Tuesday, February 24, 2009

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.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

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.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

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!

Thursday, February 12, 2009

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!!!

Friday, February 6, 2009

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.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

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.