8 pm and 6 am so I need to learn how to comfort myself. And this is me- a grown adult who has fully functioning cognitive abilities. I know that Joey is still there for me even when he isn't in the room. When someone tells me it's still an hour until dinner, I have a concept of how long that is and I know that food is coming eventually. I can communicate my needs directly and I can move and meet them on my own if I need to.

  I know that for a lot of people this sounds nice in theory, but may be harder to implement. However, in these situations it is important to understand that it is not the baby that is the problem. The baby is doing what it is designed to do- what babies have been doing for centuries. It is our society that has changed and made the equation unbalanced. In a culture with incredibly weak community ties, small nuclear families, and non-existent parental leave, there aren't many options. We as a society have dismissed and devalued children and child-rearing to the point that they have become expendable. So I don't think the answer to our problems is any book on training babies. We need to train our culture. We need to write books on how to train lawmakers and employers to respect and support parenting. Paid parental leave, flexible work schedules, better access to quality childcare...these things shouldn't be luxuries. These are basic necessities for a healthy functioning society.

  If you would like to read more on appropriate expectations for infants, the following links have some valuable insight.

http://evolutionaryparenting.com/educating-the-experts-lesson-five-schedules/
(This is the last and most relevant of a five part series but all of them are worth your time.)

http://evolutionaryparenting.com/my-baby-cries-too/

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201312/ten-things-everyone-should-know-about-babies

Why I Want to Do Birth Work (And Why I Don't Hate Doctors)

   Before I get into the particulars of why I want to pursue birth related work, I want to get some things straight. I know there is a stigma for those that are involved in natural birth or alternative medicine in general that they hate doctors or Western medicine, or whatever. I chose to wear a green shirt today. This doesn't mean I hate the color red. Or people who wear red. It doesn't mean that I won't ever wear red myself...follow? Basically, one person's choices are not a judgement on other people's choices.
   Moving on from there. Do I think some doctors and nurses are idiots and totally suck at their jobs? Yup. I also know of a few midwives and doulas who suck. Some people just suck, in all professions. I also know some great nurses and doctors. The reason why I am so adamant about advocacy in this field is because there is a cultural perception that all doctors/nurses/whoever are good and competent just because they are wearing the scrubs. Medical school is hard, yes, but it is not the end-all, be-all litmus test for competency. I have heard or been told of some pretty terrible things medical professionals have told pregnant and birthing women. Things that directly contradict medical evidence and actually have proven to have negative outcomes. Let's see...
    I have heard a birthing mother told her body was progressing well so she only needed a "little              pitocin" despite the fact that pitocin is contraindicated for non-emergency births.
    I have heard of doctors making episiotomies so that women don't "tear" despite evidence that              shows episiotomies increase tearing.
   I have heard nurses suggest feeding on schedules or supplementing with artificial nipples despite            these practices being associated with low milk supply, slow weight gain, and failure to thrive.
   I have a friend who had a nurse break her water without telling her or asking during a vaginal                check.
   I have known countless people who have been induced based on baby size estimated from late                pregnancy ultrasounds, despite evidence showing ultrasounds after 24 weeks are unreliable and baby size is NOT a medical indication for induction.
   I know of only one person who birthed at a hospital with intermittent rather than continuous fetal          monitoring, despite the fact that continuous monitoring is associated with an increased risk of  surgical birth.

The list goes on and on. Now, I have also heard a lot of good things, like the doctor here in Tucson who is always on call for breech births because he is the only doctor who was appropriately trained to vaginally deliver breech babies (even twins!). Or some truly wonderful nurses who ended up being doulas as well for many of their patients. So please, don't mistake my passion as stemming from a hatred and mistrust of medical personnel. It's actually quite the opposite. I don't advocate for women because of the "bad" OBs. I advocate for women because there are too many great OBs and nurses for us to continue giving the bad ones our business. We can change the birth culture (and the god-awful maternal and infant mortality rates) of this country by demanding evidence-based care and seeking out those professionals who provide it. But how is a woman supposed to know the difference between providers?

