Category Archives: women

Pitocin and seizures

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Holy crap, I may be onto something with Pitocin and seizures–

I looked up Pitocin and was shocked to find out that seizures are one of the known side effects.

I found this blog.

And this from the epilepsy foundation community group.  This is absolutely criminal. Absolutely. There are sooo many serious side effects with this drug that it should either be banned or treated like they do controlled substances–you need to prove that there is a serious threat to the mother/child before allowed to put her and her baby through this hell.  Where is the accountability??

For my own birth(s), there was no reason for the doctor to have induced my labor(s)–it was around the holidays and he just wanted to get to his parties, it seems. Bastard.

Here’s a site on epidurals.  I probably escaped more injury by not having that.

More from the poor front…and Pitocin…

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I helped one of the newer residents with groceries up to their rooms, as one of them is disabled and needs grocery carts to get the heavy bags up to her apt.  Someone has taken the five carts we had for resident use (three were ours, that former management had allowed us, and two were ones that somehow escaped the nazi-ish electronic monitors that the grocery had put on them to stop the carts from leaving the lot.)  Somehow, they’ve all come up missing.  We figure residents are keeping them in their apartments, disregarding that others may need them.  I got chastised this morning for making an announcement over the intercom for people to bring the carts back down. They emphasized that I’m only allowed to use the intercom for emergencies.  <sigh>

Apparently, the ogre of a manager at the grocery store has still been complaining about us using the carts!  Unfreakingbuhlievable!  The folks that are disabled cannot lift those heavy bags for the trips to their apartments.  They can barely get them across the street. Same with the elderly who can easily drop their groceries while trying to get them home.  It’s freaking ridiculous.  Like I said before, I wonder how much this grocery store (a national chain) paid to have this stupid electronic system put in?  And for what?? Five stinking carts?!

Anyway, while I was helping the residents take the groceries up, one, a nursing student, mentioned that she had spoken to a woman who went into labor and was put on Pitocin.  She had screamed from the pain for hours…

…again, memories come flooding back, as I remembered my own screaming from Pitocin.  I was shocked to find out that I wasn’t the only one. I thought that I was, well, just a wimp…apparently not.

Here’s a story on possible brain damage caused by it.  If you look at the comments, there is one by a clever midwife who suggested the laboring mother get on all fours to aid contractions..

…a lightbulb went on…I was told many years ago that I had a tipped uterus (backwards).  Now I wonder if I had been on all fours, this would have allowed my uterus to progress normally through labor?   The thing that gets me is that doctors know that a woman lying on her back during labor is not beneficial for contractions and can be dangerous as it depresses the major vein.  I was on my back during all three labors.

…and I can echo the horrible pain associated with Pitocin.  And no anesthetic.  I was so out of my mind with pain that I kept saying “push, push, push” while the nurse tried in vain to get right up to my ear and said to stop pushing.  I couldn’t even respond to her or anything–a somewhat catatonic state.  And I’ll always wonder what that did to my daughter–whether it’s played a role in her epilepsy.

 

Big Bird breathes sigh of relief…

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Congratulations, President Obama. Big Bird lives on…:)

I know better, but I was listening to the rightwing radio last night and they were painting a dim picture of Obama’s win.  I turned it off and went to bed to read…thinking we were going to get Bush III…

Indiana voted in Mike do-nothing Pence for Governor,  and now has a super majority in the legislature…<sigh>

…well, at least I am spared Richard my-sperm-is-a-gift-from-God Mourdock…

The news on the reaction in the Middle East.  I hope this means a peaceful movement in Israel is underway….

DN! has this up on the elections.  Elizabeth Warren is animated after her win.  Thank God.

Unfortunately, the GMO lobby won and Californians defeated the measure requiring GMO labeling. Shit.

O”Reilly had a nice take on why Obama won–because people want “stuff” and Obama was going to give it to them…

Well, now…Romney has the gov’t pay $77,000 for the care and housing of his horse…has money in offshore accounts and John McCain has so many houses he can’t even remember how many he has…all because they don’t pay their fair share of taxes…now who feels entitled?

Is it entitlement when one wants to eat? Have a roof over their head? Get medical care? I’m confused.

They went on to talk about the shift away from the standard–now women and minorities are getting their voices heard. The boys of the old school are threatened…and it will probably get uglier before it’s all done.

To my sisters who were the power behind getting President Obama re-elected:  Thank you.  We can move mountains when we focus on what’s important to us and fight for it.

I want to say, though, that women have been characterized as of “one mind”–that any woman who manages to get before a microphone speaks for all women.  They don’t.

This is one of the reasons that the middle-of-the-road women backed away from the Feminist Movement–they were treated as if they spoke for all women.  Women who wanted to stay home with their children were characterized as dull twits who lacked ambition.  Women who didn’t believe in abortion but believed in equality were marginalized, also.

