Are women's bodies broken and defective? Just ask your TV.

Most people know that we don't expose ourselves to much media around here. However, we get a snippet here and there, and more often than not, we're disgusted with what we hear.

This morning at the gym, I happened to catch a glimpse (sound turned off) of this segment on Good Morning America. (GMA happens to be the show that visited my hospital, spoke with one doctor, refused to speak to nurses, and then "spoke out" on the "dangers of doulas.") What seems to have happened is that a Haitian woman went into preterm labor at 32 weeks. American doctors suspected that the baby was lying transverse and thus unable to delivery vaginally. There were also signs that her uterus was becoming infected. A flurry of text messages later, they managed to get her to a field hospital, where it was discovered that the baby was actually head down, in a fine position for delivery. She subsequently delivered her baby vaginally, and, it seems, fairly uneventfully.

Watching this clip with the sound off, I was struck by the imagery. Poor, third-world, black pregnant woman splayed out in front of the TV cameras while white men all over the world exchanged electronic missives about what to do with/to her. She's rushed off to lie flat on her back in a hospital bed in a tent, an Israeli field hospital with, of all things, electronic fetal monitors strapped to her. Where did those come from? Why would they have a machine that not only costs thousands of dollars, but doesn't improve outcomes? When periodic listening with a fetoscope--or in times of need, an ear against a pregnant woman's belly--can tell you what you need to know?

The message these pictures spoke was: women's bodies are trouble. They're defective. They're ticking time bombs. And they need men--wealthy white men, judging by these images--and their machines to save them.

Despite the fact that the birth was eventually effected with very little technology (which I couldn't tell from the clip--to me, it appeared that she underwent a Cesarean, but she must have just given birth in a room that looked like an OR), ABC News still managed to worm in a statement of how OMG SHE WOULD HAVE DIED if she'd had her baby at home:

The mother is doing well, despite having experienced preeclampsia, a leading killer of pregant women in Haiti, shortly before giving birth. And when Besser spoke with the doctor who delivered the baby, he said that the earthquake, ironically, likely saved the lives of both baby and mother.

"He said that had she delivered at home, both the mother and baby would have died," Besser said.

I'm sorry--would have died of what? The cure for preeclampsia is not drugs. Not surgery. Certainly not Blackberries and television cameras! Just one thing: the birth of the baby. Which her body had already initiated (go figure) and eventually completed.

It's not the only time the media (hey, ABC news again!) has recently glossed over the facts to present us with the idea that things can go wrong at the drop of a hat and you'd better be in a hospital--just in case. Exhibit B: the Christmas Miracle Mom.

Only, maybe not so much. It's interesting how the American Medical Association and ACOG seem to have infiltrated the media in recent years; how a story involving a cardiac arrest following an epidural turns into doctors saving the life of a woman whose pregnancy mysteriously tried to kill her. Interestingly enough, just a few years ago, MSNBC ran a story about a young mother who died following a "routine" induction and epidural. It actually happened in DC, at a hospital where several of my friends used to work. I thought the article did a good job of avoiding conjecture and finger-pointing; it just reported the sequence of events, which pointed to the fact that an epidural killed Julie LeMoult.

Does that happen often? No. But it does happen. Similar to the risks of homebirth, (though different in the important respect that one is a major, elective medical procedure and the other is normal life event), the risks are rare, but there. However, while there's probably not an OB in the country that wouldn't argue for a woman's right to have a large needle, anesthetic, and narcotic injected into her spine in order to birth her baby, their professional organization is fighting tooth and nail to limit a woman's right to bring her baby into the world in the location of her choosing, despite the dissent of some of their members.

And today, what you hear are grim statistics, implicitly chalked up to out-of-hospital birth:

A woman in Haiti has a 1 in 44 chance of dying from childbirth in her lifetime, according to the World Health Organization. The comparable statistic for the United States is 1 in 4,800.

Part of the problem may be that even in the best of times, medical resources may not be accessible to many Haitians.

"About 80 percent of the population delivers outside of the hospital on a good day [in Haiti]," Moritz said.

A number of European countries have higher rates of out-of-hospital birth than the United States--and better maternal mortality rankings, by far. So clearly place of delivery is not the only factor here. Perhaps the women's bodies there aren't as defective as they clearly are here, or in Haiti? Or just maybe, they haven't been led to believe that they are.

Pregnancy and birth are neither where it begins, nor where it ends. They just tend to be where it's most visible. However, society's disdain for the female body crops up in other places, too. Breastfeeding, for example. It's a well-worn example that women's breasts are OK everywhere, as long as they're being used to sell sex (or anything else) and not to feed a baby. Women's bodies are cheap commodities for commerce and decoration--not something powerful and useful (let alone something men can't do! Gasp!) like nurturing another human being!