   THIS is why I want to do this work. I want to help women make the best choice for them in their birth instead of having to just roll the dice and take what they get. I don't care what you want for your birth- unassisted birth in the woods or scheduled c-section. I just want you to make that decision based on evidence and knowledge, not fear and lack of options. Because no matter how you want to give birth or how you need to give birth, it should still be the most amazing moment of your life. Birth shouldn't be a scary, painful obstacle to having a baby. Birth itself should be an incredible experience. You are doing something wonderful- it should make you feel wonderful. Not scared, or sad, or angry. To achieve this, it is my experience that women need three things- they need to be informed, they need to be empowered, and they need to be supported.
  How is someone supposed to know if what her doctor or midwife suggests is best for her if she doesn't know her options or the risks and benefits of each choice? Medicine is just a drop of water in the 5 gallon bucket of knowledge that exists in the world. Obstetrics is an even smaller part. Then take into account where the person went to school, what books they used, which journals they follow and read...you can't expect a person to know everything. Women need the tools and knowledge so that they can be educated about their own care. So that when they hear bad advice or are offered procedures that contradict evidence-based care, they see a red flag.
   When women have this knowledge, they are empowered. They can take control of their pregnancies and births and advocate for themselves. They don't have to close their eyes and hope that their providers know what they are doing. They can make decisions, including the decision of which providers to hire. Did you hear that? You are HIRING your providers. You pay them to provide a service. If you don't like their service, don't pay them. Find someone else. So many women stay with their OBGYN for their births just because that was who did their annual pap smear. Swiping your cervix with a q-tip has nothing to do with having a baby. Interview your providers. Find one that works for you. Make a birth plan. Prepare for your birth.
   Then surround yourself with support. Find supportive providers, for sure, but make sure whoever else is invited to take part in this experience with you is 100% on board. This may mean they need to be educated about the decisions you made so that they understand. If someone is not supportive, they have no business being in your birth space. This is YOUR body, YOUR baby, and YOUR birth. I have seen women with all the information and capabilities available to them let go of their birth experience because when it came down to it, they weren't supported.

   This is what I hope to accomplish. I want to provide women with the tools they need to be informed, empowered, and supported. I want women to be able to own their birth experience. This doesn't mean that everything will always go perfectly. Sometimes, rarely, complications do occur. But if you are an active participant in your birth and you own the experience, you will be the one dealing with problems if they arise and you can still be empowered and supported in those situations. Birth should be something you accomplish, not something that happens to you.

For more information about the movement to improve childbirth, check out Improvingbirth.org

Here is an awesome album from their Facebook page of why women want to improve birth https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.509315189141974.1073741832.255657527841076&type=3

For more information about evidence-based birth, evolutionaryparenting.com and evidencebasedbirth.com are great resources!

At least we don't have yellow wallpaper...

 

 If you're missing the Charlotte Perkins Gilman reference, we can't be friends anymore. Go read some decent American-feminist literature and get back to me.

   I have a wicked case of post-partum depression. It's getting better (obviously I'm coherent enough to write this). I basically have done nothing except nurse the baby and sit. I had absolutely no appetite to eat anything, so I lost a ridiculous amount of weight and had no energy (in addition to being sleep deprived in general). I cried throughout the day. If Perrin started crying, I shut down completely. I couldn't do anything except stare at him. Joey would take him and calm him down. Joey changed his diapers, and held him, and basically did everything aside from nurse. He brought me whatever food I did eat, and my vitamins. He called psych counselors and lactation consultants and basically anyone who could help. I just couldn't get myself to do anything. I hated everything- especially the baby. The baby was nothing to me except pain. I knew, in my head, that it he wasn't being mean on purpose and that he is just a baby...but there were times when I could swear he was trying to inflict as much pain on me as humanly possible. It's a strange feeling to be so sad and so angry and then to feel guilty for feeling those emotions.
  I really don't know what else to say except that things got bad. I never wanted to hurt the baby, but Perrin and I coexisting didn't seem to be working out. One of us had to go, and I was the adult (sort of), so it seemed like it had to be me. I needed to go away- back to Memphis, somewhere else, I don't know...something had to give. Finally I wasn't able to handle it anymore. Joey stepped in and insisted I get help. He called our midwife and found some local PPD resources.
  I started seeing a counselor and she (as well as our midwife) agreed that fixing the breastfeeding relationship ASAP was key. The pain was driving a lot of my resentment towards Perrin. They brought up the possibility of me pumping and bottle feeding to eliminate the stress of nursing, but I refused for two reasons. First, I wasn't quite desperate enough to risk our future nursing relationship just yet. Second, and most importantly, nursing was all I had. That was my only interaction with Perrin. I did it because I absolutely had to. If we introduced bottles and Joey could feed him...I knew I wouldn't look at Perrin again. So I hung on to our nursing relationship and Joey called every lactation specialist in the state he could find until we started making progress. Now nursing is almost pain free.The counselor also stated she thought I was scared to interact with Perrin and that was one of the reasons I would just shut down. She suggested attending some Mom and Baby classes to get some tips and help on interacting with my baby. Joey and I now attend a Parent and Baby class on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
   Our midwife assigned me some homework as well. The first was eating and sleeping more, for obvious reasons. She also stressed my need for socialization. We don't really have many close friends in Tucson, and definitely not lots of kid experience. We don't have a tribe. So my midwife put in contact with some like-minded parents near by. We have had two social get-togethers this week.
  So things are slowly getting better. It is still ridiculously hard. I'm living off of gluten-free Oreos and Lucky Charms. Our house is a wreck and completely filthy. Every ounce of our energy is going towards just surviving until tomorrow..but it's getting better.

