My life as a sex-ed teacher

Coming Out

2009-10-14T21:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-20T12:36:00.000-07:00

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

Say no to phonebooks!

2009-02-24T14:56:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-02-17T14:12:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-14T16:16:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-12T09:55:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-02-10T07:57:00.000-08:00

Check this out!

http://www.tomsshoes.com/

History of birth control

2009-02-06T11:15:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-01T17:34:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-01-12T20:11:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-04T17:33:00.000-08:00

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.

They like me, They really like me!

2008-12-24T10:44:00.001-08:00

I visit a local middle school every week to meet with a small group of eighth graders, all of whom I adore, by the way. Last year I was at this school for two weeks in May, talking with their sixth graders for our Learning about Me program. I was there last week and as I left, there was a group of students standing by the front door waiting for their rides. One boy looked at me for a moment and said “Hey! You’re that sex-ed teacher aren’t you!” The rest of the students-most of whom were seventh graders I had taught last year- turned and looked and a few other kids said similar things. I stopped and talked with them for a minute and then went on my way.

I have to admit, I felt pretty cool.

Really?

2008-12-17T05:54:00.000-08:00

Time just announced their Person of the Year on the Today Show. To no one's surprise, it was President-Elect Barack Obama. The shows hosts asks what the President-Elect's reaction was to be given this honor...really? The man was just elected to be the President of his nation...and we expect him to clap and squeal at being named Time's Person of the Year? Particularly ridiculous when you consider that every President since Herbert Hoover
has been named Person of the Year at some point. Sigh.

These are my feelings about today's weather

2008-12-16T17:08:00.000-08:00

http://theducks.org/pictures/do-not-want-dog.jpg

Twitter

2008-12-02T15:22:00.000-08:00

This summer I attended a meeting where I heard a gentleman speak about a Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program in southern Illinois. They use MySpace to interact with the kids in their programs, and suddenly, a floodgate was opened. My boss was intrigued by the idea of using MySpace and I volunteered to set this up. In August we had a MySpace tutorial at my cubicle, where I showed 5 co-workers how to use the accounts I had created for them. I've been playing with ways to use the blog feature to keep kids thinking about the things we talk about in groups and really enjoying the ability to communicate with them in a more casual fashion than calling or writing them.

I'm also on a committee that organizes an annual conference for junior & senior high school students and by agreeing with another member that a website would be useful for our group, I became the website committee. I've now created a googlepages website, which I am pretty proud of, given my absolute lack of talent for this sort of thing. I've also purchased domain names and created MySpace and Facebook profiles for the conference and read dozens of articles about using social networking within nonprofit groups. Last month my boss volunteered me to join the website redesign committee for my agency and I'm thinking about how I am going to restructure my department's presence on MySpace next summer to make our staff available to every student that hears a presentation or attends a group(last year we served 1,356 through presentations and 539 through ongoing group services).

And now I've made a Twitter account. I'm not sure how well we will be able to use Twitter, either within the agency or the youth conference, but I plan to do lots of looking around and playing with my personal account in the next few weeks. I am just amused that I've become the go-to person in my office for this kind of thing, even in college, I was never a huge Facebook person and I didn't even own a computer until I was 20 years old and Chris gave me a hand-me-down machine that he'd put together.

So has anyone heard of a group that has successfully used these sites for non-profit agencies? Any tips or suggestions for me?

Oh those 6th graders...

2008-11-12T20:10:00.000-08:00

I realized today that my job involves two very sensitive topics: talking to kids about sex and telling parents how to raise their children. It is no wonder, then, that I am filled with adrenaline and nervous energy before every appointment and come home wiped out many nights . You'd think I'd get used to it, but nope, still agitated and flushed most of the time.

Last week was ... something. I did Learning About Me all week, although only for one class period.This is the program for 6th graders and it was fun, as usual. By the end of the week i was in love with the kids, I felt like i really knew them individually. The highlight of the week was Thursday.. At this point, we've talked about puberty and the kids are warming up, they usually begin tot realize that I will take them seriously by this point. We were talking about types of contraception, and the group was really fixated on whether a woman can get pregnant in specific scenarios. One young lady had just asked about homosexual couples and a boy in the back raised his hand. Thankfully, i walked back to his desk and he asked "what about if two men and a woman are having sex and one man is in the front and another is in the back, can she get pregnant?"
The other kids did not hear his question(they were still in a bit of an uproar about the idea of homosexuality) and honestly, I addressed only the minimum the question required. I usually pride myself on answering any and all questions truthfully and openly, but I don't usually get threesome questions asked to my face. I have gotten them before, but always on a piece of paper. The hardest part was the kid's sincerity, he was not asking to get a reaction out of me, but genuinely wanted to know. In case you were wondering, my answer was walking to the front of the room, shouting "OK, Brian asked a question about a woman getting pregnant during a very specific sex act and I want to explain this to you guys again." I got out my Female Reproductive System Poster(to the groans of the class) and pointed out that anytime sperm gets near a vagina, pregnancy can occur. I freaked them out with the old 'even if you don't have sex!" story and and got a debate started about whether sperm are alive. A successful diversion, I think.

"Summer is over and gone," they sang. "Over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying."

2008-10-27T20:42:00.000-07:00

Summer is officially gone. With it goes gardening season, the time of growing green things. The temperature is dropping everyday and I felt frozen precipitation on my face over the weekend. And so my first season as a home gardener has come to an end.

The potato crop was pathetic, my carrots were quite entertaining and I had a good tomato crop for my first year. In fact, my tomato plants were still blossoming last week! We will probably have frost tonight, but there are a number of green tomatoes left on the plants that I will try to collect tomorrow if they survive. I've successfully detached myself from the fate of the tomato plants, and even the oregano plant we bought at the farmer's market that is still gripping life with its last few leaves. But the lettuce that reseeded itself...I'm really worrying about.

Tonight I took an old sheet and tucked it over and around the 1" lettuce plants that have made a thick carpet across one of my beds. From what I've read, this will probably protect it from being ruined by the frost. I'm hoping to save it until I have time to transplant it into pots this weekend.

Why so much concern for things that I didn't even plant? Good question. All season, the lettuce has been my pet project. I was devastated when I discovered rabbits were chomping plants off at the stems. I was the proud parent, dragging zip lock bags of salad to coworkers and potlucks. And now I am nurturing the unplanned offspring of my plants which have long since moved on to the compost pile. I do not understand it, but I really love my lettuce plants.

