Workin' It

This isn't really an "official" blog; more of a dry run.  I just became an Amazon Associate, and the ad to the left is a Kindle "book".  Now, I don't know if I'll ever own one of these; I'm a person that just LOVES reading a real, physical book.  But who am I to get in the way of progress?  As long as there are ways to keep reading, to be able to get lost in a story, to be pulled into an adventure, to be wooed into a romance, I'll be there.

I hope my friends and family have enjoyed my blog.  I appreciate everyone's efforts at helping me get this started.

I LOVE YOU ALL!!!

The Kitties I have Known part 1

In an effort to prove to someone that I'm not all doom and gloom, that my life really doesn't revolve around adoption reform, I want to change things up a little bit.  Add some spice to my blog; I want to introduce the cats in my life.  :)

 Introducing Oscar.  He's an 11 year old tabby, with an old man attitude, a crook at the end of his tail (I think that his tail was stepped on as a kitten, but I'm not sure), and the deepest purr you've ever heard.  He's my buddy, and I'm his person.  He tells me LOUDLY when it's time for bed, and woe to me if I don't listen, or get out of bed after I'm safely tucked in.  He's the patriarch of our kitty clan, and takes no guff from anyone!  He was recently diagnosed with asthma, and has been having a difficult time of it lately.  His wheezing has been keeping me up at night, though, and there was one time I thought he'd just curled up next to me and slipped away.  Imagine his ire when I woke him up rather violently.  I think I was lucky to come away from the encounter with all my fingers in place.

This is Cleopatra, a 4 1/2 year old tabby and the matriarch of our kitty clan.  She is the Queen; you can call her Mama Patra, Auntie Patra, but just don't call her Cleo.  You'll get a paw full!  She is a definite daddy's girl; its especially funny to watch her jump on her daddy's lap and start to tread on his belly, purring up a storm an drooling all the while.

 

This is Qu'ushi, a domestic medium furred kitty.  His name is Hebrew for "little black boy"; in some ways, not very original, but Qu'ushi is a one of a kind cat.  He's a small fur kid, with a small voice, but a lot of love, and very much a daddy's boy.  He is Cleopatra's Prince Consort, even though he walks like a dandy, with a distinct swoosh to his stride.  And while he is a black cat, his time spent outside has bleached out some of his color, so he has patches of a deep mahogany brown.  If he wants something from you, he'll stand on his hind legs and stretch his forepaws up your leg and dig his claws in, meowing in a complaining voice until you figure out what it is he wants.  Typically his requests are for food, to be let outside or occasionally to be picked up.

These three cats are what I call our triumvirate.  They are the original cats that my fiance and I brought to the relationship when we moved in together.

Meet Jazz.  Beth is HER girl, and she is claimed by my daughter.  Beth is the one who found Jazz and her brother (whom we gave to some friends) on the grounds of the commercial nursery that we lived in for a year.  This 2 1/2 year old tabby quickly edged her way into our hearts.  She is named Jazz because she "sings"; her voice is melodious, for a cat, and she is a very vocal kitty.  She and Cleopatra tend to have arguments over who is dominate.  I'm not really sure if Cleopatra wins all the time, but Jazz is gracious enough to not shove it in her face every minute of the day.  Part of why Jazz thinks she's a contender for the throne is the fact that she's had several litters, and thinks that makes HER the Queen.  Which, in cat worlds, it does, but not necessarily in this household.

This handsome fellow is Pinkerton.  He was originally named Pinky because as a kitten, his fur was white, and showed a very pink skinned kitten.  At the time we thought he was a she, so Pinky would have been a perfectly acceptable name.  Boy, were we surprised!  So, his name morphed into Pinkerton; sometimes Stinky Pinky, Detective Pinkerton, and Pretty Boy.  He's about a year and a half old now, and is a short haired, tabby-Siamese mix.  We're not entirely sure where the Siamese comes from because ALL of his siblings, except for one have been either black, tabby or gray.  He's a very sweet boy, and always looking for a pet or to play.  We have an arm chair that is next to a walk way in our home; he'll jump up on the edge and either reach out a paw in play or he'll cock his neck to one side coyly asking for some love.

These are the first five of our cats...there's more to come so stay tuned.