  So to those people who are offended by my experience- the people who tell me I should think of all the childless couples in the world and appreciate my baby more and get over the "difficulties of motherhood" (their condescending quotation marks, not mine)- Screw you. I'm in enough of a mental hell with plenty of guilt all by myself, I don't need your baggage. If I could snap my fingers make it all pretty, I would do it in a heartbeat. But guess what, I can't. It hurts and it's hard and I don't know what to do except work my way through it. So I can either pretend this isn't happening, or I can be honest and maybe help someone else out there know they aren't the only one. I saw another mom at one of our groups- she looked exactly how I felt. But we were both there and both dealing, and we will both be okay. So if I ever hear a person tell another PPD woman to just get over it and be happy with her baby, I'm going to punch them in face, ahimsa be damned.
 

Required Reading

   I've been going back and forth about whether or not I would like to write a bunch of my own posts about these topics or whether I should just post a bunch of links. Obviously plan B won out. It's not that I'm lazy (not entirely anyway), but I am slightly busy. And while in some cases I may offer a unique perspective, there is really no reason for me to reinvent the wheel here. Most of what I would say has already been said by someone somewhere. So instead, I am providing you with a sampling of readings on topics which I find interesting and important. Before you dive in, there are a couple of quick points I'd like to make.

1. These are not the only sources of this information. We did not base our decisions off a few quirky blogs. I have put in countless (well, about two years worth) hours researching and reading about these topics for my own curiosity, my doula stuff, and planning our life with Raptor. These just happen to be some of my favorites because they sum up the topics well, provide unique insight, and/or have great links and citations for other sources.

2. Seriously, there is a ton of information out there. Go look. For real. Research everything. Look for scholarly peer reviewed sources to back it up. And for godssake, look outside the U.S., ok? European journals are great places to go.

3. Also, most of the blogs I'm pulling stuff from are pretty awesome. Seriously, check them out. They cover a lot of topics and have some really incredible perspectives.

4. Insert usual I'm-not-trying-to-be-preachy/judgmental/whatever-these-are-simply-our-choices disclaimer here.

I'll leave a comment or two for some of the articles as well as an introduction of why the topic is important to us. Otherwise you're on your own. I'll even put them in alphabetical order, all professional like.

Attachment Parenting-

     There is apparently a lot of misunderstanding about what attachment parenting is. It seems that people get caught up in different methods and forget the basic point- responding to children in an empathetic and age appropriate way in order to create caring and well adjusted individuals. Anyway, here are some good basic overviews. 

http://www.attachmentparenting.org/principles/principles.php

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130107110538.htm

Babywearing
    It's not that I hate strollers; they just don't do all the amazing things my wraps do.

https://www.llli.org/nb/nbnovdec04p204.html

Breastfeeding-

     No explanation necessary.

http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/breastfeeding/Documents/MO-BF-Benefits.pdf

http://www.phdinparenting.com/2010/05/14/50-reasons-for-breastfeeding-anytime-anywhere/

http://kellymom.com/ages/older-infant/ebf-benefits/

http://www.lalecheleague.org/release/benefits.html

Circumcision-

     If it's a girl, she won't be circumsized. If it's a boy, he won't be circumsized. Genital integrity, bodily automony, and basic human rights are deserved by everyone. The is no medical justification for routine infant circumcision. Not a single medical organization in the word recommends it. But don't take my work for it, read on. The more you know, the more it turns your stomach. 

