April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

pregnancy

Motherhood–hold the apple pie

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Apple Pie
A society will sentimenalize and moralize about the things it wishes it cared about. Pregnancy and motherhood being no exception.

Plenty of moralizing, lots of cooing over womb contents like children oohing over puppies in the pet shop window, but little actually being done to support pregnant women and mothers.

We begin with the moralizing over what you may or may not eat/drink while pregnant.

You say you just can’t help super sizing. You look at the that hamburger and all you can think is more bacon!!!!!!!!!! You have started getting slushies by the garbage pail.

No need to take responsibility folks. Good news it’s your mom’s fault!!

Our study has shown that eating large quantities of junk food when pregnant and breastfeeding could impair the normal control of appetite and promote an exacerbated taste for junk food in offspring,’ she said Dr Stephanie Bayol.

‘This could send offspring on the road to obesity and make the task of teaching healthy eating habits in children even more challenging.’

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Now don’t you feel better? Have a cookie.

In an effort to prove two can live as cheaply as one pregnant women are now being told they must keep weight gain to 10lbs less than the current guidelines.

According to current guidelines, which IOM announced in 1990, women with low body mass indexes should gain up to 40 pounds during pregnancy, women with normal BMIs should gain 25 to 35 pounds, and most obese women should gain about 15 pounds. In 2003, about 25% of pregnant women in the U.S. gained more than 40 pounds during pregnancy, compared with 20% in 1990, according to the AP/Standard-Times.

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Now some of that weight is increased uterine size, breast size, placenta and amniotic fluid. All of which on their own can add up to 15lbs. Considering that ‘obese’ women are now to only gain 5lbs, one can only assume that doctors are recommending calorie restriction (ie dieting) during pregnancy. Seems like a bad idea. In fact the current guidelines were set because doctors were recommending restricted weight gain before and it wasn’t shown to have good results for the babies.

I suppose the retro fad has hit the medical community now.

Not only that but you’ll grow hair on your chest and talk funny.

Lobby groups in Ireland are calling for regulations on anti abortion ‘counselling services’.

Niav Keating of Choice Ireland said: ‘When our activists attended one agency, they were told that having an abortion would increase their risk of developing breast cancer, becoming an alcoholic and abusing children. These are blatant lies designed to scare vulnerable women in a crisis pregnancy situation.’

Choice Ireland said it was calling on the government to bring forward statutory regulation for all pregnancy counselling services. Minimum codes of practices and standards should be imposed to ensure that misleading and incorrect information is not given to
vulnerable women.

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You would think that groups that invoke the gord as their witness wouldn’t be playing so fast and loose with the truth….something about bearing false witness.

Adoptive parents showing appreciation for the trials gone through to create the children they want are in court complaining about birth mothers getting benefits they don’t.

adoption advocates contend that 15 weeks is far more time than the average mother needs to recover from the physical stresses of childbirth and that much of it is actually spent bonding with a new child.

But some maternity experts disagree, saying that the birthing process puts physiological stresses on a woman’s body that adoptive parents may not recognize.

‘Maternity benefits exist to recognize the unique experience of pregnancy,’ says Amy Mullin, a University of Toronto sociologist and author of Reconceiving Pregnancy and Childcare: Ethics, Experience and Reproductive Labor. ‘During pregnancy, a woman can undergo hypertension, nausea, heartburn and a number of other things. It’s not the norm for pregnancy to be completely easy. The government has recognized that embodied experience and I hope they continue to do so.’

Ms. Mullin stressed that the 15-week leave can start up to eight weeks before pregnancy, addressing any pre-birth health concerns.

‘That gives a mother six weeks to recover after her pregnancy,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t say that’s out of line.’

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Bleeding hearts. Why in my day women dropped ’em while doing the laundry and went right back at it.

Here are some of the realities of pregnancy

A dairy farmer is accused of giving a cattle hormone to a woman he got pregnant in hopes of inducing a miscarriage.

Police said 25-year-old William Stanley Sutton III added ProstaMate last week to a soda he gave to Lauren Ashley Tucker, 21.

