Sunday Snippets: Headaches

Over the past few years, my migraines have gotten worse and even more so after I gave birth to my son. I get a terrible headache/PMS fog two/three days before my period.

But I never heard about that possibility after giving birth. There is so much not talked about for those carry a pregnancy and give birth, the 4th trimester and beyond.


PEOPLE KEEP DYING IN MISSISSIPPI PRISONS, BUT THE GOVERNOR WANTS TO MOVE ON

Trump’s legal team gave thousands in contributions to Republican senators ahead of impeachment trial

The hardest decision of my life: to end a pregnancy because I had no paid leave

WHY I DECIDED NOT TO HAVE AN OBGYN AND LET WENDY FROM WORK HANDLE MY PRENATAL CARE INSTEAD

‘Dad Naps’ for Everyone

Republicans think tampons need to be taxed to limit women from buying too many

Don’t Marry a Man Who Doesn’t Vacuum

Yusef Salaam Of The Exonerated Five: Pay Attention To 2020 Candidates’ ‘Track Record’

Sunday Snippets: Happy holidays!

Hope the end of the year is everything you need it to be.

School Boundary Analysis Plan Outlined

Groundbreaking South Carolina Bill: Compensate People for Forcing Them to Give Birth

There's A Gay Guy Dressing Up As Mike Pence Collecting Money For Planned Parenthood

'Anything you want, take it’: A downsizing party after 45 years in the same house

India builds detention camps for up to 1.9m people ‘stripped of citizenship’ in Assam

Riley Howell, Who Died Stopping UNC Charlotte Shooter, Honored As Star Wars Jedi

She Helped Inspire The Wire And Oversaw The Weinstein Investigation. Meet Rebecca Corbett.

Sunday Snippets: Leverage

I've been bingeing all 5 seasons for over a month. I still crack up and love this show all the more every time I watch it.

Trump moves to permit new logging in Alaska's Tongass National Forest: report

The Quickening A story of two births

Trump administration leaves menstruating migrant girls ‘bleeding through’ underwear at detention centres, lawsuit claims

Black breastfeeding week matters—mamas of color are not getting the support they need

What White Feminists Get Wrong about Black Women

Inspired by the women of scripture, Baptist minister champions reproductive rights

Sunday Snippets: Don't look away

Refugees need all of our love, support, money and help. I can't stop thinking about the photo of a dad with his 11 month old daughter strapped to him, both drowned in a river trying to reach the US.

They deserve safety, sanitation, water, food, a warm bed. The rage at this situation, caused by this horrid administration and state sanctioned racism and xenophobia, overwhelms me.

THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY.

Joy Harjo Becomes The First Native American U.S. Poet Laureate

Vibrant Photos Capture the Electric Energy of Tokyo at Night

The tradition of taking a man’s last name is ‘unquestionably sexist.’ This new trend could be the solution.

Goucher College trustee reportedly spent millions to fund anti-vaccination movement

Science confirms you are a different person after giving birth

A birth story

It's been almost three months since I gave birth to our son and I wanted to get down some more feelings on the subject.

I didn't have the overwhelming rush of love that my mother had and logically, I knew that was okay, but emotionally I felt guilty. The weeks after I gave birth, I knew I liked the kiddo and I had the biological urge to make sure he didn't hurt himself, but I didn't have the gushy feelings.

I have them now, but not all the time. When he smiles delighted at me, as though I'm the most interesting person in the world. Or when he coos at me. Or grips my fingers while he's eating. Hubs and I both came to the same conclusion; that once he was born, we were supposed to transfer all of our love for each other, our hobbies, etc to him. When in fact we still very much like each other and our passions and our son is just another addition. I'm still Jillian, with another identity. Not Son's Mother, who used to be Jillian.

Not to mention that I was so raw from exhaustion and healing from the birth. Healing from a tear is awful. I had to have help to stand and the nurses warned me not to look. Not a problem, since I already knew what thrice diced lasagna looked like, although my wonderful husband assured me everything looked fine.

I think part of the issue was that I really really didn't like being pregnant. I liked feeling him kick and the hilarious shirts that I found. But being so sick at first, the horrible headaches, round ligament pain, etc, I mourn both the fact that I didn't get an enjoyable pregnancy experience and the fact that I feel like a jackass for being upset about it, since many people would love to have been in my shoes.

And I think the other part was I felt like I didn't deserve him, that he wasn't quite real. I've wanted children since I was 20 and now that I've had the experience, I feel like a hypocrite for possibly not wanting more since I didn't enjoy the experience. Not to mention the miscarriage. Every single appt, I went in expecting not to hear a heartbeat anymore. I was terrified to commit and love him because I thought he'd be snatched away.

Now I tease him that I'm going to sell him to the highest bidder when he wakes up for the 4th time at night and he just smiles. I think we'll be okay.



His birth story:

My "due date" was March 1st. I had my last appt with him still in utero on March 2nd and the doctor asked if I wanted to schedule an induction.

Kiddo was going to make his appearance when he wanted and inductions are no fun, no matter how you slice them.

Saturday, March 3, I started feeling intermittent contractions and started to get really excited. I slept till 4am Sunday March 4th and that was the last solid sleep I got till Monday night. They started picking up in intensity around 6:30 am so I woke up the hubs and we started timing them. We got to the hospital around 9:30 but since I was only 2 cm, they sent us back home. I was sorta glad because the doctor on call was my least favorite doctor in the practice. He checked me in triage so fast and so rough, even the nurse was like Uh, buy the lady a drink first?

So I relaxed at home, napping and Netflixing. By 9pm, I had to pause Netflix for each contraction and stand up for them. I ended up on the couch around 11:30 and the hubs stayed with me, holding my hips until 2 when I told him to get some sleep. Our oldest cat hopped up after he left and licked my arm after each contraction and pawed at my face to make sure I was ok. I couldn't lay down for any of them, the pain forced me back up. They were one on top of the other.