This one is probably the least technical, but it is one of my favorites because it is so straight-foward.

http://9davids.blogspot.com/2010/11/50-reasons-to-leave-it-alone.html

http://www.drmomma.org/2009/11/case-against-circumcision.html

This is another excellent piece. It systematically breaks down the most common misconceptions. This link is just the first of six parts, but the others are linked at the bottom of this one. 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201109/myths-about-circumcision-you-likely-believe

http://www.thewholenetwork.org/14/post/2010/11/50-reasons-to-leave-it-alone.html

Don't like reading? No problem. This video is fantastic. It's about 30 minutes long but totally worth it. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ceht-3xu84I

Crying it out-

     There is a ridiculous amount of peer reviewed psychology and sociology research on this subject. 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201112/dangers-crying-it-out

http://www.phdinparenting.com/2008/07/05/no-cry-it-out/

Discipline-

     Once again, a ton of research out there on this. Violence begets violence. Period.

http://www.attachmentparenting.org/principles/disc.php

http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/discipline-behavior/spanking/10-reasons-not-hit-your-child

Gender Neutral Parenting-
      We don't want our child to be boxed in by an arbitrary label because of their genitals.

http://joeyandrox.blogspot.com/2012/12/colors-are-for-everyone-or-will-it-make.html

http://www.phdinparenting.com/2012/05/27/4-ways-parents-can-help-break-down-societys-gender-assumptions//

http://www.theconnectedmom.com/2012/02/raising-pink-boy_16.html

http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/let-him-play-with-dolls/

Infant Sleep-

     In case you are wondering why we don't have a nursery or crib. 

http://www.evolutionaryparenting.com/sleep-a-misguided-and-unhealthy-obsession/

http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/sleep-problems/co-sleeping-yes-no-sometimes

http://www.naturalchild.org/jan_hunt/familybed.html

http://www.phdinparenting.com/2009/01/09/cosleeping-benefits/

Vaccines

http://blindedbythelightt.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-specific-approach-to-question-why_3.html?m=1

Colors Are For Everyone, or "Will it make your penis fall off?"

           
              We realize that intentional gender neutral parenting is probably not very familiar to a lot of our friends and family. However, I have begun to notice that there might be some confusion about what exactly gender neutral parenting looks like. We have heard quite a few comments along the lines of “it’s so hard to shop for gender neutral things” and “it will be so much easier to pick stuff out once the baby gets here”. So the purpose of this post is to clear up any confusion. Feel free to ask questions if anything is still left unclear.

Gender 101

                People regularly misuse the word “gender”. Most of the time they actually mean sex. Sex is a biological category. Your sex is either male or female (or intersexed, in some cases, but we will stick to the basics). Sex is determined by your genitalia and/or chromosomes. You are male because you have a penis, testes, etc. and are XY. You are female because you have a vagina, uterus, etc. and are XX. Gender has nothing to do with biology.

 Gender is a social construction which in most cultures can be viewed as a spectrum ranging from masculine to feminine. By social construction, I mean gender is really not based on anything concrete. It is simply a compilation of attitudes and trends in a given society. Different societies define and value gender differently. For example, in Western civilization (i.e. us), masculinity is generally associated with power and strength while femininity is associated with emotions, communication, and nurturing. Masculinity is valued above femininity. This isn’t because it is the right way or “natural” (remember, there is nothing natural, given, or biological about gender, it is completely constructed), it is just because that is how our particular society developed. Others do things differently.

So we have determined gender is different than sex. Masculine does not equal male. Feminine does not equal female. Males can be masculine or feminine. Females can be masculine or feminine.  A lot of research and study in fields like anthropology and psychology have been conducted over the last 50 years concerning gender and sex. There is no link between the two. There is more variation between masculinity and femininity within sexes (between lots of men or lots women) than there is between the sexes (between men and women). This may seem counterintuitive. After all, when thinking about all the men and women you know, it’s probably easy to say that men do X and women do Y. Boys are rambunctious and girls are sweet. What most people don’t realize is that they are observing gender, not sex. These behaviors are taught and instilled in us by the society we live in (parents decorate the rooms, pick out the clothes, buy the toys- these choices made by the parents shape children’s preferences). We teach boys to be masculine and girls to be feminine. It has nothing to do with natural inclinations. When children are not pushed one way or the other, there is actually no difference between boys and girls.

Gender is not sex. It is also not sexual orientation. Your gender has nothing to do with what other genders or sexes you are attracted to. Masculine men may prefer men or women. Feminine men may prefer men or women. Same for women. So in review, sex is what is between your legs, sexual orientation is what you want to do with it, and gender is a social construction that guides your preferences and behaviors.

                Fun Fact: Prior to the World Wars, blue was actually the color for girls. It was calm and demure. Pink was reserved for boys because it was so robust and bright.

