Yep, still crazy.

[altarflame]

I've been all happy because I can sleep at night, and I can do a lot of self-motivated stuff during the day, and I feel at peace most of the time. Like my time in therapy and my months of emdr really, really helped me a lot, though there is still of course something there. I'm "channeling all my birth angst into positive change in the world" through my book writing and advocacy work. Yesterday affirmed for me, though, that I have not just some issues but an entire subscription.

*sigh*

BirthGirlz hosted this event called "Embracing the Miracle", which was supposed to be about "How Prenatal Choices Effect Who Your Child Can Become", led by a woman I hadn't heard of who comes with a certain amount of acclaim. I was like, alright, whatever, she's a noted author who's done world tours, Nancy likes her, I figured it would be a little new-agey but I do believe in bonding with your baby in utero and getting researched and junk, which is what I thought this was about. I was volunteered to make a lot of food for the event and that ended up being really satisfying. We had 30-35 confirmed guests, and I made 60 each of stuffed mushrooms, tiny fruit tarts, and little savory tarts. Let me digress for a moment because this is enjoyable: the fruit tarts were little phyllo shells brushed inside with boiled-thin apricot preserves, filled with a mixture of whipped cream, cream cheese and sugar, and topped with sliced kiwi and strawberry slivers. The savory tarts were the same phyllo shells, but the filling was onions and walnuts diced small and sauteed up in a lot of butter, then mixed with cream cheese and bacon crumbles, and I topped each of those with these fresh microgreens we got - pea shoots. They looked freaking fabulous and everybody loved it all, though I think one particular chick ate like 15 of the mushrooms which is totally cheating ;) They were stuffed with tons of onion and garlic sauteed in olive oil, lots of diced red and yellow bell pepper, tiny-diced tomatoes, seasoned breadcrumbs and cheddar cheese (I knew there would be a lot of vegetarians there). And Kristin and Michelle had brought fresh artichoke dip and HOMEMADE CRACKERS and baked bree hot and oozing out of itself and Michelle's daughters baked chocolate chip cookies and brownies and cinnamon rolls and things, everything spelt flour and raw turbinado sugar and anyway, the point is the food was the good part for sure.

I was unprepared for the actual content, which was all based upon the intro topic; "It's not birth to three that really matters, it's birth and the first hour of life". Then we got to build on that for 2 hours, with everything from contrasting slides between the warm glowy home brith pool to dramatic black and white stills of screaming babies alone on cold metal hospital scales with their umbilical cords cut too soon, to real stats and pics of how Japaense researchers have seen on brain scans that babies born by c-section actually have a hole in their neocortex. She talked about how long initial separations like Aaron had can actually cause sensory issues and how premature c-section with NICU stays, like Isaacs, can cause nightmares and high needs babies. She discussed the half life of the drugs you get during a cesarean in your newborn and how they stunt growth of the neural network and how babies turn face up as they come out, this amazing spiral, because women pull their babies up to face them with the cord still connecting. The synaptic explosion that happens when eye contact occurs in that instant. How the endorphin, oxytocin and prolactin bursts just after birth are the chemical high of a woman's entire life, and lay the foundation for the mother-child relationship.

I am not saying the half of it and I'm not GOING to, but I have rarely managed that level of dissociation. Really. I was talking and laughing with my sister or Kristin the whoooole time, and by the time it was time to go I realized my reflection was confusing me and making me mad, when I saw it in the bathroom, and that I already had blank spots I couldn't remember. I got home and tried to go right to sleep (before dinner, before nighttime, me who never sleeps) and was angry when I had to get up. I was totally out of sorts.

Grant got the kids in bed. Then he brought me my crocheting stuff and sat me on the floor between his legs (him on the couch), rubbed my shoulders and asked me questions until I had cried for a freaking hour and described all this crap to him. Then we layed together and made love and then we sat around at the computer laughing at things for awhile and then he pulled out all the him-uncomfortable-but-me-in-his-arms stops to get me to be able to sleep after I got all hysterical again about having to go back into surgery, and how my diastasis and hernia are totally worse the last week, and blah blah blah.

I woke up feeling a lot better. He is pretty amazing.