Menopause is another example. On the way to the gym this morning, coincidentally, I happened to hear an assinine spot involving a male DJ talking about one of his friends' wives who was going through early menopause. He went on to discuss how disgusting and abnormal this was, how she was probably a "sweaty mess," and how MAYBE his friend would stick around, but if you were "just dating" someone, the menopause would probably be a reason to "hit the road." "You add PROFUSE SWEATING to ALL THOSE HORMONES?" he said. "Come on!"

The message: women's bodies are gross, they're only good for one thing, and when they're not good for that thing anymore (as deemed by men)? Hit the road.

Come on indeed. This makes me all so furiously sad, now not just for myself and the other women out there, but because I now have a little girl. A little girl whose tiny body has miraculously transformed from 10 pounds of sweet melting baby fat into a sturdy 17 lbs of muscle and mobility, and which I know will someday be capable of further miracles. Like the one that grew and nourished her, and safely birthed all 10 lbs of her with little more assistance than a tub of warm water. And I plan to fight tooth and nail to safeguard her belief in herself and the integrity and power of her body.

Are women's bodies broken and defective? Far from it. But our view of them certainly is.

A happy new year.

Two weeks into the new year, I feel like we're in a very nice place. Certainly better than last January, when I was starting to get big, down with a cold, and lacking in energy. This year, instead of an expanding midsection, we have an ever-more-delightful, affectionate, silly and wonderful little person around.

We're settling into a nice routine, too; during the week, we get up around 6, I go to the gym for an hour, and Matt hangs out with Eden. I come home, and we spend time as a family until Matt leaves to walk to work. In the evenings, Matt usually does some woodworking, I do some homework, and after we put Eden to bed, we cap it off with an episode of Lost (two episodes on the weekends). On the weekends, I go to work, Matt and Eden have a daddy-daughter day, and we take it easy in the evenings. I feel so fortunate to have been able to rearrange my work schedule around my daughter's teething. I'm actually training up on the postpartum floor as well, to get a few more weekend hours, which is nice.

Eden is also getting bigger and a little more predictable (despite her increasing mobility). Plus, I think we're getting used to her. The more we settle into our life as parents (versus focusing on what we used to be able to do--you know, like sleep in, or have an uninterrupted conversation), the happier we are with it.

Things just feel peaceful and quiet these days--the calm before the storm. We're thankful for both.

Happy New Year!

Compared to my post about Christmas, which was celebrated on the 23rd and not posted till the 31st, my January 2nd new year's post is downright timely. Not that there's a whole lot to say about it; we spend New Year's Eve at home with Eden, who went to sleep around 9pm, while we stayed up watching Lost on DVD. Like with The Office, we're pretty much the last people on earth to discover both shows and now we're just as obsessed as everybody else, except we're about two years behind. Nothing wrong with that!

We also made homemade spaghetti and meatballs, which always tastes so deliciously decadent as to be well worth the small investment of time that it requires to make it. Since our discovery of BPA in a can, and having used up most of our frozen tomatoes, we've switched over to fresh tomatoes in all of our recipes that call for canned. It's a little more expensive, and it can't be called seasonal, but to us, it's worth it. In this instance, it worked quite well.

Besides marking our last New Year's in Reston, 2010 is going to be a big year for us. It appears to be the year we'll move back to the midwest, meaning the end of our current jobs and housing and the seeking out of new. Eden's first birthday, the beginning of my midwifery clinicals, and who knows what else will be other highlights. It was supposed to be the year I finished midwifery school, but it now appears that I'll do that in 2011 instead. Which is just fine with me. In all other ways, we're coming so much closer to accomplishing our dreams than I'd ever hoped we could, that a delay of a few months really doesn't matter at all.

Meanwhile, we're happy right now just to be exactly where we're at. Eden is growing and developing by leaps and bounds every day. Last night, while I was nursing her to sleep (or trying to), she somehow wrangled herself into a position perpendicular to me, worked her legs underneath her, and straightened them, so that she was standing up, bent at a 90-degree angle, still latched on. She's a lightning-fast army crawler and is already imitating sounds we make, making us feel like walking and talking will be here before we know it. Today at CVS, we reached two milestones: we bought her first toothbrush (a tiny yellow Sesame Street number--how impossible is it to buy a child's item that doesn't have some kind of marketing on it?!), and I also sat her in the front of the cart. Having only ever held or worn her in a store, it was amazing to look down and see this tiny, distinct person sitting in a little seat, little legs poked out through the holes, and of course trying to grab and mouth everything that went past her.