                Something to think about: For most of history, boys and girls were dressed the same (soft colors, ruffles, gowns) for most of their early years. By creating gender differences earlier, companies have expanded their markets.

So what does this have to do with parenting?

                In a lot of respects, children are a blank slate.  Each child is born with its own unique personality which if left alone would guide its behaviors and preferences. That leaves an enormously wide range of potential for emotional expression, interests, and everything else. We want that for our child. We don’t want to shape our child or force any preconceived expectations upon them. We don’t want to push them to do certain things or behave a certain way because it is what is expected of their sex.

                If this sounds weird or radical, just take a second to think about it. I think it comes easier in the context of girls. Thankfully a lot of women have worked very hard over the past century to expand our horizons. Whether my parents did it intentionally or not, I was raised pretty much gender neutral. My nursery was blue, as were a lot of my clothes (the hyper- pink/blue dichotomy is relatively new and in fact, simply a marketing ploy. If you say boys wear blue, girls wear pink, and then only make products in those two colors, you have a 50% chance of your customer needing to re-buy everything the next time around…but I digress). I had dinosaurs, Barbies, ligthsabers, Nerf guns, Polly Pockets, etc. I was never told that “that’s for boys” or I couldn’t do something. My parents didn’t want to limit me. But unfortunately this seems to come more difficultly to parents of boys. The same parents who don’t bat and eyelash at their daughter wearing blue or playing with trucks may flip out when their son tries on a dress or asks to take ballet. Or play with dolls or play kitchen. Because God forbid your son grow up to be…you know…a dad or know how to make a sandwich.

                The goal of gender neutral parenting is to remove these barriers so that the child can be led by their own personality. Gender neutral parenting isn’t about avoiding blue or pink and only buying yellow and green. Gender neutral does not mean androgynous. It has nothing to do with the actual objects/choices involved. It has everything to do with creating an open attitude about the fact that gender and sex are not equal and dichotomous and therefore allowing your child to develop his or her own gender regardless of their sex.  Gender neutral parenting is about all the colors (colors are for everybody). Gender neutral parenting is about providing blue AND pink, and all the other colors, as well as all types of toys, hobbies, and interest then following the child’s lead as to what he or she likes. Everything is gender neutral.

If this is still confusing, here are some helpful questions to ask yourself when trying to determine whether or not something is gender neutral (appropriate for both sexes):

-       -Does this object/clothing/hobby require a penis/vagina/other sexual organs to use appropriately?

If the answer is yes (an athletic cup perhaps?), then you might take the child’s sex into account. 

If the answer is no (toys, dolls, music, colors, extracurricular activities, etc.) it doesn’t matter and can be used by both sexes.

-    -Will this object/clothing/hobby cause the penis/vagina/ other sexual organs to shrivel, rot or fall off? If the answer is yes…well that just sounds dangerous and I’m not sure I can recommend that choice for anyone.

If the answer is no, congratulations! It’s gender neutral.

Ways you probably gender children without realizing it

                Maybe this doesn’t seem crazy to you. Maybe this seems pretty simple. But regardless, we all have a tendency to gender children and most of the time we don’t even realize it.

                We call girls with masculine traits “tom boys” and use other similar terms. Girls are just girls. They like all kinds of different things. Same for boys. Just because a child doesn’t like something that we associate with their sex or likes something different doesn’t mean they are abnormal or need  be labeled.

                We call things “girl stuff” or “boy stuff”. If a girl likes action figures, by definition they can be girl things. If a boy likes dolls, they are boy things. But let’s just make it simple. Toys, colors, etc. are for everybody that likes them. End of story.

                We steer our boys towards the blue side of the store and girls towards the pink side. Heck, we don’t even question why stores have two sides in the first place.

                When a child does something stereotypically associated with their sex, we say “oh, he’s all boy” or “she’s such a girly-girl.”

                I can go on forever. The point is, these subtle words and attitudes shape how we treat each other and how our children view themselves. The point of gender neutral parenting is to become aware of these things so that we can give our children room to develop to their full potential.

Questions and Concerns

This has been a pretty basic overview of the concept and gender in general. By all means, seek out more information. I have included some great links at the bottom of this post. But in closing, I will bring up a few common (or at least common to me) responses or questions about gender neutral parenting.

-Won’t that make your child gay? (As if this that is the worst thing that could ever happen) We have already determined gender has nothing to do with sexual orientation.