Tucker felt sick to her stomach and vomited after drinking a 20-ounce soda Sutton gave her that ‘tasted nasty and burnt her throat,’ according to court records. She went to the hospital Aug. 9, and the hospital reported a possible poisoning to police.
The unborn child survived. Tucker, who was treated and released, is now 15 weeks pregnant.

ProstaMate is a hormone given to cows in the breeding process to bring all cows in heat at the same time. It can also be used to stimulate an early-term abortion in a heifer that gets pregnant too young or a cow that mates with an undesired bull.

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A Perth man who bashed, kicked and stabbed his pregnant, wheelchair-bound de facto wife has been remanded in custody.

Graham Leslie Garraway, 24, appeared in the Fremantle Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday charged over the alleged attack on Wednesday on his 21-year-old partner at their Langford home.

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DARTMOUTH, N.S. – A pregnant woman is in hospital with life-threatening injuries after being stabbed repeatedly with a sword in a domestic dispute.

A 43-year-old man who lives with the woman has been charged with attempted murder. Police wanted to charge him with trying to kill her unborn child, as well, but that was overruled by the Public Prosecution Service.

The stabbing happened in a ground floor apartment in Dartmouth just after midnight Tuesday. The woman was discovered by a passerby who heard her call for help from an open window. When she looked inside she saw the injured woman and ran for help.

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A pregnant woman with a chronic heart condition pleaded for doctors to abort her baby so she could live – but both she and her newborn son died.

Her ‘tragic’ story resulted in a year-long investigation by Health and Disability Commissioner Ron Paterson after her family complained about how she was treated. His report, released yesterday, criticizes poor communication between clinicians during the woman’s pregnancy and a 15-week delay in assessment for a heart condition – 15 times longer than recommended.

The family of the woman and her son did not want them named.

Paterson refused to say which hospital provided ‘suboptimal’ care but the Sunday Star-Times understands Wellington Hospital, one of two hospitals involved, was found to have twice breached the patient code of conduct.

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Not all pregnancies are alike

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pregnant_couple.jpgThis is the version of pregnancy anti-choicers see. Even if they themselves do not experience the soft focus joy the picture alludes to, they would never admit to it. They certainly do not want to hear that for many the experience of pregnancy is a horror.

Anyone who could still adhere to the idea that all pregnancies are gifts and all abortions are wrong after reading the following story has no sense of decency or humanity.

An 11-year-old primary school pupil who was raped last year but kept her ordeal a secret until a month ago, has given birth to a baby boy.

The baby was born in Tygerberg Hospital on Thursday.

The family of the the girl, who lives in Bishop Lavis, have decided to give up the boy for adoption.

Approached for comment, a prominent medical doctor, Yusuf Noor, said it was “very traumatic. It will stay with her for the rest of her life”.

“Depending on the size of her pelvis, womb and other parts of her body, she may not be able to give birth normally again and she may have complications.

“However, it depends on the treatment given to her before the birth by a gynaecologist.

“The greatest problem will be a psychological one. It is very traumatic to give birth at that age,” Noor said.

Her grandmother said: “I hope the counselling programme and sessions are completed before she is summoned to testify in court.”

The 48-year-old security officer who will appear in court today is a former neighbour and a family friend

full story

Unchained Melody

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Full wording of the 1967 Abortion Act follows

How the church views women“Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.“.. Emma Goldman

Cardinal Keith O’Brien believes the 1967 Abortion Act is full of lies. As it is a document dealing with a woman’s legal right to seek medical treatment. One can only assume that to the Cardinal it is a lie that a woman has a right to seek medical treatment, that anyone has the right to save her life or that any woman catholic or not, has the right to “defy” the father church. [Read more…] about Unchained Melody

Infallable? Well…..maybe not..

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I wonder if Benny looks back fondly on the days when a pope had real authority. Now, just like the Queen, there is more pomp than power.

Why these days a pope can’t even threaten the church members without some spin doctor coming along to say, “Look Benny doesn’t always mean what he says. Smile, nod make him feel good but don’t take him too seriously.” [Read more…] about Infallable? Well…..maybe not..

