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Hopefully the last entry like this
Jun. 5th, 2010 02:04 pmI intend to take a pretty laid back approach to childbearing and childrearing, one which can best be summed up as "good enough." I'm pretty smart and adaptive. If I can't get this right, it's not reasonable to expect other peole can -- and since I see other adults walking around who were once children, it's clearly possible to succeed at it (and therefore I will). I don't see a need to get crazy about everything.
Needless to say, this puts me in a minority.
I have now completed my last day of research; from here on out, I'm only going to listen to my doctor if and when I conceive, and I'm going to do that listening with a healthy skepticism. My two mantras are:
1. Shut up.
(This applies to anyone who is not Ciro, my husband, or Val, my shield brother. I suppose my mom can also say stuff, and I suppose Ciro's mom. And I look favorably on people from Berkely, for reasons I'm not sure about; I've just noticed that the reasonable discussion board comments come from there. But I don't want to be told by some infantalizing woman how my life "will be so changed" and I don't want a mid-twenties non-father non-doctor telling me on the basis of some TV Guide article that I should or should not eat eggs. Birth is not magical, and you probabably don't know enough about science to boss me around.)
2. No episiotomy.
Corrolary: Try it and I'll kill you.
(The episiotomy is this brilliant idea where because a woman might tear her perineum during delivery, you go ahead and cut it in advance so that it definitely tears. This saves you, the doctor, time. It's offensively absurd. It is not unlike noticing a kid climing a tree, thinking he might fall and break his arm, calling him out of the tree, and breaking his arm so that at least it's a clean break. That is the level of logic.)
As you can see, the main reason I don't intend to do more research is that it puts me in a terrible mood and makes me want to murder a lot of people, ideally using blunt instruments. Ciro has evaluated this and feels it is better that I avoid reading bad science than that I avoid hammers, since hammers are actually useful for things.
The biggest disappointment in all of this has been the website of the Department of Health. I like the U.S. government. Even the I.R.S. part of it. I like DARPA, NASA, the CDC, the Department of Energy. I like Homeland Security now that it's under Napolitano. I am pro-government. The Department of Health is wackadoo. Their advice on what to eat and what to avoid doesn't have any whys attached, and therefore doesn't distinguish between real dangers and "eh, couldn't hurt."
For instance, it really does make sense to avoid deli meats, because listeria can seriously mess with the fetus and/or cause you to spontaneously abort. It's pretty serious. (Also, despite what wiki says in that link, all soft cheeses are not a risk; it's just ones from unpasteurized milk, which until recently were illegal in the U.S. anyway.) Avoiding salmonella . . . not so necessary. Or at least not any more necessary than when you're not pregnant. You get salmonella, you get food poisoning, just the same as if you weren't pregnant. The end. Making sure you don't eat "undercooked meat" sure makes it sound like medium-rare steak is off the menu, but the thing about steak is there is literally no way that's unsafe. The bacteria that live in stake are aerobic. They stay on the surface and you sear them off. It's fine. They also trot out the "no alcohol is safe at any time" rule, which is bunk. There is zero evidence anywhere that if I drink a half glass of champagne at month 5 I'm going to retard the fetus. None whatsoever. "Unsafe at any amount at any time" is pure hysteria, meant to to shock the alcoholics into not being alcoholics -- which it won't. It's reefer madness.
Basically, the DOH doesn't treat this stuff like science. It treats it like magic. And that's not okay. That's especially not okay when it's a means of exerting control over women's bodies. And I don't truck with "only nine months." Dig a little deeper and it's only nine months and any time you might conceive (which is any time pre-menopause) and any time you're pregnant and any time you're breastfeeding.
Sure, they could be superstitiously "doing what's best for the baby," but if so, why aren't they telling me I should never clean up after a dog or cat, should never wash someone else's dishes, and should never plunge a toliet? All of those put me at a much higher risk of bacterial contamination than if I eat fresh oysters. But cleaning up after everybody is what a wife is supposed to do, so of course the government wouldn't think of intruding. That would inconvenience everyone.
The other stupid thing the DOH says is that when you're pregnant you should take in 300 extra calories a day (which is not even true in the first trimester, although it is after that), and then goes on to add that you should eat 2500-2800 calories a day. When I was 22 and did four to six hours of kung fu a week, I maybe needed 2200 calories. I'm now nearly 30 and have a desk job. I metabolize 1570 calories on a normal day. They go on to say I need at least four servings of meat, 9-12 servings of grains, 7 or more servings of vegetables, four glasses of milk. . . There is a serious obesity crisis going on and it is one of the things that places mothers and fetuses most in danger. What is wrong with you department of health?