Speaking of compost piles, my dad bought me a pitchfork for my birthday. I am freaking excited about this. Last week I turned the entire pile using a shovel. It was not fun. Although, I am happy to report that there is quite a lot of brown, crumbly material at the bottom of the pile(as well as some horrible ammonia-smelling parts, thanks to a miscalculated addition of lawn fertilizer. oops.)

Winter is coming on and now I will have time for more indoor projects. I am excited to finally use the sewing machine I received as a Christmas present and get back into reading. But I miss my garden already. Which is why I am planning to maintain indoor lettuce and cherry tomatoes and an active compost heap throughout an Iowa winter. Wish me luck.

My blog is the first result in a search for "my teacher darling"

2008-10-27T19:14:00.000-07:00

Why would you want to search for "my teacher darling" you ask? Well, I don't know for sure, but someone in Turkey does. That's right, Turkey!

StatCounter: one of the many items on my top ten fascinating things list that I would not know about if it were not for my amazing partner in crime, Chris. He somehow set my account up(I've tried to set it up with a project at work. 6 weeks later and it still isn't registering views) and now whenever someone looks at my blog, I get to stalk them! Sort of. I don't actually know who they are. But i can see how they found me, where they are from, how often they're coming back, etc.

Here's the breakdown of where you all are:

65	Iowa	United States
62	New York	United States
62	Illinois	United States
32	Washington	United States
20	-	-	-
16	California	United States
13	Missouri	United States
12	Ohio	United States
10	Florida	United States
7	Kentucky	United States
6	Maryland	United States
4	Wisconsin	United States
3	Texas	United States
3	Buenos Aires	Argentina
3	Ontario	Canada
2	Berlin	Germany
2	Tel Aviv	Israel
2	Nebraska	United States
1	Colorado	United States
1	Quebec	Canada
1	Sao Paulo	Brazil
1	District Of Columbia	United States
1	Louisiana	United States
1	Connecticut	United States
1	Arizona	United States
1	England	United Kingdom
1	Emilia-romagna	Italy
1	Minnesota	United States
1	Gauteng	South Africa
1	North Carolina	United States

From what I understand, the numbers represent pageloads, or views. Kind of. i think. but not individuals, at any rate.

I'm also on the first page of a google search for the phrases "raj patel sex ed" "what i am in your life"(which was just part of a sentence when I said it, but taken out of context, is sort of poetic) and "darling doggie" . This is probably not interesting to anyone except me. This blog is also on the 10th page for a search of "iowa teen pregnancy prevention programs" (someone in Ankeny was very determined...if you are still looking, let me know, I have connections!) It looks like people have found this blog while searching for information on breastfeeding teachers, sex with teachers, weekend sex, composting sex and "'psyche myself out' sex". there were a few looking for a combination of "homemade" "teachers" and "sex" (is homemade teacher porn really this popular?) and a few looking for breastfeeding support, especially for teen moms(La Leche League!)

Someone in Seattle looked at the blog 32 times between June and September. Thanks, whoever you are!!

For the most part, though, there were no referring links. People found me through Facebook, emails or the blogs of other amazing people(namely Christofer, Erin and Josh).

Anyway, now that I've consumed most of my evening by obsessively pouring over StatCounter entries(and writing about it as though it were fascinating) I should move on to other things. like cleaning my kitchen.

ER

2008-10-24T05:11:00.000-07:00

I watched ER last night(thanks Becky...) and there was an interesting situation going on with one of the characters. Dr. Gates has an adopted daughter around 14 years old who gets a tongue piercing. Throughout the episode Dr. Gates co-worker and girlfriend Sam is encouraging him to talk with Sarah, (after an intern explained that girls get tongue studs to "pleasure the boys.") Dr. Gates finally corners his daughter, who admits that her friends bet her to get the tongue piercing and says that she isn't having sex. He replies that he is 'here for her' and if she ever wants to talk about sex, she should come to him.

I kept muttering "he's doing it wrong, he's doing it wrong..." during the scene. Although I applaud ER for addressing teen sex and showing a parent who is willing to talk to their child, you don't put the ball in their court! You don't make it the child's job to open up this horribly awkward and scary conversation! That's why we call them the child and you the parent! It's your job to absorb all that weirdness and discomfort so that your child can feel safe enough to actually talk. Grr, television.

Survival

2008-10-08T19:25:00.000-07:00

Today was the first meat and potatoes day at my co-ed group of eighth graders. we are meeting weekly this year, but still during a twenty minute advisory period. Last week was canceled and the week before i wound up yelling at the kids because two of the new ones got into it(he called me fat, she told me to shut up, none of you should be talking! i was talking! i will turn this car around without ice cream!) So i went in with minimal expectations...and so they were greatly exceeded! The first half was paperwork catch up and the last ten minutes were "sexuality review." Which basically amounted to a rousing discussion of the changes experienced in puberty. One young lady responded "its when boys start wetting the bed again!" To which I replied "that's not exactly what happens. That is called a wet dream...anyone know what a wet dream is?" a young man, we'll call him Sam, replied "its when a guy ejaculates in his sleep." This may not seem like much to you, but you have to understand that Sam has been suspended 4 times this year(that I know of) and just looks like a baby bad ass. The other boys were doing things like yelling "CUM!" (though i will admit, it was usually yelled as a reasonable response to a question) or making volcanic hand gestures. Or both at the same time. To the point where I got up and closed the door(and apologized to the 6th grader at her locker outside). So when Sam gave this matter of fact answer using accurate terminology, I turned to him, gave him a high five and said "Wow Sam, you could totally run this class!" It was hilarious. And just what i needed. I usually feel pretty freaked out heading to this school because sessions rarely go well(mostly due to the limited time). We're going on a field trip in a couple of weeks, so I needed a boost before taking them out in the community.

Announcement: Human Trafficking Conference

2008-10-04T07:35:00.000-07:00

Fifth Annual Social and Economic Justice Conference
"Global and Local Perspectives on Human Trafficking"
Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2008
Rogalski Center on the St. Ambrose University campus

Human trafficking is a human rights crisis that reflects the dark side of globalization. Participants in this conference will explore global and local perspectives on trafficking in order to seek gender-responsive solutions that focus on empowering the survivors and prosecuting the traffickers. The conference goals are to: educate participants on global and local perspectives on human trafficking; assist service providers and others interested in human rights to recognize human trafficking, empower survivors, and refer them to appropriate agencies; and, to continue the dialogue with policy makers to strengthen Iowa's laws on human trafficking and to support international statutes against trafficking to ensure that traffickers are prosecuted.

