My story.

So I have decided that I am going to exit out of my comfort zone and involve myself in my "hot topics" in an actual way, so....

This weekend I attended my first event in addition to a steady writing campaign.

The Association of Texas Midwives decided to completely disgrace themselves in the natural childbirth community by hosting a Mohel to speak on, wait, let me choke this down: "holistic circumcision"

Now this is NOT a commentary on the Jewish ritual of Brit Milah. I am not there in my activism to protest a religious covenant (even though I feel strongly that this covenant can be replaced and others agree: Jews Against Circumcision) I was protesting the fact that this Mohel was there to SELL his religious covenant to Non- jews.

He is a circumciser for profit and the midwives who lead the conference think he is so funny and endearing and a delight to host.

ugh.

His holistic circumcision includes no anesthesia. He is not a licensed medical professional so there is no way to properly report complications or to research his complication rate if you are a parent looking to cut your son's genitals.

The fact that he even abuses the word holistic is appalling:

HOLISTIC: Holism (from ὂλος holos, a Greek word meaning all, whole, entire, total) , is the idea that natural systems (physical, biological, chemical, social, economic, mental, linguistic, etc.) and their properties, should be viewed as wholes, not as collections of parts. This often includes the view that systems somehow function as wholes and that their functioning cannot be fully understood solely in terms of their component parts.



It beyond baffles me how midwives think its ok to send their clients to him. I am sorry but if you are a woman brave enough to research and choose out of hospital birth, You are brave enough and strong enough to research the purposes of the foreskin and protect your baby!!

Like Marily Milos says.

"Before a baby boy knows he has a penis to protect a mother knows she has a baby to protect."

I went, we had numerous educational materials that many midwives took and at the end donations rolled into our booth! The mohel arrived with his bodyguard in tow and I couldn't help but think:

I wish baby boys had bodyguards to protect them from YOU.

I am glad though that many of us intactivists were present and we were a nice variety of folk!

While there and amongst meeting fellow intactivists I heard this question a lot:

So what is your story? How did you get involved?

Here is my story, since I think it is important to tell one's story. Education and facts are key but rarely make people question their own behavior as much as someone's story can. I knew all the facts of homebirth safety but it took many other's stories before I had the courage to go that route myself.

I was pregnant with my first in 1999, The internet was nothing like it is now and the most "pregnancy/childbirth" related info I referenced online was a belly gallery of others mothers at different phases of gestation. That was it. When the topic of circumcision came up it lasted roughly two minutes. My mom said "I like my men with little helmets" we all laughed and I believe one of us in the room said "its much cleaner."

I asked our pediatrician to be and she said "oh I DON'T do that" you have to talk to the obstetrician - they are the only ones who carry the malpractice surgery insurance.

**that should have been a clue.

I was asked to sign a form in the middle of a contraction to give consent to circumcise my child if it was a male. I didn't even read it and they didn't care if I did. NOTHING WAS MENTIONED about risks/benefits/ after care. NOTHING.

So on the second day of life in this world my son was taken from my breast and warm arms to go down the hall and be strapped to one of these:

I made Kyle go with him, it was the only way I felt I could handle the knot in my stomach. I didn't want him to experience pain and most certainly not be alone when he did.

They came back a while later, Kyle quiet about the happenings and my baby screaming his head off.

Then we went though the healing process, constantly aware of his tender parts, bandaging with vaseline and gauze. I myself had an episiotomy that stung like hell when urine hit it. I resorted to spraying warm water with the peri bottle as I went to dilute the urine and pray for less stinging. All the while pulling a diaper of urine and poo off of my baby's open penis wound.

It was horrible. And then there were complications. That I won't go into. I questioned our choice a lot but only to myself and never out loud. I didn't understand how all this pain could be "better"

One day I babysat my friend's son and he was intact, She was going to be gone for the entire weekend so I asked rather sheepishly "what do I do when I change his diaper, ya know to clean him?"

I had all those prevalent myths in my head.

She said - you don't do a thing. Just wipe the outside.

I know now that a baby's foreskin is tightly adhered to the glans and its is dangerous to even try to retract it. That will happen around puberty. The only one who should retract is the owner of the penis. Cleaning it then is as simple as a rinse, Cleaning a baby is as simple as wiping a finger.

I was devastated to think of the hassle we had tried to avoid but instead had caused a wound. A wound that needed super duper care and still had complications. I said then that if I ever had another son we would not circumcise him.

Then we had three daughters. And it wasn't until 2010 that I really researched the issue in preparation for our second son just to be absolutely sure. And it is very true what they say:

The more you know the worse it gets.