Today we also ordered some books, making use of generous gift cards and other funds given to us for Christmas (thanks, everybody!). For Matt: The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live it. For me? A few too many breastfeeding books, so seductive because (like pregnancy and birth books) I can justify them as part of my "professional library." Including:

Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense
The Food of Love: The Easier Way to Breastfeed Your Baby
Ina May's Guide to Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding Made Simple: Seven Natural Laws for Nursing Mothers

And, for Eden: What Baby Needs. While it's about the anticipation of a younger sibling, and we don't need that quite yet, we know someday we will and it seems like many of the more naturally-minded or breastfeeding/homebirth-friendly children's books (I am Made of Mama's Milk or Welcome With Love) go out of print quickly and then are quite expensive used. This one was under $5 shipped, and so I figured it was a bargain. Something I didn't get, but totally loved: these nursing animals (pig, cat, and dog) which have babies who "nurse" by magnetically attaching to their mother (which I'm sure is how all nursing mothers have felt at some point). Awesome! I remember how much I loved Puppy Surprise as a kid, and this is even a bit more biologically sound than dogs whelping via a Velcro abdominal pouch. (And who knew, anyway, that there were so many Surprise iterations that followed?)

So anyway. We're happily anticipating what comes next, enjoying where we're at, and already watching our baby girl grow up. And learning that, unlike the proverbial pot, she'll continue to grow and change incredibly quickly no matter how closely we're watching.

Christmas!

I figure that so long as I post our Christmas pictures while it's still December, I'm not too far behind, right?

We actually celebrated our Christmas on December 23rd, because I was scheduled to work overnight on the 24th and 25th. Well, I actually ended up working the 22nd and 23rd as well, thanks to Matt's generous offer to cook the entire Christmas dinner (and clean up after himself!) and watch Eden all day. He did, and I can't imagine things going any better than they did!

Our menu for Christmas dinner was as follows:

Spice-rubbed roast beef
Country Potatoes
Green bean casserole
Buttered corn

The roast was one from the half steer we split with Pam's family earlier in the fall. The recipe we used was one from the Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook, an excellent and artistic book that contains all you need to know about cooking succulent grassfed meat (for example, cooking it "lower and slower" than you would grain-fed beef). This particular recipe involved rubbing the meat with a combination of spices (including cardamom and cloves, which we chose specifically because it seemed especially Christmasy!) and then roasting it at the super-low temperature of 180 degrees. It came out absolutely perfect--tender, juicy, medium-rare, and with just enough spice to lend flavor without covering up the beef's own deliciousness.

The Country Potatoes are a recipe that Matt's mom makes for get-togethers which Matt and I are absolutely crazy about.

Country Potatoes

2 # frozen hash browns (we used two pounds of peeled, cubed potatoes. They didn't cook up quite as tender as we would have liked, so I think next time we might boil them for just a few minutes before assembling the casserole)
1/2 c. shredded cheddar cheese
1 c. sour cream
1 can cream of chicken soup (we actually just halved this recipe)
1/2 c. chopped onions
1 stick melted butter
1-1/2 c. corn flake crumbs (we used about two cups of torn bread crumbs, since we're all about croutons)
4 T. melted butter

Mix hash browns, sour cream, cheese, soup, onion and 1 stick melted butter together. Pour into 13x9 inch pan. Mix corn flake crumbs and 4 T. melted butter together and spread over the top. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Serves 12 (haha)

Utter deliciousness.

For the green bean casserole, we went the easy route and bought French-fried onions (though we've made them before) and used the recipe off the side of the can. We did make our own cream of mushroom soup, though.

We also had a delicious organic red wine with the meal, made better by Pam's introducing us to a wine aerator. It was a total revelation, especially to someone like me who in the past has had to work to enjoy red wines (not anymore!). It really mellows and softens the sharp, bitter edge that red wine often has to it, and we're definitely glad to have one of these on hand!

Here are a few more pictures from Eden's first Christmas:

All in all, we had a wonderful evening. It was simple, quiet, and shared with each other and one good friend. There were gifts, but no extravagance; there were also no obligations, no sense of "we should invite so and so" or anything like that. Just sincere, genuine, and heartfelt. While we missed our families, that was also allayed by the knowledge that next year we'll be nestled about as closely in the bosom of our families as possible, so we were able to enjoy this one quiet Christmas together, and appreciate it for what it was.