-Will that create an identity crisis? My question to that is, is your identity really that tied up in your gender? By taking the focus off of gender, you are allowing your children to develop themselves in other ways, maybe even discover something about themselves they would have otherwise been kept from.

-If this is how things are, doesn’t that make it right? There are many things that were once the status quo (slavery?). That doesn’t make them right. Isn’t it everyone’s hope for the children that they have more opportunities and a better world than the generation before them?

-You’re just asking for your kid to get bullied. This is one of my pet peeves, because I hear this statement in response to a lot of things. This is straight up victim blaming. If my kid gets bullied, it’s his fault for XY or Z or my fault for allowing him to do it. Newsflash- it is not my kid’s job (or my job) to make my kid bully-proof. If my child has big ears, should he get plastic surgery? What about a speech impediment? I understand that these aren’t choices, but the implications are still the same. No, it is YOUR (a general “your”, nothing personal) job to not be an asshole. Will my kid encounter general meanness in his or her life? Of course. But that doesn’t mean he/she has to accept it or that the onus is on them to prevent it. They can do everything in their power to make themselves as socially acceptable as possible and people will still be jerks.

-How will they learn their role in society? I would love to think that we are the sole influence on our children (well, maybe, that's probably actually a little scary and too much power), but I know that is not the case. We get a pretty important role in the early years, but by two years old, children's peer relationships begin to take an increasingly important role in their lives in proportion to caregivers. Society will get to our children, I promise. They will go to school. They will meet strangers in stores. They will be exposed to media and commercialism. The idea is not to prevent these things entirely. The idea is to give our kids a safe place in our home to go against these things if that is their desire and to give some balance to the messages they will receive.

                In conclusion, if it won’t make your penis or vagina fall off, it’s fine to buy for our kids no matter what their sex. They will have all types of colors, clothing styles, and toys so that they can decide what they like. So next time you hesitate getting something for a child, just remember- everything is gender neutral and colors are for everybody.

http://www.phdinparenting.com/2012/05/27/4-ways-parents-can-help-break-down-societys-gender-assumptions//

http://www.theconnectedmom.com/2012/02/raising-pink-boy_16.html

http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/let-him-play-with-dolls/

Post From the Past #4

     As we begin planning for the arrival of Baby, I have been thinking a lot about my preconceptions about pregnancy, birth, and parenting and how much they have changed over the past few years. I know my views tend to fall fairly crunchy of center. Nothing in this post or any subsequent ones is meant to be judgmental in any way. If you don’t like the way we do things, that’s fine. I’m glad. Do things your way. My purpose is simply to share information and provide a perspective that you may or may not have been exposed to before because I am so SO glad that I stumbled on to these things before we started having children.

    Speaking of which, a lot of people wonder how I stumbled into the whole birth-activist thing. I basically started with a few friends of mine with shared world views. However, unlike myself, they had children so they would post and discuss lots of articles and perspectives concerned with pregnancy and children that stemmed from feminist and crunchy perspectives not unlike my own. So I would read them. I like to read, and I like to learn, so if I become interested in a specific topic it can snowball quickly, especially considering my access to databases of research through the University. So I read everything I could find. I read opposing positions and found supporting sources and counter sources to everything I discovered.

    Let’s start with where I started. I always had a fairly typical “American” view of pregnancy and birth. I was terrified. I always said there was no way I would have children, not because I disliked children but because the idea of childbirth scared me more than anything I could imagine. After all, it’s a medical emergency! You have to go to a hospital for goodness sakes! There are IVs and a needle in your spine (contrary to what you may think given my tattoos and piercings- I despise needles), not to mention the monitors and catheters and beeping and people frantically running around. And this wasn’t just my perceptions based on movie and television. I was present for the birth of my two youngest sisters, start to finish. These beliefs, combined with an overall lack of faith in my body in general that seems to be epidemic in this country, made me positive that birth was something hard, and excruciating, and something to be feared.

     But then I started my reading. It started with my exposure to a book called “Taking Charge of Your Fertility.”  Women were raving about how amazing and empowering it was to learn how to monitor your own fertility for either birth control or conception purposes. Now this resonated with me because I HATED being on birth control. I hated the way it made me feel (I started anti-depressants shortly after starting birth control and I do not think that was a coincidence). I hated the fact that I was pumping my body full of synthetic hormones, and I hated the risks I was facing (cancer, stroke, etc). And I hated a slew of other random side effects that always popped up, despite the fact that I tried several different kinds. I also wasn’t super fond of the $30-$50 I was paying out of pocket each month (it being pre-Affordable Healthcare Act). So here was this book promising free, empowering, effective birth control! I ordered it off of Amazon and read it cover to cover and I was astounded by how much in the book I didn’t know. I literally had no clue how my own body functioned.