The Brainwashing of America part 1

For several generations now there has been a huge misconception in America that pregnancy, labor and delivery are medical diseases, in need of medical management and treatment.  Look around you, it's everywhere!  In our popular culture from movies to sit coms; every pregnant woman you see is a screaming, out of control banshee, blaming the man who put her in that condition.  While it makes for a laugh, this is perpetuating a myth that began when medicine became industrialized.  In reality, it began much longer ago than that with the persecution of midwives as witches by the male dominated medical profession.

But that's for another blog.

When I had my first child, I went into labor and delivery willfully ignorant, believing that my body would know exactly what to do, and that I could just coast along for the ride.  I was sorely mistaken.  Yes, labor was painful.  Yes, labor is work.  And my mistake was that in not realizing that as a woman in an industrialized society, without the benefits of being raised around women that were either constantly giving birth, or helping someone else in labor, that my brain, and the brainwashing I'd been subtly subjected to my entire life didn't allow me to just "go with the flow".   Fairly quickly I began to request something for the pain.  Since pain medication is based upon your pre-pregnancy weight, I was given very little; my pre-pregnancy weight was maybe 115 pounds.  In the end, I had an emergency cesarean section.  Turned out, my son's umbilical cord was wrapped around his foot.  Every time he was pushed/descended into my pelvis, his cord tightened up like a knot, cutting off his oxygen and putting him into sever distress.

When I became pregnant with my next child, I made a conscious decision to be as educated as I possibly could about what was going on with my body, and how to successfully have a natural labor and delivery.  About my 20th week, I spent some time with my parents.  One day my mom and I were in a book store and I came across a book; "Husband Coached Childbirth", also known as "The Bradley Method".  My hopes, wishes and prayers were answered!  I devoured that book.  I already had this "off" opinion of the La Maze technique, but I didn't know why until I read that book.  When Dr. Bradley made a point of saying that animals pant to cool themselves off, but not humans, the light bulb went off over my head.  As a youth, growing up on a farm, Dr. Bradley had been exposed to all sorts of animals having babies.  He noted that many of these animals panted during labor, but understood as he began his medical practice that humans didn't need to do this in order to ease themselves during labor.

When he began to assist single women during their labor, he experienced a huge amount of displaced gratitude.  This spurred him to further research, and developing a technique that we can recognize now as directed meditation.  Taking long, deep breaths during contractions lessened the pain of labor, and made it more manageable.  For some women, music can help put them in a good place to concentrate on the kind of breathing needed for a smooth labor, for others it's building a "safe place" in their mind, and go there while her body is working to bring her baby into the world.

These are just a few techniques that a student of Husband Coached Childbirth learns, but the point is that he was able to give back to thousands of women the power to give birth in a dignified manner.

So, as soon as I got home, I started looking for someone in the area who taught the Bradley method.  I was blessed to find a woman who did double duty as our local Le Leche League leader and a Bradley method teacher.  My class was small, only two other couples, and we were Darlene's very first class.  It was a learning experience for all of us.  The other two expectant mothers were both due on the same date; I was due a week and a half after them.  We all ended up having girls, and they were all born on the same date!  My daughter was the youngest; which I always thought was appropriate since I was the one due last.

My testimony for the Bradley method is even more significant in that the night after my baby shower; I woke up at about 1:00 AM, no knowing which body part to put over the toilet.  I was violently ill for nearly six hours before I asked my husband to take me to the labor and delivery deck on base.  During an ultrasound, it was discovered that my daughter was only surrounded by pockets of amniotic fluid.  I was immediately put on an IV; both for hydration and a slow pitocin drip.  The plan was to have me on the drip for 24 hours to monitor my baby to see if she could tolerate the rigors of full blown labor.  If not, if she showed any sign of distress, it would be another cesarean for me.

I spent the next 24 hours worrying that my baby wouldn't be able to come into this world naturally; though I must admit that much of that time was spent trying not to get sick again.  It was the fastest flu I'd ever had, though!  By the time 24 hours rolled around, I felt fine, and my daughter was handling the contractions like a pro!

