Coming Out

In honor of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, I am going to briefly explain why this day has meaning to me.

After trying to conceive for about four months, my husband and I became pregnant in December of 2008. We were thrilled and immediately began making plans for our baby to arrive in September 2009, even giving a "womb name," Fievel, so that our little progeny could have an identity beyond "the baby". Then on February 18, 2009 I began to miscarry. Chris and I were devastated at the loss of our first pregnancy. Although we were only 9 weeks along, the loss of this pregnancy was also the loss of our dreams for this child, the loss of a chance to expand our family this year and the loss of our innocence-I now know in a profound way that yes, these things can and will happen to us.

I titled this post "Coming Out" because this has been my secret for the last 8 months. Not that I have tried to hide it, but there simply is not much of a safe space to talk about pregnancy loss in the public sphere. How do we bring this sort of thing up? When I see an old friend, how do I say "oh, and we lost our first pregnancy" as we are giving our life updates? In our language, there is not a term for a woman who has lost a child or pregnancy, there are no words for this creature I lost other than baby(which feels presumptuous, especially in conversation with those who have lost infants) or embryo(which I cannot bear to use). The Japanese have a word, Mizuko, which refers to the unborn who have died and translates to "water baby." So now I have Mizuko Fievel, who lived in me for less than 2 months, the focus of a myriad of dreams and hopes. The reason for my recent depression and withdrawal from the world. The namesake of the puppy my husband gave me for our anniversary.

I hope that with my public display of grief, the people in my life will become more aware of how common pregnancy loss really is. I hope that people will be more comfortable talking about it, and most importantly, have someone to talk to if they experience this sort of tragedy. Only after I miscarried did I hear about the miscarriages, still births and fertility struggles of the women in my life. These are not dirty little secrets and should not be treated as such.

So yes, please ask me questions. I would love a chance to talk about my pregnancy, my loss, and as always, my opinions.

Because I am pro-marriage

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Say no to phonebooks!

This is really cool! Ever get frustrated by all the phone books piling up at your home? Visit http://www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org/index.html and they will remove your name from the telephone company's mailing lists. You can always call to order a new phone book if you need one, or just use websites like www.yellowpages.com.

Over 500 million of these directories are printed every year, according to Yellow Pages Goes Green and few of them are recycled. Of course, the US telephone directory industry is worth $13.58 Billion dollars, which is why we all continue to receive so many obsolete items on our door step each year.

Make-up is killing our daughters.

ARGH!

OK that was melodramatic. but this is simply horrifying. The Environmental Working Group released a study stating that teens use an average of 5 more cosmetics daily than adult women. The study found 16 chemicals, from 4 families, in the bodies of 20 young women, including parabens, which were found in every girl. These chemicals are all hormone disruptors that have been linked to reducing fertility levels, breast cancer and obesity. This study only surveyed 20 teens and is obviously not a piece of massive scientific literature, but this does not change the fact that Federal health statutes do not require companies to test products or ingredients for safety before they are sold. This is not acceptable. We know that the chemicals in these products can enter our bodies, why are they not being regulated??? The media is damaging our girls' psyches by hyper-sexualizing them and then the cosmetic industry is not only profiting from it, but damaging their bodies as well.

The Radish and out-of-hospital birth

On Tuesday, I received an email from an editor of Radish Magazine. I am an avid reader of Radish, monthly healthy-living publication that focuses on eastern Iowa and western Illinois. The editor had been forwarded an email about a Friends of Iowa Midwives event that I am co-organizing this weekend. She is interested in our group and invited me to send her press releases about future events!

What is Friends of Iowa Midwives, you ask? In a nutshell, its a grassroots organization trying to promote women's rights to birth options. Now you might say "Wendy, what are you talking about? Women have lots of options in birth! Besides, why do you care, you've never given birth!"

Well, you would be right and you would be wrong. So here is a story.

Over the last two years I have learned a lot about pregnancy and birth. Within months of beginning my job, I noticed a disturbing trend. The young women I worked with would make a birth plan with me, but when we talk a week after the baby's birth, nothing went the way they wanted. I can understand that this happens occasionally, but every single client had something go wrong during birth that resulted in induction, c-section, epidural or some other unwanted intervention. Very few continued breastfeeding past one week. I happened to get a newsletter from a baby magazine featuring an article by Henci Goer. She mentioned a few books and movies addressing the problems in our maternity care system, including The Business of Being Born, which was being screened just a few weeks later. I went to the screening, and suddenly I was reading piles of books. I learned that 1/3 of all American births happen by cesarean section, even though the WHO recommends that the rate remain no higher than 15% of all births. Artificial induction of labor can lead to increased epidural use and c-sections. Epidurals, despite increasing the risk of c-section(and a variety of other problems) are used in over 60% of US births. There seems to be a domino effect, women get one intervention and the rest follow. The thing that I was most alarmed to learn is that we have the highest infant mortality rate among industrialized nations.

I began to realize how political this issue is. There is a movement that objects to the way that hospitals treat birthing women as though they are destined to need intense medical assistance, that they are incapable of having a successful birth without the assistance of obstetricians. In half of US states, it is illegal for Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) to attend births. Since most doctors and Nurse-Midwives chose not to attend out-of-hospita births, this leaves women without safe alternatives to hospital birhts.