     So I kept reading. I read about normal pregnancy and childbirth. I learned about the delicate hormonal balance that occurs between the mother and baby. I read about the intricate process and how my amazing body was both capable of growing and birthing a tiny person all by itself. I learned that in over 90% of births, medical interventions are completely unnecessary and can often cause significant complications. I found out the only about 1/3 of obstetric practices in the U.S. are evidenced based. I learned that obstetrics was developed to treat high risks pregnancies which make up only about 10% of women in the U.S., and was never intended to be the basic care system for the other 90%.I realized that the medical model of care is just that- one model. And you weren’t going to get exposure or information about anything else from your doctors or nurses because that is all they know!  That is how they were trained and what their textbooks said, so that is what they do. I learned that there are other models- birth centers and midwives and home birth. I found out that home birth is just as safe for the baby as hospital birth for normal pregnancies and more safe for the mother. I learned so many things, more than I have time to cover in this post.

   This resonated deeply with me. I have always been a bit of a flower child. I never feel more complete or more spiritual than when I am surrounded by the earth. And this made sense! If every other being in creation can bring forth life on their own, why can’t I? What makes humans so different that they can’t perform the most basic of biological functions? Why wouldn’t I be perfectly and intricately designed, just like any thunderstorm or snow flake? No matter what your belief system-nature, God, evolution, wherever you think stuff comes from- why would it make sense that we are so poorly designed to not even be able to achieve procreation without a thousand bells and whistles that didn’t exist until a hundred years ago (which we preceded by a long, long lineage of natural woman centered child birth I might add. If anything “modern birth” is a social experiment at best)?

    And as I learned, I started to feel like I had discovered some big secret. I wanted to run out into the world screaming, “Hey everyone listen! You don’t have to be afraid! You don’t have to spend all this money and time and put up with all this stress and risk! Your body is perfect and works just fine!” I wanted to tell the doctors how they didn’t need to worry about all these women and use all these interventions, that pregnancy wasn’t an emergency or an illness. I was so excited because I felt like I was now holding information that could make a difference!

    But then I kept reading. And I realized it’s not a secret. This information has never been hidden or obscured. That it is well known and NORMAL in most of Europe, such as the Netherlands where 80% of births take place at home without an obstetrician. That it is well known in most traditional and indigenous societies. That is used to be known here, before the 20^th century, and that the evidence supporting all of this information was still right there in the literature. And then I realized- I wasn’t uninformed. I was lied to. I was deliberately misled. By doctors, by media, by insurance companies and hospital policies, by our culture at large. I learned that the U.S. ranks 49^th in the world for maternal mortality. Yet here in the U.S. we continue down this hypermedicalized path of treatment that causes more problems (and more infant and maternal deaths) than it fixes. Now don’t get me wrong, there is a time and a place for all of these things. There are plenty of emergency situations where these high-tech hospitals and doctors are totally necessary. But those instances are few and far between and yet these procedures are considered routine and doled out to every woman walking through the doors. But people don’t know that. I didn’t know that. Our culture makes every birth out to be a game of roulette. Thank God the doctor did X, Y, and Z or we would have lost the baby! (Not realizing that U, V, and W led to the situation in the first place). No one person is to blame. In part, it’s our healthcare system. Pathology makes more money than health. Our homebirth services, which include all of my prenatal care, labor and delivery, and 6 weeks of postnatal care are going to cost $3,000  total. That’s it. For everything. Normal birth just isn’t very lucrative. And normal birth takes time. Your body is not on a schedule. But hospitals and doctors and nurses are. And most of them have never seen a normal, non-medicated child birth. A lot of medical staff have never seen a woman push in any position other than on her back. And the only time they do hear about homebirths and birth centers is when someone has to transfer, which is very rarely happens, but that means they are only seeing the ‘worst case scenarios’ (note: these really aren’t even worst case scenarios, the whole point of having competent birth support at home is having someone who knows enough to know when something is outside their abilities and needs further attention. These should be seen as examples of home birth working well). The list of things that people don’t know just goes on and on and on. And then, not often thank goodness, but sometimes…you have people who do know but just don’t care. You have the doctor who wants to give you a c-section so he can be home in time for dinner. Or so she can say “I told you so” because you were being a ‘difficult’ patient.