Some of the stuff the woman was saying was laughable hooey, for instance she referenced crystal babies and indigo children, and gave us a live demonstration of what orgasmic birth would sound like. <- Not kidding. She also had many annoying turns of phrase, such as calling herself a "coyote midwife" because she "sits by the hole and waits", and acting as though she tricked us all after we raised our hands to show who breastfed their babies because NO! We did not breastfeed, our BABIES breastfed! So that sort of woo helped me to disregard and tune out to some degree.

But a lot of what she said is real truth I see manifested in my kids as individuals, that Grant and I have talked about before, at length, and/or is proven whether I like it or not, and much of it is shit I take totally on myself as a burden of guilt.

I really do believe in "reparative work" after bad beginnings, and I think I've done amazingly with that and that is part of why my kids are so great as they are.

Still and all, listening to someone talk about human potential vs damaged goods for an entire afternoon had me wanting to punch her in the face.

Comments

[aranel.livejournal.com]

I kind of wish you had punched her. I bet much of even her non-woo stuff was unsubstantiated--there is so much fake science out there. I mean, it's incontrovertible that normal birth is better for mothers and babies than unneeded c-sections, of course it is, that's what I wish for myself and for every mom and baby. But it's also really easy for people to come up with 'studies' that nobody can see the methodological holes in without a lot of background knowledge about study design and statistical significance and all the rest of it. The people doing them are even probably well-intentioned, but that doesn't change the fact that manufacturing pretend scientific evidence covers up for how many unknown factors there almost are and how much scientists really don't understand, because there are so many things they don't have a truly controlled way to test. I mean, you have a daughter who had actual dark places in her brain scans far more significant than anything they can possibly be seeing in c/s babies generally, and just look at her.

[aranel.livejournal.com]

er, should be 'how many unknown factors there always are'

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I think this event, for first time pregnant moms who are open to learning, would be a valuable thing. I would just liked to have a full itinerary of her programs so I could choose the "reparative work" one and not the "scare you into natural birth at all costs" one.

I've been trading fb messages all day with other chicks who have kids already, "born wrong", who also believe most of what she said was true and had a pretty hard go of sitting there.

[aranel.livejournal.com]

As a first-timer who's planning a homebirth right now (second pregnancy, the first was lost to miscarriage), I would be really put off by a "scare you into natural birth at all costs" event. I don't doubt there are realities behind what she was saying (and obviously I didn't hear the presentation so I can't go plug her references into Google Scholar or anything) but it would make me mad as hell to hear somebody undermining her own credibility and by extension *my* credibility as a would-be homebirther and the potential of the homebirth/natural birth movement as a whole to become more accepted in our society, by mixing facts with a lot of scaremongering and pseudoscience and woo.

Which is not to say I'm opposed to hearing about the spiritual/scientifically unquantifiable side of birth. I really admire Ina May Gaskin, for instance. But I am really opposed to using 'scientific' findings, which often on closer examination are not that scientific, to scare people, which is what it sounded to me like that woman was doing, from your secondhand account. And I would think there is really enough fear around birth in our culture already.

[aranel.livejournal.com]

I should also maybe add that I am a big believer that our genetics and innate temperament have an influence on how we turn out that's probably far more important than most environmental factors, and that they along with our own decisions eventually tend to prevail over all kinds of trauma and adverse circumstances. I have scientific and observational/personal-experience-based reasons for believing this, but I have to say it also helps me a lot to accept that no parent or early environment is 100% perfect, and that there will always be factors in my child(ren)'s lives that are out of my control. As in, not to beat myself up for occasionally consuming sugar and caffeine or being stressed while pregnant. :-) Because I have a perfectionist streak, and was a guilt-driven person even before getting pregnant, and the other way (believing that children's early environment is hugely, irrevocably determinative)--that way lies madness, for me.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

It's sort of a viscious circle of logic, really, because every horrible extreme thing you can say about how important it is to breastfeed is completely true - it is extremely important on a lot of levels! But if a baby is not breastfed, will they even possibly be able to be healthy or feel loved? Uh, duh, of course. So it can't be that important! But it is...so, they're screwed? No, not screwed, but blah blah blah. I see this a lot like that.

[aranel.livejournal.com]

I think it just comes down to the question: are you going to trust that moms' desire to do the best thing for their babies (and themselves) is sufficient? Even though a lot of them will not in fact do the best thing? Or are your going to go for the persuasive power of guilt and fear?