I joined the email list for Friends of Iowa Midwives and when I heard that someone was starting a Quad Cities chapter, I volunteered to help out. Rebecca and I held our first event on Friday, a Red Envelope party, to send letters asking Iowa legislators to support out of hospital births, since there will be a bill this session to legalize and regulate CPMs.

I am really exited about this issue and may be writing about it again. I am particularly excited that we had a good turn out for our first(and thus, poorly publicized!) event, and that The Radish is interested!

Validation

Last month, I gave a presentation about Sexual Harassment to a local junior high school with a co-worker. We were able to see every student, by presenting to groups of 50 each of the 8 class periods. The focus of the presentation is to help kids understand that all those things their peers do are not just messing around, but genuine harassment.

Its a fun presentation but one where we never know if we made an impact. But today, my boss received a call from the dean of students at the junior high school. She called to discuss another program, but mentioned that Quincy & I did a great job with the sexual harassment presentation. In fact, several kids have stepped forward since then to report problems happening in gym class, which she implied they might not have done prior to our presentation. We may have made a difference!!!

By the way, I really love shoes.

Check this out!

http://www.tomsshoes.com/

History of birth control

I found this information very interesting...

1958, two doctors named John Rock and Gregory Pincus revolutionized contraception with the first clinical trials of oral contraceptives. Rock and Pincus decided that the pill would be more acceptable to women (and organizations like the Catholic Church) if it preserved women's natural menstrual cycle. So, they manufactured the pill to mimic a typical 28-day cycle. This is why many birth control packets contain three weeks worth of hormonal pills and one week of placebos or sugar pills. Withdrawal from the hormones on the fourth week triggers bleeding that's similar to menstruation. However this "withdrawal bleeding" is usually shorter and lighter than a regular period because the uterine lining hasn't been thickened.
According to many women's health experts, menstruation serves no biological purpose if a woman is on birth control. In fact, a woman can purposefully skip her period by omitting the placebo week and starting a new pack of pills, patch, or ring. Birth control manufacturers have caught onto some women's desire to have less frequent periods, and there are now several brands of the birth control pills on the market that don't have a placebo week.

I must confess that I wonder about the effect of not having a menstrual cycle on a woman's body. Sometimes I think that decisions are made before people really grasp the long-term consequences. Then again, I was raised Catholic, so maybe that's just the Pope talking.

Spring

The temperature yesterday reached 46 degrees. I got really excited and washed sheets today, so that I could hang them up on the clothesline. When I brought them down, they were damp and frozen, but I felt so good to be out there messing about with clothespins.

First time I thought of it that way...

http://www.cranstonherald.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7338&Itemid=32

Oh man. When I have a baby, she's totally getting a shirt saying that she's part of the local foods movement. AWESOME!

Doubt

I recently saw the film Doubt, starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams. This movie was really well done, the acting was fantastic, it exceeded my expectations. As implied in the trailer, Sr. Aloysius, played by Streep, is the principal of a Catholic school in 1964 and develops suspicions that Fr. Flynn, played by Hoffman, is developing an “inappropriate relationship” with a young male student. Throughout the film we never see anything conclusive, we don't know for certain who is guilty of which sin. The priest argues that the principal hates him because he is trying to bring new ideas into the church,to develop more personal and friendly relationships with parishioners and students. During one scene Fr. Flynn is at a table surrounded by 13 and 14 year old boys who are expressing their concerns about dating. What if a girl turns me down? What if all the girls turn me down? the priest explains that while a boy has the right to ask any girl out, the girls have the right to say no. the trick is not to take it to heart.

This scene is one that endeared the character to me. I think that young men do need role models beyond their fathers, men who can take an interest in them, take their concerns seriously and pass on whatever wisdom they can. This piece of wisdom particularly warmed me up, since I've noticed more and more young people struggle with this idea of "they have the right to say no". for more on this subject, see my next post. At any rate, it was easy for me to look at Fr. Flynn and say, yeah-this guy is trying to bring some humanity into the church, good for him! At the same time, I came of age during the recent sex abuse scandals in the catholic church, I went through the new trainings for volunteers and had a deep sense of paranoia instilled in me. Although the agency I work for has no policies on the issue, I am still very cautious about being alone with students or putting myself in any situation where I could be accused of something that would destroy my career. Many tools used by sex offenders are also tools I use to gain the trust of the young people I work with. The main difference is intent, and that I never try to break the relationships students have with other adults. But it is still enough to keep me nervous.

Having those concerns so much a part of myself, I also sympathized with Sr. Aloysius, who I gradually warmed to throughout the film. Streep did a fantastic job, of course, letting her character's little humanities peek through the cold exterior. This is a woman who cares for the people in her charge and takes her role as protector very seriously. She will not let the nuns in her care come to any harm and is determined that the students at her school develop the strength and discipline they need to survive as adults...we could use a little more of this attitude in our schools today.

In the end, I have my suspicions, but I do not know if Fr. Flynn was a pedophile, if Sr. Aloysius was a change-fearing schemer or if both were true. What I do know is that even we we are acting on the side of justice, when we take those big actions in order to do good, we never know for sure if it was the right choice. Those are the decisions that can haunt us forever.