And the 70s Feminists who fought against alimony because it…well, I’m not really sure why they were fighting against alimony…but as this quote by Barbara Seaman, amongst others, puts it quite well–this is something that I lost out on when I divorced.  I also got less than half of the assets (with a mortgage to pay off) and my ex got away with only paying one-fifth ($20,000) of his income to support his three children.  Although I had stayed home for eleven years, the judge did not allow for that, and had instead computed the amount of support as if I had a job!!  Yes, I had a lousy lawyer–whose partner still smirks at me to this day whenever I have to trudge back to the place I grew up in…I’ve always wondered what that smirk means….

Anyway, I hope that with the election that women and minorities will do their homework, and support thoughtful politicians who approach the legislative process with the “Do unto others…” mindset…it would make life so much easier and just might bring about Peace…

Pens for women? God help us.

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commondreams has this link up of the increasingly stooopid marketing crap of pink, pink, pink crap for women. (Abby Zimet notes that it’s bad enough that we have to deal with Mourdock…um, no, unless you live here in Indiana, you only have to suffer listening to it–you don’t have to fear that he is probably going to get elected…

…and his comment that a pregnancy after rape was a gift from God kind of gives new meaning of men who think of themselves as a gift from God, doesn’t it??  I suppose his sperm should be considered a gift from God, too??)

The comments of customer feedback are too, too delicious.  I was going to suggest a pen in the shape of a vagina, but somebody beat me to it.

…or perhaps we could have one in the shape of a boob.

Some of the best ones:

I allowed my wife to write the grocery list with one of my pens. Shortly thereafter she went out and bought a bunch of flannel shirts, cut the sleeves off and grew a mullet. While she was writing her feminist manifesto, I secretly switched out the man pen with a BiC For Her. She’s now back to baking apple pies, vacuuming in heels, and popping bennies in order to keep her girlish figure… like a proper American gal.

Thank you BiC!

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I tried these on a whim, and I have to say I wasn’t very impressed. The applicator mechanism is far too fiddly, and the plastic tampon inside far too thin (not to mention uncomfortable and non-absorbant) – I’m sure there must be a knack to using them, but I couldn’t find it. They also stained my knickers blue for some reason. I really wanted to like these, but it’s back to pads for me.

bwahahahahahaha

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Expanding the Debate

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DN! has again allowed ALL presidential candidates a forum to express their reasons for wanting to be president.  I couldn’t listen to the entire debate, as I’m out of time, but this is what I’ve listened to:

Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein’s arrest should send chills down one’s spine.  It is absolutely stunning that a person with a legitimate claim as a candidate for political office is arrested for trying to assert the right to debate.  And being handcuffed to a chair for eight hours??

As she said, this would not have happened if the League of Women Voters were still running the debates.

To shut them out is weak, in my opinion.  If you’re a strong candidate, allowing others in is not going to phase you.  What are they afraid of?  Legitimizing the Green Party? or Justice Party?

Having to actually answer questions that many Americans want answered?

I would say all of the above.  A robust debate helps the marketplace of ideas, but informed voters tend to start asking questions that most politicians would rather not answer.

On to the debate–

Dr. Stein and President Obama touch on keeping jobs here, giving tax breaks to those companies that keep or create jobs here.  In the place I grew up in, they were giving tax breaks out the wazoo to companies, at the peril of schools, which suddenly lost the tax base to keep schools running with adequate teaching staff, supplies, etc.  And what did these companies do when the mood struck?  Left for Mexico, China, etc.  Personally, I think when a company gets tax breaks like this, and then packs up and leaves, they should be made to pay back every last cent they took away in tax relief… plus interest.

Social Security going up by 1.7 percent

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…your grocery bill, gas bill, etc. will go up by 25 percent…/snark

Link.

See, this is what I don’t get–they were just saying not two months ago that this was one of the worst droughts on record and our grocery bills were going to be severely affected–but this article states that food prices have pretty much stayed the same.

Ahem.

Like I’ve noted in my personal grocery bills, I’ve seen several items jump $1 or $2 per item in a month’s time, which really adds up if you’re on a restricted budget, as folks on S.S. are.  They know that every time there’s a S.S. increase, it isn’t enough, and the prices will go up accordingly.  (No, I’m not on S.S. or disability.)

I’ve done a quick search of several articles, and they all insist, via the Consumer Price Index that grocery prices have remained the same.