Cooking with squash

I've never been a big eater of vegetables. I've tried to browse the grocery store or farmer's market, and just pick up something in season (like hmm, kohlrabi? or so I hear it's beet season), and go home and cook it. Last time I tried that I ended up with the Swiss Chard incident, and there have been a number of other attempts that were equally unsuccessful.

So I'm not really sure what possessed me to pick up a butternut squash and bring it home, except that it seemed so robustly autumnal (this was back in autumn, mind you). Surprisingly enough, I ended up finding at least three uses for butternut squash that I liked quite a bit.

The first one was a variation on Easy Brown Rice Risotto, which was sort of a no-brainer because I've made it before and liked it with sweet potatoes. Here's how that went:

Butternut Squash & Brown Rice Risotto

1/2 butternut squash, peeled and cubed (about 1/4" cubes)
About 1/4 cup olive oil
1 Tbsp rosemary
2.5 cups chicken stock
1 T butter
1 cup long-grain brown rice
1 cup grated Parmesan
1 cup walnuts, toasted briefly in a dry skillet
1 cup feta cheese

1. Drizzle cubed squash with olive oil and sprinkle with rosemary. Bake at 400 degrees 30-45 minutes or until roasted and tender.
2. Meanwhile, bring chicken stock to a boil. Add butter. Once butter is melted, stir in the rice and reduce heat to simmer. Cover and cook 45-50 minutes. The rice should be moist.
3. Remove from heat and fluff with a fork. Stir in Parmesan and roasted squash.
4. Garnish generously with toasted walnuts and feta cheese.

Hummus was next on the list. I actually didn't realize until after I'd made it that butternut squash was the first on the list of possible add-ins we'd listed for hummus way back when.

Curried Butternut Squash Hummus

1/2 butternut squash, cubed and roasted as above except sprinkled with curry powder instead of rosemary

Hummus prepared like this (or any other way)

Add the cubed squash to the hummus and process in a food processor until smooth.

I think my favorite, though, was butternut squash soup, even though I seem to have failed to take a picture of it. It was wonderful--silky, sweet but not too sweet. I had originally looked at a recipe from Smitten Kitchen, but found that it had too many ingredients I didn't have on hand. However, commenter #3 on the afore-linked post had just the ticket; I made very few substitutions except to eliminate the leeks, chives, and brie.

Butternut Squash Soup

1 large butternut squash, cut in half. Bake at 350 degrees/45 min.(cut side down on baking dish)
Chop 1 carrot, 1 onion, 1 leek (white part mostly). Saute in butter in large pot.
Add cooked squash and 2 liters chicken stock to pot and bring to a boil.
Add one apple (peeled and chopped), one bay leaf, and one tsp. sugar.
Simmer 40 min. Remove bay leaf and mash/puree.Add salt and pepper to taste.

Next up I think I'm going to have to do a dessert round.

Snow!

We're having record snowfall in the Washington area today. We made the most of it and went out grocery shopping. As you can see, like a good Midwestern baby, Eden really enjoyed it:

Making our bed and lying in it

This is kind of a long story and sort of old news, but I thought it was worth reporting.

The takeaways from this rather long story, if you don't feel like reading on, are:

1) I (along with many in the scientific community) believe that the evidence shows that conventional mattresses are not safe and they contribute to SIDS.

2) A Guardsman mattress protection plan, like any warranty, is worth about as much as the paper it's written on. I paid around $70 for the original plan, so for my time and trouble I was compensated basically $55 toward a new mattress when I paid $350 for the original. Not a route I would go again. Our latex mattress does come with a limited warranty, but it's not anything we had to pay extra for. And, while they were super nice and responsive when I was scheduling a cleaning, they were suddenly very difficult to get ahold of when it came time to pay out.

3) Our latex mattress, while initially expensive, is comfortable, durable, customizable, and, we believe, safe--the safest option we've been able to find for cosleeping. This makes it a worthwhile investment for our family, who will spend over 1/3 of the rest of our lives there!

Here's how we got to this point.

Way back in 2006, I brought a Simmons Beautyrest mattress to our relationship that Matt and I have always been really happy with. I bought it in 2005, just before I graduated from college. It's a queen-size, which was always plenty of room for the two of us.

However, the bed was unfortunately about the only thing which did not escape our homebirth completely unscathed. Despite not actually giving birth in the bed--well, it suffered a little bit anyway. Enough said.

Luckily, I had purchased a protection plan from Guardsman which guaranteed that if anything ever made it through their mattress cover, they would replace the mattress. I contacted them to let them know that this was the case, and they politely informed me that they would first send a technician out to try to clean the spot; then if he couldn't, they would replace it.