I learned that the foreskin is so adhered that the procedure starts with ripping it away and its pain just like ripping off your fingernail and cutting it off at the base. Except that it has MORE nerve endings and completely around the penis. You don't want to see a procedure but if you think you are going to to it to a baby you should. I can't look them up - they make me ill but there are plenty out there. If you heard from a friend of a friend that her baby "slept through it" - It was shock. Trust me. On the off chance they had enough pain relief to sleep does not even begin to make it ok.

The complication rates are very high. Much, much higher than the supposed complication rates of keeping one's foreskin.

Most of the complications from intact boys is because parents and doctors for years have forcibly retracted when they shouldn't causing scarring and infections. We don't break little girls hymens to clean them and that is the equivalent of forcibly retracting to clean a boy.

I learned that the potential social stigma of "smegma" jokes are silly. Females make FIVE TIMES more smegma than males. And bathing is pretty easy. If we teach our girls to do it, we can teach our boys.

Circumcision can interfere with breastfeeding. Circumcised babies often stop making eye contact as frequently after the procedure and struggle with bonding, breastfeeding, and sleeping.

There is NO medical reason to do it. It was started as a medical procedure to reduce masturbation. Now other theories are thrown around but often just to justify the industry. No research has been backed up. No medical organization in the world recommends infant circumcision!

Its is the most common surgery yet the person receiving the surgery, which is cosmetic, has not consented.

Men with intact genitalia are less likely to experience erectile dysfunction as they age. The countries with the highest circ rates have the highest use of viagra. The procedure has removed so much skin - in the adult male its roughly 15 inches of skin - that some men are going to lose a lot of sensation as they age. Men the world over are restoring their foreskin for this exact reason.

You can't undo it. Even with restoring you get more skin but you don't replace nerve endings.

I am sorry if this offends. I truly believe that parents that circumcise do so out of love, as do parents that keep their children intact, the difference is education. If my child was hurt by a particular car seat I don't think anyone would be offended if I spoke out about that car seat.

This is an issue that can be stopped overnight if people only knew. If social myths didn't trump actual facts. If doctors put their ethics before the risk of offending patients or losing money from not doing the procedure or selling the foreskin.

There are many things I feel strongly about but not many that I feel are so unnecessarily damaging or as simple to end as this one. Babies boys or girls deserve better than this. They deserve the right to choose what to do with their bodies. There are many, many decisions we HAVE to make for our children but this is not one of them.

If I had been educated I never would have made the decision I did. If I can save any babies from this pain then maybe one day I can forgive myself.

And that is my story.







for more information please go here:

http://www.thewholenetwork.org/

http://www.drmomma.org/2010/01/are-you-fully-informed.html

http://www.moralogous.com/

http://www.nocirc.org/

funnies...

 PJ blows raspberries while he nurses with his nose. it cracks him up. and me too.

 This book is the funniest children's book!!

Actual things my kids have said lately:

PJ:

"I pooped"

and "bye" always three seconds after the person leaves.

Cora:

"Mom I have feelings."

you do?

"yes"

I know.

"so be nice to me because I just sprayed everything in the front room with water."

you sprayed WHAT?

"everything."

______________________________________________

"when baby boo comes if it has a va-guy-na its a girl."

yes.

"if it has a peeniz its a boy."

yes.

"if it has no va-guy-na and no peeniz than it will probably die."

ohkay...

Maiya


in tears because she lost recess time from a substitute.

"I can't go to school because I am the goodest in the class and Mrs. B will say I am so dissappointed in you, you are not the goodest anymore."

more tears.


Ella

Has downloaded some pics of boys she thinks are cute onto my iphone off of facebook. Thought I better delete them before friends wonder why I have pictures of their sons saved in my phone. That could be potentially awkward.

stitches.

Can you believe five kids and almost twelve years and the only justifiable emergency room visits have been for me? Until Sunday, in a freak occurrence the dog was lunging away from Benjamin and hit PJ right in the bum catapulting him right into the corner of the wall by the fireplace. In seconds there was blood EVERYWHERE and Kyle and I were in our Sunday best undress right after an afternoon nap.

I ran to get us better clothes, fell in the kitchen... the dogs got out the front door following after the hysterical girls...

It was chaos.

but we got to the ER 

He got numbing medicine and then Kyle and I and a nurse held him down for stitches.

the cut was too large to be glued.

Holding down your screaming baby is 

AWFUL.

You'd do anything for it to be you instead of them.

And for this they had to cover his face for the sterile area. Restrained and can't see. 

so sad.