Conference Schedule

1:30 p.m.
Welcome

1:45 pm
Panel Presentations http://web.sau.edu/socialjustice/awsjspeakers.htm

3:15 p.m.
Break

3:30 p.m.
"Cargo: Innocence Lost" Film Presentation
<http://web.sau.edu/socialjustice/film.htm> or
"How Can Our Community Help Meet the Social, Economic, and Legal Needs of Victims of Human Trafficking?" Workshop Session <http://web.sau.edu/socialjustice/workshop.htm>

5:30 p.m.
Dinner ($15 charge)
or
"Cargo: Innocence Lost" Film Presentation <http://web.sau.edu/socialjustice/film.htm> (second showing)

7:30 p.m.
Keynote Lecture delivered by Ninotchka Rosca <http://web.sau.edu/socialjustice/awsjspeakers.htm>

We would especially like to invite youth to a Student Activist Networking dessert that will be part of the conference from 6-7pm in one of the breakout rooms of the Rogalski Center ballroom.
This will be a great opportunity for young activists to network with other youth in the area about an extremely important human rights issue! For more information, or to register, please contact:

Katy A. Strzepek
Director of Women's Studies
St. Ambrose University
518 W. Locust St.
Davenport, IA 52803
563-333-6113
StrzepekKatyA@sau.edu

Interactive Activity Time

2008-09-19T09:28:00.001-07:00

This made me giggle. Anyone know why?

Oh the tangled webs we weave

2008-09-10T14:00:00.000-07:00

When creating public policy, even the best intentions often have dire consequences for those we are trying to serve. Here is a great example of the difficulty we have in predicting the outcomes of our actions.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/01/3/gr010305.html

So what do you think? If I have a young girl confide in me that her partner is dramatically older than her, or a teen mom reports that the baby's father is 30, how do I proceed? While a break in trust with me may not prevent these young ladies from receiving reproductive health services, it may help them become a little more distrustful of professional service providers, it may make them a little more ashamed of their relationships and eat away at their self-esteem. If I were to make a report and it were acted on, it will certainly destroy the relationship I have with the victim, who will probably not come to me with confidences in the future. This dilemma is a recurring one in social work, especially for the borderline situations. When do you go to the parents? When do you call someone out on destructive behavior? Where is the line between friend and social worker, listener and teacher?

Hello again

2008-08-19T20:25:00.000-07:00

Well its been awhile. I haven't written in quite a while and, more to the point, I haven't done much introspection in a while. This summer has been a strange thing. I've been less busy and felt more frantic. I've once again realized that my mental well being is tied closely to my level of "accomplishment" and when I let myself get behind on things, it has a massive impact on how I deal with life. I have a line by George Bernard Shaw taped up in my cubicle at work "A man learns to skate by staggering about making a fool of himself. Indeed, he progresses in all things by making a fool of himself" I try and try to remember that its ok to be imperfect, but it sure is hard. And more to the point, that realizing I'm imperfect should be a catalyst for working harder, not giving up and taking a nap.

So anyway, now that the school year is starting up, I'll be posting more and going back to write some previously posts that I started but didn't complete. Good luck to me.

Reducing the Stigma

2008-07-03T07:49:00.000-07:00

I had a thought about STIs recently. During our presentations, we use a little bit of scare tactics when discussing STIs. We talk about symptoms(You know cold sores you get on your mouth? Yeah, its a similar idea...on your genitals. Anybody ever have a wart on their hand? How'd the doctor remove it? Freezing, burning, cutting? Yep, that's how they deal with genital warts too...on your genitals. neat huh?), living with an STI(how would you like to explain to your mom how you got gonorrhea of the throat?) and long term consequences(picture telling your partner that you have to use a condom for the rest of your life because of a one night stand). Now we aren't making any of this stuff up, its all based in fact. And the theory is that if kids actually think about STIs in these terms, they'll hopefully take the whole thing more seriously and AT LEAST use a condom if they chose to have sex.

But here's my concern: By overemphasizing how awful STIs are and how appalling it would be to explain that diagnosis to a parent or partner, are we increasing the stigma associated? I have had the humbling experience of accompanying someone to the emergency room when they found out they had an STI on more than one occasion. In addition to the awful pain experienced with the symptoms, these young women had a really difficult time coming to terms with the phrase "I have an STD." Realistically, STIs are just infections. they are just infections by bacteria or viruses in people's bodies, the same as strep throat or ear infection. But there is still a HUGE stigma associated with them, largely because we all believe the myth that only "certain kinds of people" get them. Of course this isn't true and most of us know that intellectually. But you hear that someone has an STI and instantly question their morality, who they are.

I am concerned that I am perpetuating this stereotype that causes people with a disease to be treated badly. The purpose is to protect kids, but at what cost?

Fluff

2008-07-02T20:14:00.000-07:00

WARNING: THERE IS NO INTELLECTUAL MATERIAL IN THIS POST!

Unfortunately, there has not been much going on in my life that has led me to think many thoughts beyond my own superficial life. So stop reading now if you are looking for anything thought provoking.

Now then. Last Thursday I visited my friend Katie, (now known as MRS. Katie)who, being an avid reader, sent me home with an enlongated reading list. I started with the book Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer, which apparently is the first in a best-selling series. I stayed up reading until 5:30am that night and have now completed the 3 books in the series that have been released, as well as spent hours on the internet reading as much as I can about author, series, movie that is coming out, etc.

I LOVE THIS SERIES! I have a confession to make. I adore fantasy novels. I always feel a little ashamed of that, like I should be reading nonfiction, or at least the classics. But I love reading fiction, it's my way to escape the world(hey, I don't drink, watch soap operas or play video games, a girl's gotta have some fluff somewhere!) Last summer I tried to read some more traditional fiction. I picked up one of Judy Blume's novels geared towards adults, which I had heard good things about, but returned it within a couple of days. The story was all about a divorced woman hooking up with the ex of one of her friends, and I found myself stressing out about the emotional trauma she was doing to her kids. I deal with enough drama at work, I can't handle it as entertainment. But if the character who is treating her man badly is also a vampire, or her partner himself is a werewolf, or they are all humans who live in a world that doesn't really exist, somehow I don't get so caught up in trying to fix their mistakes. In fact, these may be the only people I interact with that I don't have to constantly fight my compulsion to fix or help. wow, that's a scary realization.