At that point, the pitocin was increased to truly start labor.  It's well known that women who have induced labor with pitocin have a much harder labor.  Their contractions, instead of slowly climbing to a natural peak, begin at the peak and last that way throughout the entire contraction.  And so my labor with my daughter was textbook, by pitocin standards.  Obviously having had another child, I had a good idea of what was to come, but I couldn't have really guessed how hard those contractions would hit me.  That's where the Bradley training came in; my husband was a miracle!  He helped me stay focused, especially when I needed it the most.  During transition, I was asking for a c-section; practically begging for it.  He used a technique that we were taught during class.  He recognized that I was in transition, and he made a deal with me; if I could hang in there for another hour, we would seriously consider a c-section, but just give it an hour.  I gave him that hour, sulking through most of it in between contractions, and then suddenly found myself in the pushing stage.

My daughter was born 4 hours later, 12 hours after the pitocin was amped up to put me into real labor.  It was shift change around the time my daughter was born, and I had an audience!  The reason?  No other mother had labored naturally through an entire pitocin induced labor at that hospital before!  And since I was the only mother giving birth at just that time, I had about 14 people in my labor and delivery room; I was completely naked.  And I didn't care!

During this entire time, I never actually screamed, or yelled, or cursed, or blamed my husband for the condition I was in.  The only time I lost my cool was during transition, and I only whined a bit.  Did labor hurt?  Definitely.  But I was able to deal with it, with the proper education, training, and guidance.

This is when the idea that America has been brainwashed truly began to take root.

For my newest blog posting, please see the link below.  Eventually I'll probably post this to my own blog, but I want to showcase Amanda's blog, too.

Amanda is an adult adoptee, who has recently started her reunion with her first Mother.  She is also an activist, being the founder of an Adoptee Rights Advocacy group in her home state, a blogger, and all around great person.

http://adopteerightsreform.blogspot.com/2010/03/forced-gratitude-and-its-consequences.html#comment-form

Return Adult Adoptees the right to their Original Birth Certificates

Until I figure this out some more, this will have to do;

A Strange Marriage of Ideas

I have recently found myself in a bit of a conundrum; how do I pull two seemingly disparate passions of mine into one cohesive, integral whole?

My first passion is midwifery, breastfeeding and co-sleeping/sleep sharing.  After I gave birth to my first child, which ended in an emergency C-section, I determined that I wouldn't go into another pregnancy, labor and delivery as blindly as I did the first.  Because adoption was a serious consideration for my first child, I willfully under-educated myself as to what labor and delivery would be like.  I reasoned that women had been having babies for longer than recorded history, so mine will know what to do when the time came.  While I still believe this, I didn't realize at the time that my handicap was the fact that I didn't have a community of women who could give me the knowledge of what to expect, and how to help my body do what it needed to do.  My ignorance caused me to shoot myself in the foot, as ignorance usually will.

When I became pregnant with my second child, I knew I wanted to nurse, and I knew I wanted to have this baby naturally.  For me, one step naturally lead to another.  I contacted my local Le Leche League leader and found that she had just finished her training as a Husband Coached Childbirth (also known as The Bradley Method for Dr. Bradley, the techniques progenitor) instructor and was seeking clients for her first class.  I attended a LLL meeting when I was about 6 months pregnant with my daughter and had my eyes open for the first time.  I was an immediate convert to the beautiful ways of breastfeeding and gently welcoming a child into the world.

And what a world it is!  I credit The Bradley Method for giving my children the best possible entrance into the world, and Le Leche League for supporting breastfeeding exclusively.  While I see breastfeeding as being the best nutrition for a human child (how many babies do YOU see crawling up to a COW to nurse?), studies have show the importance of  mother's milk, and the necessary touching that accompanies nursing, for the vital growth and development of the infant brain.  While I would never call my daughter developmentally delayed, she is behind the curve as far as her peers go in her academic pursuits.  I shudder and cringe to think what may have happened had I been a lazy mother and just propped a bottle in my daughter's mouth and left her in her car seat to feed.  (A sight which enraged me even before becoming pregnant.)

I learned from Darlene and the Le Leche League that it's ok to sleep with your child; you're more in tune with your child and their needs.  While it takes a little time to coordinate, eventually mother and child can learn to nurse laying down, and eventually sleep through night time nursing.  For the first 6 weeks of my daughter's life, I woke up to her needs to nurse, but we practiced nursing laying down.  Finally it just clicked and we began to happily sleep through night time feedings.  That's not to say she didn't breastfeed at night; she did.  We just became so in tune with each other, that it became second nature to maneuver ourselves into just the right position that falling back asleep was the next logical step.