As soon as it was over he stopped crying. It took me a while though.

The following pics are in reverse order, if you don't want to see the gash before stitches don't scroll.

Drop the "y".

I was going to blog about the pretty bad case of antenatal depression that I am dealing with and usually do deal with in the refractory period between begging for death nausea and actually being able to function in my life. But that post may never get written. Its depressing - imagine that, depression can be depressing? So I thought I'd return to a topic that motivates me... natural childbirth, nah not today.... circumcision... nah, but check out this abridged version of a very well made documentary on the subject: Cut the film ... the podcasts there are also excellent.

Today it will be HAES...

While in my fog a lot has been moving and shaking in the HAES world.  Georgia put up fat shaming billboards with child actors. Which claimed problems that none of the children actually had problems with. The HAES community with Ragen's organizing raised 20,000 dollars to produce a counter ad campaign with body positive messages. Even people who make a living off of shaming fat people (Jillian Micheals) was appalled by the campaign and said "let me be clear, shaming children is never the solution for any problem"... shocking I know... since shaming adults is a perfect career for her.

Another actor was digitally altered and put on fat shaming billboards without his permission claiming he had diabetes and amputation of his leg from it. Neither of which was true.

Don't even get me started on Carnie Wilson's second weight loss surgery.  The weight loss surgery industry is booming. Shame sells. (PS. this was the rage inducing line I read though : "A representative for Allergan, the maker of the LAP-BAND System®, told ABC News that the company is compensating Carnie Wilson to be a media spokesperson."  excuse me while I scream into a pillow

Weight loss surgery industry again makes the claim that weigh loss surgery cures diabetes.. was the study of enough surgery recipients for long enough time to be valid? NO. And of course your glucose will be low in the immediate period after surgery. You are LITERALLY starving. You are, that is how the stomach amputation works. Does it last 5, 10, 15 years? I don't know research there is sketchy. Complications however are well documented, just not easily accessible. And how about they talk about why they use medical problems such as diabetes to get funding for the surgery but are cutting on people all the time who are metabolically healthy with NO diabetes,NO high blood pressure, etc. and they themselves will say not a thing was wrong with me but I was fat.

Disney added a new feature at Epcot under the direction of Blue Cross Blue Shield where thin heroes "Cali-stenics" fought bad guys with ummm you guessed it fat bodies - like Glutton and lead bottom.  Because the happiest place on earth should come with a dose of fat shaming?  An outcry was almost immediate and the exhibit has been taken down for re-tooling, hopefully that means taken out back to the trash dumpster. As Dr. Yoni Freedhoff put it:

"So thanks for being so helpful Disney - I mean if your kid's not overweight or obese, here's to Disney reinforcing society's most hateful negative obesity stereotyping, and if they are overweight or obese - what kid doesn't want to be made to feel like a personal failure while on a Disney family vacation?"

The world went NUTS over Paula Deen's announcement of her type II diabetes. Paula Deen has no moral imperative with the world to share her medical history no more than the chef at your favorite restaurant does. She cooks food on TV, doesn't force feed it to you and you can make the recipes or not. Being mad that her food is not healthy is kind of silly. She is not Micheal Pollan and shouldn't have to be. If Paula Deen is enemy number one then the Pioneer Woman should be right up there with the Devil himself.

(now Paula peddling a diabetes med, that I am NOT a fan of.  see above for Carnie peddling weight loss surgery with compensation while saying "its about health")

Some other thoughts on Paula Deen:
-you don't know how she eats. Just because you have watched her show a few times doesn't mean you know what her diet or exercise habits are.
-even if you did, research isn't conclusive about what causes diabetes.
-some people could TRY their whole lives to get diabetes, work every possible unhealthy lifestyle choice and they won't get it. You know why? because its much more complicated than we think. But its easy to judge when we think we know.

which leads me to what I really wanted to talk about...

I got accused of not taking things like diabetes seriously from someone because I am a Heatlh at every size advocate. So I thought once again I'd try to clarify what Health at Every size means to me since it seems to confuse folks:

I was reading this post the other day with some critical claims about why Health at Every size should go mainstream but probably won't. (I disagree) And there was a comment from Dr. Burgard that was a hammer to the nail moment for me:

It is HEALTH, not HEALTHY, at Every Size, and we do not contend that people of all weights are always healthy, or that everyone is always at their healthiest weight. There are pathological processes which result in weight displacements, up or down. HAES focuses on preventing/treating those processes. 