So anyway, I wanted to write about this because I have been noticing how obsessive I become when I am reading a new series that I really like. It is almost like being in high school and having a crush on someone...I find my thoughts returning to the story constantly, I find little pockets of time to devour a few more pages. When I finish a book I get online and talk to other people about the books for weeks. I can't concentrate on or get excited about anything else until I've finished the story. It is just really interesting to me how I continue to experience that thrill of excitement, it is just the focus of the obsession that has changed. It happens with other things too, occasionally a project at work or something will light a little fire, but I only get crushes on fantasy novels these days. weird.

Ah, so much to look forward to. I have Laurell K Hamilton's latest release to read next, then Stephanie Meyer's last installment comes out in August and Anne Bishop, my all time favorite author, comes out with a new Blood novel in March that I am already agonizing over. sigh. I am nerdy.

PROCRASTINATION

2008-06-25T21:26:00.000-07:00

I'm having an odd week. I keep finding myself on Myspace, then feeling guilty about it. I'm mostly getting on there to see if I have emails from some long lost comrades that I recently found, but for whatever reason, I associate Myspace with 13-year-olds. Now, facebook is completely acceptable(in short doses) but no one of my maturity level(arrogance level) should be Myspacing.

I'm just frustrated because I wanted to get caught up on things at work this week and got farther behind instead. I had no access to my computer yesterday and was at a training for a large part of today. I'm leaving town at noon tomorrow to be matron of honor at the wedding of a childhood friend (Yay Katie Beth!) and won't be back until Sunday afternoon, so I'm getting quite anxious about the amount of work not getting done. I'm still so fixated on getting things accomplished that I psyche myself out and have evenings like tonight where i'm so worried about my lack of productivity that i spend 6 hours piddling around.

Sorry friends, this blog is quite the downer. I may not actually post it. I'm not saying anything of importance except that I'm crabby, and no one needs more negativity in their lives. Hmm...

The Social Action Movie Night went well last friday. I was at the church until 11pm talking with some people about the state of the world, which was enjoyable. I'm now thinking about how to make myself more accessible as an Ally, especially when I'm working with the young people this fall. I'm considering getting a (tasteful and professional) lapel pin, maybe a rainbow ribbon or flag, to wear during presentations and groups. Thoughts? All you lurkers out there: I know you're reading because I use StatCounter! Make a comment! Let there be interaction!

Fruits of my labor

2008-06-18T19:59:00.000-07:00

Today I had my first experience of eating my own home grown food. I plucked 3 leaves off of my best producing lettuce plant, wrapped them in a napkin and put them on a cheese sandwich at lunch. Unfortunately, my lunch happened in 10 minutes at my desk, while preparing a presentation on birth control for a group of teen parents. So I didn't savor the lettuce. But I did show it off to a few people. My lettuce is really beautiful, I'm going to add some pictures later this week. My peas are podding and potatoes are blooming. Its so exciting!!

Work today was crazy. I had to call DCFS(Department of Child & Family Services) to make a child abuse allegation about a client. This is always good for the working relationship. I also went to a staffing (a meeting where everyone working with a family gets together and makes a game plan) and the mom showed up 40 minutes late and drunk(like comedy movie drunk-hair sticking up, red lipstick smeared across the face). She is someone i had a lot of hope for, but she seems like she is not really ready for sobriety. She desperately wants to stop drinking, but isn't dealing with her mental health issues and has no support system, so when something bad happens she just starts drinking again. Its like she can't help it. But that doesn't matter, she can't have her baby if she can't stay sober(Not that I get to make that call, thank the Goodness). I told my boss today that I can feel myself getting more jaded as the week progresses. I am learning a lot but these are the lessons that occur as you build layers over your heart. Being a social worker does not always line up with my idea of a good person. I want to have complete trust in the goodness of the people i come across and I'm learning not to trust them at all. It is hard to know what the right thing is in this situation. I talked with this particular client yesterday and she tried to turn the phone call into a conversation blaming other people for her situation and tearing them down, and I got really hard with her, saying "This is not what I am in your life for, to complain about this woman. We need to focus on You . You messed up pretty big time this week and its going to take a lot of work to fix this" etc. My bosses were very supportive of putting on my "mean wendy hat" which never gets worn and I know that this woman did not need someone to listen to her pity party saying "oh yeah your life is so bad, i totally see why you got drunk" but its still hard to see myself getting jaded. Not that I'm really that hard, I have to laugh at myself for being worried about it, but I know its a gradual change and its scary that i see it starting.

After a short step back: I know that i am a chronic people pleaser. maybe this is not so much getting jaded as it is letting go of my need to be liked in favor of saying what needs to be said to genuinely benefit someone. I truly believe that love is doing what is best for people, not what they want, but how arrogant is that to think i know what is best for people? Why did i chose such a complex field? I should be in a profession with a straightforward manual, with only one way to do it right.

In other news I talked to a lot of neighbors tonight. Dorothy escaped and as Chris was carrying her home(a hilarious sight I have to say) Arlene next door was in the yard, so I talked with her and her daughter Gail who has foster dogs(how cool is that!)Then Natalie across the street was outside and Chris and I had ice cream with her when the ice cream truck went by. I was taking out the garbage and our neighbors across the alley had their garage open and I ran across to introduce myself like the nerd that I am. Cassie and Mark(i think), who are around our age and have two small kids and don't know a lot of people either. I am really excited, I am making friends! Or at least potential friends. AND my new friend Kasey and I are going to the Ani Difranco concert next month! AND my friend Traci may be moving to town! OK, good, focusing on my well developing personal life has distracted me from my somewhat depressing professional life.

No news

2008-06-12T23:29:00.000-07:00

Well, I lied. Things did not go back to normal on June 1. Now I'm just busy with boring things-catching up on paperwork, mostly. But I still feel like I'm racing around with too much to do. Maybe July will be better.