Call me smug, but I always laugh to myself when I hear new parents complain about the night time feedings.  If they only knew how hard they were making it on themselves, they would become fans of nursing and sleep sharing fairly quickly, I think. 

However, it was during the pregnancy of my youngest child that I finally figured out "what I wanted to do when I grew up" (I was 28, by the way).  I wanted to become a midwife.  I wanted to share with other women, expectant mothers, the joy and wonder of bringing a child into the world under her own power, free of hospitals, law suit phobic doctors, and people who thought labor and delivery were medical diseases to be managed instead of natural processes to be celebrated.

My second passion, as anyone already familiar with my blog will know, is the Adoptee Rights Movement and the Family Preservation Movement.  Just read the post prior to this one and I think my positions are fairly clear, and I don't necessarily need to enumerate them again.

Maybe someone reading this will automatically jump to where I did only today, and if you do, bravo, you're smarter than I am (no, for once, I'm NOT being sarcastic).  However, the marriage of these two passions seemed like an unlikely pairing in my head for a while.  Then, during a musing of "if I knew then what I know now", I came upon the solution to my problem.  One of the biggest reasons I caved to the pressure to give my first son up for adoption was financial.  Neither my adoptive parents, nor my boyfriend's parents were willing to help out financially with raising our son.  Both sets of parents had, independent of each other, the same reply, "We've raised our children and we're not interested in raising anymore".  My boyfriend was the only one working between the two of us at that point, and we didn't have the money for formula, diapers, a crib, changing table, etc, et al.  All the traditional accoutrements found in a nursery were beyond our financial capability.  No one ever said to me before my son was born that I could save a great deal of money with simply breastfeeding him.  No one told me that I could share sleep with my son, negating the need for a crib.  No one told me that cloth diapers could save me expenses over disposable diapers.  Those simple things could have saved us thousands of dollars and put us in a better position to keep our son.  If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn't have inflicted the primal wound on my first son.

NO ONE TOLD ME.

As to how I utilize this knowledge, this new marriage of my passions, I have yet to fully figure out.  I suppose my first step will be posting this blog.  I'll go from there as to how I can bring these strange companions in my head to a useful, helpful way.  Ultimately, I suppose I would like to help young, financially challenged women to see these alternatives that no one else is willing to tell them about.  If I can help just one person keep their child then I'll know that all the pain and sacrifice I've lived through isn't in vain.

Young, Poor and Pregnant; Reasons to Relinquish?

Recently I added my first Dad to my Facebook friends list and he's been privy to some of my not so thought through status updates. However, in discussing this with him and my fiance, I have discovered that many of those status updates are merely topic sentences for blogs that I want to start, even if I'm not quite aware of that yet. I think I also need some of the feedback from my Facebook friends that these updates provide in order to clarify my own thoughts on the things I "say".

However, both my first Dad and fiance urged me to make disclaimer statements at the beginning of my "topic sentence" status updates and post the blog link in order to be able to view the entirety of my thought process. While I can't guarantee I'll remember to do that every time, it will be something I will strive for in the future.

Below is the status update that began this discussion.

"As I continue to read The Primal Wound one thing becomes blatantly, brutally obvious to me; it should be a crime to force, coerce, manipulate, cajole, or in anyway separate a child from their mother unless that parent is proven unfit. And it should be severely punishable should a person or persons be found guilty of this act. Adoption has got to be the most unnatural thing one human being can do to another in the name of a child's best interest."

In defense of my first Dad, he isn't a part of the Adoptees Rights Movements, or the Family Preservation Movements and is only just now beginning to be aware of it at all because of his avid interest in me, his daughter. Some things that perhaps might have been obvious to those of my Facebook friends who are intimately involved and aware of my positions wouldn't need any sort of disclaimer, but one of the things that my first Dad brought to my attention is that there may be people who, like him, have no point of reference and could find my statements very confusing.

Some of the salient points I should have clarified sooner are these:

• Who exactly "a person or persons" are.
• The legal status of adoption.
• What constitutes an unfit parent.

I want to address these points now.