We are so accustomed to believing that pursuing weight loss is good, we fail to demand data for it, and instead demand data that it's "not good" - but you can't prove a negative. The burden of proof is on people who are proposing an intervention to change weight, to show that it is safe and effective - not at 6 months out, but at 2, 5, 10 years out. 


It does not help people to feel that their lives are on hold until their bodies are "acceptable." It does not help people to engage in temporary and unsustainable efforts to become "acceptable." It does help people for all bodies to be deemed not just acceptable, but precious and worthy of care. That means sick bodies, fat bodies, starved bodies, "ugly" bodies, less functional or mobile bodies. The bodies that we pathologize are the homes of people we are making sicker and less able to participate in the world. That is a pathological practice that we can change.

That! That is exactly it.

Health at every size means just that - every single person at whatever body size they are has a right to respect and the pursuit of happiness and health. It's not a blanket statement that everyone is healthy at any size.
"Healthy" is a difficult thing to achieve or measure and self worth is not negated when you are not "healthy". You can be healthy and unhealthy across the entire spectrum of body sizes.  Being Healthy or not is society's new elitism. And in that ball of mess, dieting, even if masking as a new lifestyle choice, has gotten a voice of reason that it does NOT deserve.

Dieting may be leading you further away from health and mental stability.  Dieting has a poor track record. 95% failure rate. And complications from weight cycling are documented.

So the message is simple to me - Healthy practices are valid - exercise, whole foods, a variety in your diet, mostly plants, etc.
But those healthy practices don't lose validity if they don't make you skinny.

There is no wrong way to have a body, therefore there is no right way to hate your body.  
from here

Happy Easter

The band at Sandy Lake and Chuck E Cheese

I am starting to slowly come to life - but that is another post in and of itself.

Benjamin went with band to the annual Sandy Lake Band competition. They picked music a little more advanced than usual for a sixth grade beginning band and... 

They nailed it! I got goosebumps while listening.

 After the performance we played:

 One woman was quite smitten with Cora's hair and talked to me for bit about a show she watched a show that said less than 2% of the world has red hair and some estimate that within a few generations there won't be any more... (no accuracy checks there)

 not tall enough :(

 even though the place was crawling with sixth graders Cora had the place to herself for the kiddie rides. Cute place but the prospect of taking all seven of us would cost waaaaaaaaaay too much for any amount of fun worth the drive out there. We'll stick with six flags

 Look at big brother holding his little sister's hand to the mini coaster

 riding the train (our favorite)

 He didn't want to get off

 Awards time - Rogers was rated 1st division by every single judge !!!

 Not to be biased or anything but man , Is he a good looking kid!!

 These two gangsters were rather grumpy about not getting to go to Sandy lake!

 The next day Dad took Benjamin and Ella to see the Hunger Games, So I took the three littles to Chuck E Cheese. - It felt strange to be out of the house with no other adult help (I've been homebound for three months+ now, and to only have three kids - it felt easy and strange.

 PJ is finally, finally walking 100% of the time. Every single other kiddo of mine walked at some point in their 15th month. Some on the first day some on the last but always in/around that month. Not PJ - he totally could, and would walk here and there but was perfectly content with crawling. He sloooowly transitioned over three months to walking all the time. He HATES falling, I watch 9 month old walkers who just wobble till they fall or walk right into a wall and then get back up again. Not my kids. Timid is the word.

But to finally buy big boy shoes for him was kind of bittersweet. 

babies grow so fast!

Look at those skinny little legs though, he may have been the biggest at birth but he has been my teeny tiny little one compared to all the others, actually in the size clothes that match his age - that has NEVER happened before. (Even though he still breastfeeds all the time!)

 He was so serious on every ride it was hard to know if he was having fun or not until you tried to take him off then he threw a fit! (Cora here was actually not having fun - she liked chilling on the Barney truck - nice and calm)

Maiya and PJ are tight. She always goes to him when she gets home. Gives him piggy back rides all the time and doesn't understand why he can't hang out in the front yard with just her. Its so sweet.

Improving Birth

NO elective inductions without medical indication.
NO scheduled c sections without medical indication.
NO induction for 'big baby'
NO stripping of membranes
NO breaking of amniotic sac
NO early cord clamping/cutting

you know what that is ^^  Evidence based medicine.

Meaning better outcomes for moms and babies.

729,800 unnecessary cesarean sections happen every year. Its time for change. Its time for better education of doctors and especially MOMS.

Csections increase your risks for infection, hemorrhage, post partum depression, and death.
Being induced triples your risk for having a csection.

Consider donating or attending a rally, more information here

Meg and Justin get married Part three

 the end :)