One fun thing I am doing is revising curriculum and making plans for changes to next year's programs. We are looking at adapting a high school program for a junior high program and I was talking to my boss about it. "This looks great!" I said. "Maybe just a little less sex." "Uh, no Wendy, we need to have plenty of sex, we're going to be hearing all about that at our next meeting with the state." "OK, we'll have plenty of sex then." She didn't laugh, but I thought this was hilarious. The fact that I get to say this kind of stuff still brings me a lot of joy.

Last weekend I attended a retreat sponsored by the Reclaiming Moral Values Forum of Progressive Action for the Common Good of the Quad Cities. The retreat was at the Our
Lady of the Prairie Retreat House, which I had never been to before. It was a good opportunity for me to start thinking about that part of my life again, which i haven't for a while. It was not as in-depth spiritually as what I would have liked, but then that is hard to do when you aren't coming to the topic with a common faith tradition. I met the pastor of our local Unitarian church, as well as someone who is a member. I am planning to check it out one of these Sundays.

I also met some good people, and am feeling enthusiastic about getting involved. Caroline, who is the PACG Organizer, coordinates a monthly Social Action movie night, which I've volunteered to help with. I picked out this month's title-"for the Bible Tells me so." I'm excited to possibly have a place to go and do some work, because i know that i don't do any when left to my own devices. I guess that's not altogether true. I've been doing a lot of changes in my personal life this year, but its time for me to go get active in the broader world, and that is easier to do within a supportive group. I went to a Peace Vigil that another PACG group has on Thursday afternoons. I've been wanting to do that since I found out about it in March, of course today, my first time attending, we had a major rainstorm. But it was really great, we got a lot of honks and waves and I found out that someone I work with is a member of the Peace Forum. I am hoping to make it a regular Thursday event.

So I guess there is some news, just nothing work related. Thats ok, time for some personal development, i guess.

Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month

2008-05-12T18:47:00.001-07:00

Well I'm feeling way too tired to blog(which is why I haven't in quite a while) but my alternative is folding laundry, so here I am. My boss has been making comments all year about how busy the end of the school year is, but I just didn't believe her. I believe her.

May is Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month and to celebrate, my agency had a press conference last Wednesday. We had some awesome press coverage, including 2 local TV stations, Channel 4 and Channel 8. We also had a decent article in the Quad City Times and I've been told we were mentioned on 2 local radio stations. It was pretty darn exciting. I hope that people use it as an opportunity to talk to the kids in their lives about relationships, sex and boundaries. (Hint, Hint! Stop reading this and go talk to your kids!)

The issue really is a big one, despite the common perception that it is not any more. The teen birth rate has gone down for the last 15 years or so, but from 2005-2006(most recent figures available), the national rate rose. No one knows for sure if this is a fluke or beginning of a turn around, but either way, its an indicator that we have to keep fighting to educate our young people and empower them to make good choices. I believe that in fighting against teen pregnancy, I'm also fighting poverty, disenfranchisement and drug abuse. 60% of teen moms drop out of school, 75% of them wind up on welfare or other government assistance and their children's futures are even more bleak. They are twice as likely to deal with abuse or neglect, their sons twice as likely to do prison time and daughters three times as likely to be teen moms, when compared to children born to older parents. WE HAVE TO STOP THIS CYCLE. all of these issues are interrelated, we have to help kids avoid starting on the path of bad choices.

In other news, I gave a full day of workshops on Sexual Harrassment to 7th & 8th Graders today, will be leading a discussion & viewing of the movie "Juno" tomorrow, attending a conference in Des Moines on Thursday and going on 3 field trips next week. Also had a file review last week(meaning ALL paperwork had to be up to date...those who know me are shuddering or laughing), distributed posters for TPP month to over a dozen schools and agencies, our basement flooded(again) yesterday and I've been having my "normal" workload of home visits and Survival groups. So please do forgive me if I have ignored any emails or phone calls, I'll be back to normal operations in June. I swear.

Food Crisis

2008-05-06T07:05:00.000-07:00

We've all been hearing about the food crisis going on in the world, and its been pretty easy to ignore here in Iowa. Yesterday as I was driving to work, I was listening to On Point, a radio show on NPR, that was discussing the food crisis. One of the guests, I believe it was Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, told the story of a farmer in India who had taken out a loan to drill for a well on his property. Unfortunately, the well was dry, so he took out another loan, now more desperate for money to pay back the previous debt. This well was also dry. This went on a few times until the farmer despaired, mixed a farm chemical with water and drank it after his wife and children had gone to bed one night. He died, all for a farm loan of around $350 USD.

My husband and I bought a playstation 3 last weekend. It cost $400. I cried on the way to work yesterday.

Birth

2008-05-02T21:20:00.000-07:00

One of my clients in the Pregnancy & Parenting program is having a baby today. I talked with her yesterday and she was on her way to see her doctor. She said she'd call me back to let me know what was going on...and I never heard from her. Although she's only 17, she's really good about calling me back. So I called to check in today and had a hilarious conversation:

"Hi, is Sally there?" "Uhh...no...she's at the hospital!!" said the male voice. "Well, this is Wendy from Bethany, I just wanted to check in." "OH! Yeah, she went in last night and they gave her something for the contractions, so it'll be sometime today!" So she is literally having a baby today.

I don't normally get to be this involved. Frequently I will get a call a week after the fact and hear "I had the baby, I'm not breastfeeding, it sucked, come over whenever you want." But "Sally" has been a wonderful young woman to work with, she's gone to classes at the hospital, a la leche league meeting, etc. She's really been keeping me in the loop and is accepting of my help, which is great. I'm just so excited to be a part of people's pregnancies, at whatever level. I love that my two programs are so complementary, I have learned a lot about reproductive health in the last year. I am not only a sexpert, but know a lot about pregnancy and babies too! I've gotten really interested in the alternatives to the high intervention birth, which is the trend in the US. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 1 in 3 babies in the United States is delivered by cesarean section. Women frequently give birth with epidurals for pain relief, doctors induce labor with pitocin and break the woman's water if things aren't moving quickly enough. I'm not saying that the medical field is out to get women or anything like that, but I do feel that we are moving in a dangerous direction in this country. Women no longer just have babies, everything is highly scheduled. It has been very interesting reading about the history of childbirth, the changing roles of doctors and midwives and other trends.

I try to encourage my clients to breastfeed and make up a birth plan in advance. I don't push my own beliefs about medication, but I do push things like rooming in with the baby, which research has shown to improve bonding and breastfeeding. I dont care if they get an epidural or are induced, I just want to make sure that they are able to talk to their doctors and have their opinions validated.