Mothers

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An interesting article at Women’s Enews on mothering and the value placed on it. While much lip service is given to the undertaking, little is done to actually support those choosing to have children.

(WOMENSENEWS)–The news media loves stories about highly educated mothers opting out of rewarding careers to stay at home with their young children.

Anecdotal evidence unsupported by serious research is also constantly drumming home the idea that women consider themselves the best providers of child care. For example, a 2006 Salary.com survey of what mothers do “on the job” leads with the headline “Dream Job: Stay at Home Mom.” Although the survey claims that equal numbers of working and stay-at-home mothers participated, quotes from the happy, at-home mothers dominate the report.

For instance, working mothers are “horrified” at the thought of hiring strangers to care for their children, they believe that mother’s care is “priceless” and that motherhood is the “greatest job in the world.” It’s easy to stay on message: Women must choose between work and family.

But the opposite message is sent to low-income mothers.

The recent debate over the welfare-to-work provisions of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families–or welfare–captures this difference. Congress did not debate the best means to provide even minimally adequate day care to the children of single parents. Instead they wondered whether or not the required hours of paid work should be increased!

Why does popular sentiment portray some mothers as virtuous when they drop out of the labor force to care for their families, while others are responsible only if they work for pay outside the home?

With Mothers Day coming up and the usual platitudes running rampant trying to get you to spend spend spend to show mom how much you love her, and with the forced pregnancy folks all creamed up about Bushie and company and their anti choice stance, I thought it might be interesting to see just how much mothers are valued once those sacred womb contents are born. [Read more…] about Mothers

Back Up Your Birth Control Day

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Today is Back Up Your Birth Control Day in America. This action is to draw attention to these facts among others;

– Most teenagers in the U.S. don’t have access to EC over-the-counter (but they do in areas of Alaska, California, Vermont, Hawaii, Washington, Maine, New Hampshire and New Mexico)

– Despite the over-the-counter status, low-income and immigrant women still have issues of access to emergency contraception

– More than 60% of voters say they do not know about EC or any product that has been proven effective in preventing pregnancy when used within days after unprotected sex

You can read Biting Beavers’ story of trying to get EC here

or this story

The conservative politics of the Bush administration forced me to have an abortion I didn’t want. Well, not literally, but let me explain.

I am a 42-year-old happily married mother of two elementary-schoolers. My husband and I both work, and like many couples, we’re starved for time together. One Thursday evening this past March, we managed to snag some rare couple time and, in a sudden rush of passion, I failed to insert my diaphragm.

The next morning, after getting my kids off to school, I called my ob/gyn to get a prescription for Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill that can prevent a pregnancy — but only if taken within 72 hours of intercourse. As we’re both in our forties, my husband and I had considered our family complete, and we weren’t planning to have another child, which is why, as a rule, we use contraception. I wanted to make sure that our momentary lapse didn’t result in a pregnancy.

The receptionist, however, informed me that my doctor did not prescribe Plan B. No reason given. Neither did my internist. The midwifery practice I had used could prescribe it, but not over the phone, and there were no more open appointments for the day. The weekend — and the end of the 72-hour window — was approaching.

Or read the empathy and understanding for a rape victim

To add insult to injury, here’s what Dr. Joe Kearns, former medical director of Good Samaritan Hospital in Lebanon, had to say:

“People drive to Reading to buy jeans. Even if that were the case, that you had to drive to Reading to get this [prescription], to me that does not rise to a compulsion that you have to pass laws that [doctors] have to do something.”

I am struggling to understand how a woman–who has just been raped!–would find a trip to Reading to get a prescription for emergency contraception (EC) similar to a road trip she might take with her girlfriends to buy a new pair of jeans.

Although legally women in Canada are allowed to buy EC OTC there are many instances of pharmacies not carrying it or pharmacists exercising “freedom of conscience”.

And our current fundamentalist friendly government who have already shown themselves ready to turn back the clock with cuts to SWC and removal of equality from the mandate, would be only too happy to partner with these same groups to deny women reproductive choice.