Needless to say, this puts me in a minority.
I have now completed my last day of research; from here on out, I'm only going to listen to my doctor if and when I conceive, and I'm going to do that listening with a healthy skepticism. My two mantras are:
1. Shut up.
(This applies to anyone who is not Ciro, my husband, or Val, my shield brother. I suppose my mom can also say stuff, and I suppose Ciro's mom. And I look favorably on people from Berkely, for reasons I'm not sure about; I've just noticed that the reasonable discussion board comments come from there. But I don't want to be told by some infantalizing woman how my life "will be so changed" and I don't want a mid-twenties non-father non-doctor telling me on the basis of some TV Guide article that I should or should not eat eggs. Birth is not magical, and you probabably don't know enough about science to boss me around.)
2. No episiotomy.
Corrolary: Try it and I'll kill you.
(The episiotomy is this brilliant idea where because a woman might tear her perineum during delivery, you go ahead and cut it in advance so that it definitely tears. This saves you, the doctor, time. It's offensively absurd. It is not unlike noticing a kid climing a tree, thinking he might fall and break his arm, calling him out of the tree, and breaking his arm so that at least it's a clean break. That is the level of logic.)
As you can see, the main reason I don't intend to do more research is that it puts me in a terrible mood and makes me want to murder a lot of people, ideally using blunt instruments. Ciro has evaluated this and feels it is better that I avoid reading bad science than that I avoid hammers, since hammers are actually useful for things.
The biggest disappointment in all of this has been the website of the Department of Health. I like the U.S. government. Even the I.R.S. part of it. I like DARPA, NASA, the CDC, the Department of Energy. I like Homeland Security now that it's under Napolitano. I am pro-government. The Department of Health is wackadoo. Their advice on what to eat and what to avoid doesn't have any whys attached, and therefore doesn't distinguish between real dangers and "eh, couldn't hurt."
For instance, it really does make sense to avoid deli meats, because listeria can seriously mess with the fetus and/or cause you to spontaneously abort. It's pretty serious. (Also, despite what wiki says in that link, all soft cheeses are not a risk; it's just ones from unpasteurized milk, which until recently were illegal in the U.S. anyway.) Avoiding salmonella . . . not so necessary. Or at least not any more necessary than when you're not pregnant. You get salmonella, you get food poisoning, just the same as if you weren't pregnant. The end. Making sure you don't eat "undercooked meat" sure makes it sound like medium-rare steak is off the menu, but the thing about steak is there is literally no way that's unsafe. The bacteria that live in stake are aerobic. They stay on the surface and you sear them off. It's fine. They also trot out the "no alcohol is safe at any time" rule, which is bunk. There is zero evidence anywhere that if I drink a half glass of champagne at month 5 I'm going to retard the fetus. None whatsoever. "Unsafe at any amount at any time" is pure hysteria, meant to to shock the alcoholics into not being alcoholics -- which it won't. It's reefer madness.
Basically, the DOH doesn't treat this stuff like science. It treats it like magic. And that's not okay. That's especially not okay when it's a means of exerting control over women's bodies. And I don't truck with "only nine months." Dig a little deeper and it's only nine months and any time you might conceive (which is any time pre-menopause) and any time you're pregnant and any time you're breastfeeding.
Sure, they could be superstitiously "doing what's best for the baby," but if so, why aren't they telling me I should never clean up after a dog or cat, should never wash someone else's dishes, and should never plunge a toliet? All of those put me at a much higher risk of bacterial contamination than if I eat fresh oysters. But cleaning up after everybody is what a wife is supposed to do, so of course the government wouldn't think of intruding. That would inconvenience everyone.
The other stupid thing the DOH says is that when you're pregnant you should take in 300 extra calories a day (which is not even true in the first trimester, although it is after that), and then goes on to add that you should eat 2500-2800 calories a day. When I was 22 and did four to six hours of kung fu a week, I maybe needed 2200 calories. I'm now nearly 30 and have a desk job. I metabolize 1570 calories on a normal day. They go on to say I need at least four servings of meat, 9-12 servings of grains, 7 or more servings of vegetables, four glasses of milk. . . There is a serious obesity crisis going on and it is one of the things that places mothers and fetuses most in danger. What is wrong with you department of health?