I looked up the table they publish:  http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpid11av.pdf for the 2010-2011 price list…and somebody ain’t telling the truth, here…

You have to scroll down to get specifics, and looking at something that most poor folks purchase: ground beef went up 11%.  Eleven freaking percent in one year!  White bread 5%; Cereal 3%; Bacon 13%; Fresh Fish and Seafood 8%; Eggs 9% Milk 9%; Potatoes 12%; Coffee 14%;  Butter 14%; Peanut Butter 6%….and non-food:  fuel oil 30%; water and sewage 5%; motor fuel 26% and on…

(note that medical care only went up 3%…well, now, the oil companies aren’t getting nearly as much attention from the politicos as the medical community’s medical costs increases…hmmm…twenty-six percent should garner a little more attention, dontcha think?)

But they’ll give you a 1% increase…

…so you can try to make that can of dog food go a little further…after all, the top 1% need those tax breaks so they can…feed and house their horses…and  John McCain needs another house…

 

Weekend

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I checked out videos of Hotel Rwanda and Schindler’s List from the library for the weekend.

Yeah, it’s not something I would recommend…pretty depressing.

I go round and round about what pushes people to treat another human being as “cockroaches” (Rwanda) or “vermin” (Nazi Germany).

I used to think of it like psychiatry has promoted–these folks were abused as children, therefore, they acted out their anger.  But then I realized that there are many people who are abused who do not go on to hurt others–they go on to be good parents, wives/husbands, citizens, etc.

So, then I go back to the start and ask again why some folks grow up to be bullies and others don’t?

I mean, in Schindler’s List, Goeth, a high raking officer, was clearly mentally ill by being torn between loving his Jewish maid, whom he said he wanted to grow old with, but beating her because she was a Jewish “bitch”.  He randomly would shoot people for no reason at all.  He had a Jewish woman engineer shot because she was telling him that the concrete foundation they had poured for a building was not level and it needed to be re-poured.  After she was shot, he  told them to tear up the foundation and redo it like she said.  Just craziness.

But none of what happened in Rwanda and Nazi Germany could have been possible without people going along with it.  People who fed their hatred and jealousy and fear.  People who loved having power over others.

I’m reminded of the Native American story of the Grandfather and the grandson.  The grandson had told his grandfather that he had two wolves inside him:  one was dark that was mean, hateful, selfish, greedy; and the other was Light that was kind, loving, compassionate, and generous.  He asked his grandfather which wolf would win, and the grandfather replied, “Whichever one you feed.”

 

 

 

Banning Circumcision

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There’s a group in California that is trying to get circumcision of boys banned.  I cannot understand the routine circumcision of boys–with exception for religious rites, such as the Jewish tradition.

When I had my firstborn, my son, in the early eighties, I was with the new crowd of questioning why this procedure was being done?  I guess I was more of rebel that I had thought because I didn’t want to do it to him, and the family thought I was bonkers.  Something happened, however, when a nurse was cleaning my son and doctor had to perform an emergency procedure and cut into the foreskin after it failed to return to normal position (I’m trying very hard not to get too graphic here).    After about five days, I was questioning whether this was a good idea, and caved to family pressure to have him circumcised.  One of my many regrets…

Here’s a link to Parents mag that discusses the pros and cons of it.   I used to read this mag as a guide and you can tell by the wishy-washy article that it was difficult to justify not getting a circumcision.  One of the stupidest reasons is that “I don’t want him to look different than everyone else…”

I say leave the kid alone, and if there are repeated urinary tract infections or some other health issue, then by all means have it removed…but to do so because you *may* have issues without really testing the waters doesn’t make sense.   It’s like removing the tonsils because the kid may have repeated infections.

And if the kid decides later in life that he wishes to remove it then he has that option.

And I feel the same way about ear-piercing.  I see little baby girls with ears pierced and I cringe.  Let the child make up her own mind on whether she wants pierced ears or not.

Lastly, one has to wonder at what kind of psychological damage this does–a baby being hurt like that by adults has to have some sort of impact.  I know that they did not use anesthetic when my son was circumcised–I’ll always wonder what that did to him.  They actually tried to tell me that babies don’t feel pain.  What utter crap.

Vandana Shiva

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More from the organic farmers’s group–this article on Vandana Shiva, an intelligent, feminist activist who is a delight to watch whenever she appears on DN!   She doesn’t back down and she has sound arguments to all the corporate-speak.

From the article:

Why do you refer to the term seed slavery?

In another time, some people thought it was alright to own other people as slaves. In our times some corporations think it is alright to own life on earth through patents and intellectual property rights (IPR). Patents are granted for inventions, and life is not an invention. These IPR monopolies on seeds are also creating a new bondage and dependency for farmers who are getting trapped in debt to pay royalties. This is why 270,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide.

Word.

Be sure to click on the Puztai link.  Wow. This falls under  “if you have nothing to hide…”  then why are you trying to quash this information and silence a scientist who made such a discovery…?