When I refer to "a person or persons" I was in fact referring to attorneys or agencies whose sole purpose is the making of money from adoption. I never said adoption should be illegal, but that force and coercion and manipulation in order to obtain a baby for an adopting couple should be illegal. Informed consent is required for every single medical procedure we have; a doctor is obligated by law to give all the information about said procedure and the alternatives to the patient, yet there is nothing in place to keep an attorney or an agency from outright lying to a woman who is considering adoption and to me, that is plain wrong. While placing a child for adoption isn't technically a medical procedure, it is a life altering event for the surrendering mother, the child and the adopting parents. To be less than fully informed is, in my opinion, a criminal act. In the system we have today, adoption is a money making industry, motivated by greed, not good will, on the part of the vast majority of agencies and attorneys. It's not in the agencies or attorneys best interest to give a woman who is considering adoption all the information that is available on the repercussions of adoption on all members of the triad. Those people understand that should a woman be given this information, she will likely chose another option for her child, and they can kiss the money goodbye.

As for teen parents, their youth should not make them automatically unfit. I believe we need a movement in this country to keep the children of these teens at least within the biological family, should a teen mother and/or teen father prove unable to care for the child. Placing a baby with strangers doesn't help the child, no matter how loving, caring and attentive those strangers may be.

Some simple definitions of an unfit parent would include neglect, abuse (physical, emotional, mental), drug abuse. There are other definitions of "unfit", of course, but, that would be up to a judge to determine, using the law as precedent.

Financial abuse is a trickier situation, generally speaking. There are millions of children in this country alone who don't have health insurance. I'm ambivalent about this being an abusive situation; one, because we do have access to emergency rooms that by law must treat patients who seek treatment (and should the child need to be admitted to the hospital, there are financial alternatives that most hospitals offer for payment, either through medicare or payment plans), and two, because for things like immunizations there are free clinics in just about every community that a parent can take their child to. It was stated in a conference on adoption at the White House in the early 1900's that poverty is NOT an adequate reason to remove children from their families. Another thing to consider for financial "abuse" are that there are a great many community, private outreach programs designed to assist poorer families.

As for who is a better parent, according to The Primal Wound (and frankly, common sense) there are natural processes that a woman goes through during a pregnancy that does enable her to be the best parent to her child. Societal pressures are the factors from keeping that woman from fulfilling the imperative nature has provided. An adoptive mother hasn't gone through the 9 months of pregnancy that will make her uniquely able to care for that child. Can prospective adoptive parents provide a more financially stable environment? Perhaps, but as I stated earlier, I don't believe that poverty is a sufficient reason to take a child from it's mother. And that mother and child do not necessarily have to rely on tax payer money in order to survive.

Additionally, our society has a tendency to view a young pregnant woman in a static position. They see her as forever being young, immature and unable to provide for her offspring. This is an incredibly narrow view point, very limiting, imposing a certain set of criteria upon that person that common sense must dictate as purely illogical. One of the primary reasons why many prospective adoptive parents want an infant is because we know that babies grow incredibly fast, and are soon out of infancy. Humans grow. They grow up, get older, wiser, more mature. Of course not everyone does, however, telling a young, financially challenged woman that she cannot care for her child because of these very transitory situations in life is to risk creating in that person a mind set that, as soon as she signs the papers, becomes reality instead of only a possibility. Youth and poverty are not permanent. But when a woman is coerced into handing her child over to an eager, infertile couple, society has stated that woman will forever be a child, incapable of taking care of her child, establishing a destructive pattern of behavior in her that will keep a part of her forever that age when she relinquished, and even sadder, can cause so much damage as to compel the young woman to sabotage any efforts or attempts at creating a better life for herself.

Additionally, as the child grows, he or she can inevitably experience these exact same situations. Where the birth mother was unworthy to parent, the child was unworthy to be parented by their biological family. When one feels unworthy, there is no desire to better oneself. It can turn into a self perpetuating cycle to the point where the child turns into a birth parent themselves.

We regularly prosecute people for coercion, manipulation and force when these methods deprive another of health, happiness and well being; however, when done in the name of "the best interest of the child" we excuse the behavior, even if studies have shown time and again that adoption isn't always in the best interest of the child. Its criminal to leave a child in the hands of a parent who is patently unfit. Why then is it encouraged to take a child from a fit parent simply because of transitory situations in life?