The tech came and was very nice and helpful, but was unable to get the spot out with the first treatment. He informed me he needed to come back a couple of days later to try a stronger treatment which couldn't be combined with the first.

After he left, I noticed a strong ammonia-like chemical smell in the apartment, clearly a result of the spot removers used on the mattress. Coincidentally, while the tech had been here I'd been reading this article. Basically, New Zealand has eradicated SIDS for the past FIFTEEN YEARS (it's an older article) by wrapping their mattresses in polyethylene covers which prevent the interaction of toxic flame retardants (required by the government) and common fungus, which combine in mattresses to release poisonous gases.

They've attempted to share this research with the United States, where 8 babies a night die of SIDS, but despite the fact that it's a cheap, easy solution which can't hurt, the United States has basically said it's not interested. Why? The above article postulates it may be because admitting that government-mandated flame retardants are killing babies would be invoking a HUGE amount of liability, and because SIDS research is big business.

Sad.

Lest you think this is just one of my hippie trips, one of the New Zealand researchers notes that the level of success with their mattress-wrapping campaign amounts to one billion times the amount of evidence needed to establish scientific proof.

Fortunately, these covers are available in the United States. Unfortunately, they don't come in adult sizes, and as we are firm believers in the physical, emotional, and developmental benefits of cosleeping, our baby sleeps with us in our adult-sized bed.

Clearly we had to do something.

I called Guardsman and shared the above with them, saying I was uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping on the mattress now that it had been impregnated with chemicals and preferred not to go through with the second cleaning. They demurred, saying the chemicals were safe and nothing could be done about the warranty until a second cleaning was attempted. The tech subsequently came back and could not remove the stain with a second cleaning. anyway After a number of phone calls to Guardsman, they finally said that since we had bought the bed at a store in Iowa which did not deliver to Virginia, they could either purchase the bed in Iowa and we would have to pay to ship it out here, or they could give us a "courtesy payment" of $125.

When I paid $350 for the original mattress, $125 didn't feel like much of a courtesy. But since we didn't actually want another queen-sized Beautyrest mattress, for both size and chemical concerns, we grudgingly accepted it and started looking for another bed.

Incidentally, we were able to sell the mattresses and frame on Craigslist for another $125 to someone who didn't care about the stain.

So with our nominal cash in hand, the hunt was on for a safe mattress. Chemical-free mattresses are available in the United States, but by law they must either contain a natural flame retardant like wool, or you have to have a prescription to buy them. After much research on the various options, their cost, safety, durability, and comfort, the route we chose to go was a natural latex mattress which contains a wool layer, thereby bypassing the need for a prescription. There are a number of discount latex mattresses out there, but we chose to go with a Savvy Rest because all of their ingredients--rubber, cotton, wool--are certified organic. We don't believe that organic certification is the be-all, end-all in any way, but it's a starting point, at least. We also read a number of reviews and managed to track down a Savvy Rest dealer--a chiropractor about ten minutes from us who had a full-size bed set up in his office. We got to come over and roll around on it with Eden, as well as try out the layers (soft, medium, and firm) in all different orders-- the order in which the layers are stacked affects how soft or firm the mattress feels. It's also split down the middle, in case your sleeping partner prefers a different firmness than you.

We were sold, and the chiropractor (Dr Bruce Short of Herndon) even threw in a SavvyRest shredded rubber pillow for us. I sleep on this now and it is THE MOST AWESOME PILLOW I'VE EVER FELT. We hadn't thought about pillows posing basically the same problems and hazards as a mattress, but once we thought about it, it seemed obvious. Matt chose an organic wool Holy Lamb pillow, which he has also been incredibly happy with.

We've now had the bed for about a month (after a few weeks of camping out on a futon and an air mattress while we waited for it to be delivered) and we're thrilled with every aspect of it. It was relatively easy to assemble (it ships as six separate latex sheets plus the organic cotton cover, which zips over it). We also opted for a wool "puddle pad" which helps protect the bed in the event of leaky sleepers (such as diaper-free babies). We are loving the extra room (plenty for two adults, an increasingly wiggly baby, and\ two cats) and find the bed and pillows exceptionally comfortable. While the price tag (around $2500) was originally a little tough to swallow, we found that any king mattress was going to be pricey, and the peace of mind and durability this one offered was well worth it. From what I understand, other customizable sleeping options (such as a Sleep Number Bed) are comparably expensive, without the benefit of chemical-free organic ingredients. Plus, we anticipate sleeping on it for pretty much the rest of our lives, as extreme as that sounds, and therefore the cost-per-use makes it actually a great bargain.