Anyway, that got way off topic. All I wanted to mention was how thrilled I was today when I got to talk to this client's dad while his grandbaby was being born.

Oh dear

2008-05-02T15:37:00.001-07:00

My Hubby and I at Dinner

My dad's fiance emailed me this picture from his birthday a few weeks ago. We had all gone out to dinner after work on a friday night(a real thank goodness the week is over kind of friday) and I am seriously concerned that this is what my face looks like in repose. How often am I lost in thought and scaring away my coworkers?? Do I look like this when I'm listening to clients tell me about their babies? 8th graders telling me about their love lives? EEK!

On a personal note

2008-04-28T19:22:00.000-07:00

What does it mean when I stalk my friends on facebook and feel depressed and left out instead of happy and nostalgic. There are some people, who I have not seen in a year, who I can read their blogs or whatever and miss them, but feel love and excitement for what they are doing in their thrilling lives. But I just read some stuff on the good-old facebook and mostly feel like crying.

I replaced some friends on my speed dial over the weekend. College friends who I still care about, but never talk to anymore. It would have been better if I'd been replacing them with new and exciting friends, but I wasn't. I don't have a lot of hope for acquiring those new and exciting friends either.

Don't get me wrong, there are some people at work who I really like and its great being closer to my family and high school friends. I've seen my mom and dad a lot lately, which has been wonderful. But I felt really connected to some of my college friends, especially last year. With a place like Iowa State, I really only had to hang out with people I liked. So the ones I stayed connected with are the ones that I have a lot in common with. Like philosophies and dreams, not just place of employment or a hobby or two.

But I'm not really friends with those people anymore. That's the truth of the matter. Glorified acquaintances with a good past, I guess. But it sucks and it hurts. I'm not usually lonely here, but I guess tonight might be a mourning night for friendships that just didn't last.

How to be inclusive

2008-04-28T15:30:00.001-07:00

In an effort to make an already uncomfortable topic more comfortable to any LGBT students who may be in the classes I teach, I try to use gender and orientation neutral language as much as I can. Sex ed is always an awkward class, but if you are of a minority and the facilitator is speaking as though you don’t exist, it would be even worse. I always use the term “partner” and try to mention “life partner” every time I mention a husband or wife.

Today I was doing our high school presentation “Sex & It’s Consequences” for 2 classes of freshman health students. I realized that many of the little “activities” we do are strongly reinforcing heterosexism. During a discussion about pregnancy, I pick out 1 girl who, for the purposes of discussion, just found out she’s pregnant, and one boy who is her ‘boyfriend’. I ask the other girls how they feel about her and the other boys if they’d date her, demonstrating how isolated and alone teen moms become. I think it is an important illustration, but it points out the fact that the girls would be her friend and the boys her partner.

In another example, I ask the boys what kind of peer pressure they get to have sex, from friends and girls. Then I ask the girls the same question. This reinforces stereotype of boys as horn dogs, but I try to break it down and discuss it. “Boys, you have my respect. Our society expects you to be be pursuing sex constantly while we expect girls to say no for a while. If you chose not to have sex, its really hard!” BUT during this discussion there is a lot of talk about what pressure you get from the opposite sex….and the opposite sex is just implied to be the gender pursuing romance.

I did a little research on inclusive language and the only things I really found were discussing using "partner" instead of girlfriend/boyfriend. But I know that my assumptions that everyone is heterosexual go much deeper. Now I have to decide my priorities. Do I sacrifice these valuable parts of my presentation, because they aren't inclusive? Do I try to alter them, making it painfully obvious that I'm including LGBT students? Do I leave it alone? This one is sitting on the back burner for a while, I think.

I have good Self-Esteem

2008-04-24T07:22:00.001-07:00

As a part of our 6th grade program, we spend a whole day talking about self-esteem. Today I realized that I have really good self-esteem right now. I'm happy. This may seem like an odd thing to say, but I think it bears announcing. I haven't always had good self-esteem, in fact I think that I may have had bad to mediocre self-esteem for most of my life.

But lately, I feel like things are really going well. I adore my job. My husband and I are doing really well, we are having a lot of fun and getting along beautifully. My relationship with both of my parents is in an excellent place, which has never before been true. Most importantly, I'm accomplishing a lot of goals. Very small minor goals, but its almost like my ideal self and my real self are getting much closer together. (It is generally understood that a person's self-image is made up of 3 parts: the ideal self-who i wish i was, the public self-who i think other people see me as, the real self-who i really see myself as). In the past, I was such a perfectionist that I set my ideal self up as an impossibility and perceived my real self as much worse than it truly was. But now, I'm appreciating the small victories I make, the small steps I take to becoming the person I wish I was. I am also realizing that I will never be the perfect activist, social worker, wife, simple living, carbon neutral super woman of my dreams. I realize that all the things I'm working towards are works-in-progress and always will be. That part of being a good christian/environmentalist/life-partner is the journey of it, that I will always be looking for one more way to get better at it, to do more.

People think that being happy means a constant state of feeling good. This is why none of us believe we are happy. I truly feel that I am happy and content with my life right now. I still have days where I want to strangle my husband and quit my job(violently). But when I stop and think about my life, I am filled with a warm joy through my body and I realize that my life is very very good.

LAM

2008-04-22T20:38:00.000-07:00

I am done teaching LAM for the year! I am also exhausted and sick. I started this blog because so many things were happening that I thought were funny or important and wanted a place to record them. I hope to be able to look back after I've been doing this for 10 years and am jaded and tired, then remember what it was like to be fresh faced and naive. But I've been so incredibly busy these last few weeks, at work and at home. So I haven't recorded anything. And I don't even feel motivated to go back and record anything. Sorry self. I will say that a student from 2 weeks ago saw me at Subway and shouted "Hi Wendy!!" and waved, so I felt pretty great that she was comfortable enough to talk to me in public. I also had a girl from a class call me and ask what to do if her boyfriend pressured her for sex without a condom, as her last boyfriend did. I answered her questions, thanked her for calling, then my heart broke a little bit.

Overall, it was a wonderful 2 weeks, it just wiped me out.

Lettuce

2008-04-22T20:37:00.000-07:00

I had 29 seedlings that I transplanted into individual containers on Sunday. I'd left them outside after transplanting and after a few days most of them looked terribly wilted and dead. I brought them inside Wednesday night, but had given up on them, believing that I'd lose most of them.