At 5:30 Monday morning, I woke him back up because my hips were in agony. He would press on my hips through each contraction. I called the doctor around 8:30 and they told me to come in right away.

Slight problem. Monday morning before 9am? All the mutherfreaking traffic. So I had to give directions to the hospital, using the back roads, in between contractions. I was clutching the seatbelt holder, to have something to grab and was honestly worried (because I didn't know it at the time that he was sunny side up and his big ol' head was pressing into spots that it shouldn't) that I was going to shit my pants. I seriously thought the child was going to be born via my asshole, the pressure was so intense.

We get to the hospital and the valets take one look and scream for a wheelchair. While checking in at triage, I started to cry again because I was so exhausted and in pain and the intake person snapped Don't cry, you need to breathe.

My face:

I'll cry if I fucking want to. Got checked and was so grateful to hear that I was 7cm. Because if they had tried to send me home again, I would have looked like this:

They wheeled me back to a room while hubs parked the car and we ended up with the most wonderful Labor and Delivery nurse. She asked if I wanted pain meds and I was like how many ya got? And honestly, I was willing to give it a go without pain meds. But I was exhausted and labored almost 6cm without anything so yeah, gimme that good shit.

Actual footage of me with a blessed epidural

The hubs stood by my side the whole time, except for the epidural part. He waited till he knew I was okay and then proceeded to nearly pass out on the couch. Him and needles, not so much. The nurses were lovely and brought him food and drink.

By 1pm, I was fully dilated and allowed to push (which trying to hold back that urge? Damn near impossible). I even requested a mirror, tried the squat bar and pushed with hubs holding up both legs. And yes, you shit while pushing. It's a thing and you really don't care in the moment.

By 4:45, I was exhausted. They said I could try forceps or elect for a C section. I said forceps, because why not? Those couldn't hurt as much as a C section, right?

They even gave me a top off of pain meds, but I felt like I was being split in two while on fire. And I had to push with each contraction while those oversized salad tongs were inside me. The doctor had him out in three contractions, with the first one turning him right side up. Upside was that it was done, downside was that the doc needed 45 minutes to stitch up what turned out to be a third degree tear.

(And post script, I had to get some additional...work done in the vaheen area because while he was stitching, some of the muscle under-layer got caught up and was present on the surface, which caused nerve over-stimulation. So I willingly watched as the doc put silver nitrate on the little skin tags, to basically cauterize them and yes, this is the shit new moms do not talk about because how in the ass has the human race sustained itself for this long when this kinda shit happens)

For the record, these are forceps:

It was incredible, watching him be placed on my chest. I was so concerned with trying to get the pain to stop, my brain stopped for a sec and was like Oh, a baby, I get one of those? His head was all coney from the forceps, but he was real. He was alive and he was here.

Sunday Snippets: And it's almost March and still a dumpster fire

Googly-Eyed Trash Eaters May Clean a Harbor Near You

ACOG Finally Recommends What Many Moms in Labor Had to Fight For Really glad to hear this.

This is super cool

Albert Einstein

Horrifying

5 accidentally transphobic phrases allies use — and what to say instead

Exactly When I have to use the I have a husband because you won't respect my no excuse

Same sex marriage laws associated with drop in suicide rates among high school students, Hopkins study finds

Fourth Wave of Bomb Threats Targets 10 Jewish Community Centers in at Least Six U.S. States

Yup yup

Book Review: The Radical Doula Guide

I have been a fan of Miriam Zoila Perez's writing ever since I read her work on Feministing. I knew she also did doula work and had a blog talking about that community. I have become, in the vernacular, a birth/parenting junkie. It started when I was a kid and saw how my mother was treated as a mom (although a good chunk of that was due to the abusive marriage she was in, but different topic for a different day) and I hated it. I hated that women especially, but all caregivers are treated differently because of the choice to rear children. I gobbled down Ariel Gore's works, devoured The Business of Being Born and other birth movies and generally tried to absorb as much information as possible. I was ecstatic to hear that Perez was going to release a guide about doula work, called The Radical Doula Guide: A Political Primer for Full Spectrum Pregnancy and Childbirth Support.

Even as someone as informed as I was about this side of birth work, I was still blown away by this guide. It made me think and really set aside beliefs I didn't realize I had.

The author breaks down the slim volume into three sections: the introduction, the role of the doula and the politics of pregnancy and birth. The introduction discusses exactly what a doula is; in short, someone who offers a variety of support to pregnant people. The second section describes the different ways doulas offer support; physical (hand holding or assistance) emotional, verbal, etc. There are also doulas for birth, adoption, miscarriage and abortion, frequently called "full spectrum doulas."

The last section talks about intersectionality and how politics, even though they shouldn't, often affect birth and pregnancy, in terms of race, class, gender, documentation status and whether the person is incarcerated. Perez brought up one aspect that, in hindsight makes perfect sense, but at the time of reading it, was a shining example of privilege I hadn't examined.

Speaking about assumptions, "I read about how women intuitively 'know' how to give birth because of their feminine instincts. What does that imply about the difference between men and women's brains?...Over and over again, I see how the ideas of feminine wisdom and connection are used to justify and promote midwifery, natural birth and doulas....But it concerns me that we are fighting against gender essentialism with more gender essentialism."

I have read all about the feminine wisdom and see it discussed and never once made this connection. This is just one of the many amazing pieces of writing throughout the guide. Perez also includes several doulas to speak about their personal experiences working in the field.

A must read for anyone interested in doula work or in the birth and parenting community!

Photo Credit: RadicalDoula.com