     I slowly began to learn and realize these things, and I realized there was no way I could give birth in a hospital. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t give birth in a hospital or that if you do you aren’t a good parent or mother or whatever. Believe me, the way I see it, I’m taking the easy way out! You see, I don’t want to have to deal with strangers while I’m trying to give birth. I don’t want bright fluorescent lights in my face or a freezing cold room with a stupid paper gown, I don’t my movement restricted by constant monitoring and being told I can’t eat or drink. None of these common hospital practices are based in actual research and many of them directly contradict it (like constant monitoring and limiting food intake). To sum it up, I don't want to waste my precious time, energy, and concentration while I am trying to push a baby out of my vagina trying to convince the people around me to just let me push the baby out of my vagina. Let me explain what I do want.

      I want to do what my body needs at any given moment. I want to go for a walk, move around, and change positions as needed. I want to be able to eat and drink whatever I want whenever I want to keep my strength up. I want to be able to get in a tub or shower. I don’t want needles in me or monitors hanging off of me. I want to birth my baby, not have it “delivered”. I want to labor for as long as it takes, not be rushed or augmented or threatened with harming my baby because I’m not meeting some made up deadline. I want it to be a quiet peaceful environment. And when my baby is born, I want him/her to be placed on me immediately. I want to start breastfeeding and not have to play defense trying to keep bottles and sugar water and pacifiers away.  No tests, no procedures. Just me and this person I have been waiting 9 months to meet. And then- I want to take a shower, and go to bed in my own bed with my whole family.

    Now I’m not saying this is impossible in a hospital setting, but it’s not likely and takes hard work (I told you I was taking the easy route!). Even if I found an OB who was up to date on evidence based care and agreed to support me, there is no guarantee that the hospital policy would be ok with it or that the rest of the staff would be supportive.  It could easily turn into an uphill battle just to let my body do what bodies have been doing for millennia. I don’t want to deal with that. I don’t need that kind of stress. So we will be having our baby right here in our house, attended by certified midwives. I know some people would freak out if they had to birth at home. To them, that would be the most stressful situation. That is why I firmly believe in supporting all women with all of their decisions- so that they can do what is best for them. The point is-everyone should be making that choice with all the available information. Not just some warped societal views or bad medical advice. So if you want more information- go find it. Start Googling the living crap out of everything you can think of. A wonderful place to start is birthwithoutfear.blogspot.com.  This website is pretty much nothing but birth stories. All kinds. Home, hospital, birth center, unassisted, vbac, cesarean, breech, you name it. Reading stories like these reveals birth for what it is- a normal, beautiful process. And you will be exposed to a lot of different types of the birth that you may not have even known existed. Watch “The Business of Being Born”, a documentary about the birth industry in the United States (this was Joey's first exposure to anything birth related, and as soon as the credits rolled, his first words were "So we are having our kids at home, right?"). Another resource I would recommend is the book “Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth” by Ina May Gaskin. It has two sections- the first is a collection of birth stories, the second is an in depth look at the process of childbirth. I suggest reading the second section first. The birth stories may be a little too far on the crunchy side for some people, and I don’t want anyone to get turned off or dismiss the book entirely. Read the second section. See what a non-medical model of childbirth looks like. Most of us are least familiar with the hospital-pitocin-epidural version. Balance out your perspective. Then, once you have read the second section, go back to the first.   Realize that these stories aren’t your only option, but they are a legitimate option. You don’t have to be some crazy homeless flower child to give birth to your baby without an entire hospital backing you up. You aren’t broken. You aren’t inadequate. YOU can do this.

    I thought about waiting to write this post until after the baby came. I know plenty of you are rolling your eyes because I’ve never actually given birth so what the hell do I know? I bet I’ll change my tune once those contractions start (even though if you have never had an unmedicated birth, you probably have no idea what normal contractions feel like since the pitocin  you were given at the beginning of labor artificially augmented your contractions making them much more painful)! First, shame on you for being so snobby. Second, why is it so important to you how my experience turns out? If you made an informed decision about what was best for you, you shouldn’t care what anyone else does. And last, I am very aware that plans may change. That’s fine. I am open to change. Just because I have a very specific birth plan in mind does not mean I cannot recognize when something needs to be adjusted. I just refuse to go into one of the most incredible, empowering experiences of my life with an expect-the-worst mentality. Do you really think I would put myself or my baby in jeopardy? Of course not. No mother would. Each mother is just making the decision that is right for her at that point in time. This is our decision.