Today I went to water and in the container that hold a definitely dead seedling are 2 new sprouts! I know this isn't surprising as there were probably more seeds that just hadn't started yet, but the imagery is beautiful and made me so happy this morning. I looked around and actually have 4 new sprouts! Hooray, I will have lettuce this summer!!

A really good day

2008-04-20T20:36:00.000-07:00

I am so proud! I PLANTED today! I spent all day outside, planting seeds of carrots, onions, tomatos, scallions, basil, oregano and onions. I also transplanted 30 lettuce seedlings into individual containers. It was such a good day, I felt really content and proud that I finally just got this done. I also got clothes on my new clothesline and just had an all around great day.

My seeds!

Lettuce Seedlings!

Darling Doggie

2008-04-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

When I arrived home yesterday, I discovered that Dorothy, my german shepard, had vomited water chestnuts, carrot slices and q-tips all over my bedspread. Today the content was less diverse, but equally disgusting. I am tired of washing my sheets, but am pleased to say that the homemade laundry soap is meeting even this gross-tacular challenge.

Also, today was the assembling and first use of our push reel lawn mower. My darling husband assembled it for me (as well as installing a clothesline! Oh joyous day!). We had decided that mowing would be my job since I wanted the push reel mower, but, as with many new toys, he was eager to try it out and ended up mowing most of the yard(sweet!). My verdict: Pushing this machine is almost identical to using the push style gas mower of my childhood. Hills are a little tricky, but otherwise the difficulty is no different. The benefits: only using my energy, so quiet that Chris and I could talk as I mowed, no stinky fumes, better for the grass. I love it! Even the doubtful hubby said "What a good idea you had!"

6th graders: Hilarious and poignant

2008-04-15T18:46:00.000-07:00

This week and last week I have been presenting "Learning About Me," a 5 day program for 6th graders. We discuss Self-Esteem, Decision-Making, Puberty, Sexuality, STIs, Contraceptives and Consequences of Sexual Behavior.

I have a million wonderful anecdotes from the last week, but at the minute I am too busy typing up the anonymous questions about sex from this week's groups. The students are encouraged to write any questions they may have about sex, puberty, relationships, growing up, etc. I am always shocked at what some of them know(suffice it to say that I need a glossary of porn terms to answer at least 1 question every time) and many of them crack me up ("is it good to beat ur meat.") This week I got a few personal questions, in the vein of "my boyfriend is wanting to have sex without a condom, what do i do" and "my 14 yr old cousin is having sex, what does she do if she gets pregnant?"

Spending time with these wonderful young people, I see how very young they really are, regardless of how worldly and jaded they may also be. It breaks my heart that any of them are struggling with these questions and I pray that I can help a few avoid getting into bad situations.

Weekend Update

2008-04-07T06:15:00.000-07:00

I feel like I worked really hard this weekend and didn't get anything done. Chris had a good friend in town and they spent a lot of time in our basement making music(at one point we had a full drum set, 2 guitars, a bass and a keyboard down there). Assorted people were coming in and out of the house to participate in that, plus some of my relatives came up to see the house and visit. So I spent the weekend cleaning, buying ink cartridges, moving drums, printing lyrics, fetching drinks and somewhere in there trying to think about my own weekend projects. The laundry for the week never got started, let alone done, but it was a good weekend.

Chris became quite the handyman in the midst of all this. I wanted to build an enclosure for the extra leaves and other brown materials, but I was having some trouble. Chris came out and did some very fancy work with a rope,hammer and nails. He also repaired our screen door and dealt with the mildew we discovered on our window sill,with nothing but moral support from me. Yay Husband!

I guess there isn't much else interesting to report except that the composting is well underway. We cleaned out the fridge and sadly had A LOT of kitchen scraps to add. The trashcan was also full, although it was entertaining to watch Dorothy sit patiently, certain that I was making a feast for her, only to panic when I took it outside. Poor dog.

Breastfeeding

2008-04-04T19:09:00.000-07:00

I don't just do Pregnancy Prevention, 20 % of my job is a home visiting program called "Pregnancy & Parenting Support Services." Most of my clients are teen moms who are pregnant for the first time and need a support person to give them information, but I've worked with women with older children also. One of my clients had a baby on Monday. She had been adamant at our pre-natal meetings that she planned to breastfeed. We even attended a La Leche League(LLL) Meeting so that she could ask questions and meet the leaders before her son was born. I had hoped that this would help her feel more comfortable calling them for help if she had trouble after the birth.

I talked with her for the first time today by phone. We talked about some other things, then I asked how breastfeeding is going. She said not well, she's already using a bottle and it hurts when he latches on unless she uses a breast shield. I asked if she'd called anyone from WIC or LLL and she said she'd had TWO lactation consultants visit while she was in the hospital and one was rude and the other did not provide any help. She said she was going to talk to her doula about it as she is also a lactation consultant.

I am frustrated about 2 things. The first is that she was visited by lactation consultants in the hospital and they did not help her. Nursing should NOT hurt if it is being done right, how could these women not have helped her latch on properly? or scheduled a follow up if they saw that it wasn't working or SOMETHING! Their job is to make sure moms are successful at breastfeeding! This girl had a doula for goodness sake, if she can't get support, who can?

My other frustration is that I see this all the time. Girls are determined to breastfeed and when I talk to them after the birth they've already given up. What is happening? Are they being discouraged in the hospital? Are they failing to understand that it is difficult and just takes time for baby and mom to learn what they're doing? Something is not adding up. I am not much help, having never breastfed anyone, so when they call me all I can do is tell them to call a professional. But they don't. Not that I blame them, they've just had a baby for goodness sake, I know making phone calls is not at the top of the priority list. But why isn't the hospital taking better care of them?

A coworker that I complained to today had some great suggestions about teaming up with LLL to try to get postnatal check-ins scheduled before the birth instead of waiting for problems and expecting the frustrated moms to call. But I'm still frustrated.

This is a continuous problem and with each new client I try to be more firm in explaining how hard it is, I try to hook them up with the resources as early as possible, and the outcomes continue to be the same.

Composting!

2008-04-01T05:11:00.000-07:00

For the last month or so I've been trying to find used wooden pallets to build a compost bin. Yesterday I finally tracked some down at the local hardware store and on the way home Chris said "Why don't you just use the cement trashcan enclosure?" GENIUS!! So now I have a compost bin and an enclosure for extra leaves.

So today, April Fool's Day, begins my adventures in composting. I like specific instructions when I undertake projects, and most of what I've heard and read has been in the vein of " Just do it, you can't mess it up!" These people are wildly underestimating my abilities to mess things up. But we'll see. At least I'll get the Ziploc full of old salad/vegetable peelings out of my freezer.

No Safety from STIs

2008-03-28T11:09:00.000-07:00

I've been researching Sexually Transmitted Infections(STIs) today and it's making me grumpy. Many diseases are asymptomatic, yet doctors only test for them when you have symptoms. For example, Herpes. They only test if you have a lesion(they take a culture from the lesion and have it tested for the virus.) But if you've never had an outbreak, you won't be tested and you will pass it on to your partner. If you are concerned that you have been exposed, you can ask your doctor for a blood test that looks for antibodies to the virus, but many of the tests available are not reliable. Many give false positives for HSV-1(oral herpes or cold sores) or even chicken pox, which is in the same virus family. There could aslo be a false negative, since some people's bodies do not produce antibodies as quickly as others. Unless you ask for a specific test, most doctors will not automatically test for most STIs. Since teens(and adults) are not experts on sexual health, they assume that their doctor is watching for these conditions and tell their partners that they have no STIs. And its even true, as far as they know.

As an educator, this fills me with frustration. We warn kids to use condoms, but even when used perfectly, they're only 90% effective and less for things like warts and herpes that are transmitted through skin to skin contact, not body fluids. We say go tell your doctor that you've become sexually active, but the doctors assume that they are ok unless they have symptoms.

Even the things we tell kids to do to be safe (Use condoms, get tested, be honest with your doctor) will not keep them safe.

Sex & Consequences Marathon

2008-03-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

This week I gave my first presentation of "Sex & Its Consequences," our high school program. Normally this is a 2 day presentation, but this week we were cramming all the information into 1 day sessions and presenting it for each of the 8 class periods on Wednesday and Thursday. We were at a rural school with around 85 students in each grade, so we were supposed to present to the entire high school during these 2 days.

My boss and I took turns presenting so the other could stare off into space for a couple of hours at a time.This school is located an hour from our office, so we left at 7am and both stayed until school was over at 3:15. My respect for teachers has increased yet again. I cannot imagine having kids staring at me all day every day. Even though I’m in a cubicle I feel like I have some privacy when I put on my headphones and tune out the rest of the office. I can take 15 minute brain-vacations and cruise the Internet or gossip with a co-worker whenever I feel like it. But Wednesday and Thursday were like running a marathon. I was either nervous as hell as I sat and worried about the next presentation or filled with adrenaline as I actually gave the presentation.

Oh, I forgot to mention. In addition to being my first time presenting, I had to deal with some extra audience members. The pastor of the local church sat in on the first 4 sessions. Then his youth pastor sat in on the rest. We thought they’d be gone on Thursday, and they were…but they sent a parent who leads a youth group to keep an eye on us until the youth pastor could come back.

This was very unnerving. The head pastor literally frowned the entire morning. It’s hard enough to get kids to interact when talking about something like sex, but when their pastor is sitting in the back of the room, its impossible. No one volunteered answers or wanted to do the role-plays. Even us presenters were off our game, we were not entertaining at all, because we were nervous and worried about the men sitting back there taking pages of notes.

I did have a pretty great moment at the end of Wednesday. One of the boys started telling me about abstinence pledges and how this guy tricked him into signing one so he could get a water bottle. Before I could respond, another girl spoke up and said someone had her sign one when she was 8 and had no idea what was going on. I asked the class “Do you think these pledges are effective when you sign a paper and never talk about it again?” They responded “no, of course not.” So I asked “What if you sign it with a group of friends or a youth group and keep supporting each other, could they be more effective then?” “Yes” they replied.

I’d never talked about abstinence pledges during a presentation before, so I was totally improvising when I said “See, so abstinence pledges are just like condoms, they’re only effective when used properly!” At this point I just stopped making eye contact with the youth pastor sitting in the back of the room and hoped he hadn’t heard me.

The hard thing about doing prevention work is that we don’t know if any of the information is really affecting the kids. I did have two moments where I saw something get through. In discussing birth control, I listed all the ways it can be less effective and one girl said “You have to take it at the same time everyday?? I don’t do that!” During another session I had 2 young men playing comedian in the front row. I mentioned that many people have no symptoms of STIs and he turned away from his friend and said “Wait, did you just say you can have an STD and no symptoms?” He looked genuinely concerned and he settled down and genuinely participated for the rest of the session, asking really good questions. Anytime I see that I give kids information that they didn’t have before, I feel like I’m on a cloud.

If nothing else, I know that if I survived this week, I can give the presentation to anyone.

Homemade Laundry Soap

2008-03-21T20:31:00.000-07:00

My friend Annie recently asked me for any homemade/natural/non-toxic/cheap/environmentally friendly cleaning products. To which I replied "Do you know any products like that in general? I'd like to buy them."

Ethical purchasing is one of my passions and hobbies, but my standards of "ethical" are so high, I don't usually meet them. It seems to be a game of finding the best option and feeling disappointed.

So anyway, Annie's request inspired me to go looking for a best option laundry soap. I found a recipe for making a homemade soap out of borax, washing soda and ivory soap, which I FINALLY tried tonight.

Using our (OLD) pots, I shredded up my ivory soap and melted it into a foggy soup. It smelled spicy. I added the powders and a variety of weird amounts of water, then stirred it up. It ended up in a 2 gallon bucket in my basement, where it is hibernating or something until I can use it tomorrow.

I'm pretty proud of myself for finally getting the motivation to do this. Tomorrow I'm hoping to make a game plan for installing a clothesline and ordering seeds for a vegetable garden...my first ever!! Then I'm on to conquering my sewing machine...it was a christmas present and it sits in it's box until I have time to learn how to use it.

I'm still undecided as to whether this is more environmentally friendly than regular soap. The ingredients are pretty caustic, even though they are "natural." However, I compared ingredients with some 7th Generation laundry soap and they seem similar. Plus, I think that this ended up costing 1/2 as much as regular soap, so if nothing else, I have more money to buy my organic fruit and shirts. I'll get back to you on a final verdict once I've actually washed something.