I have a little, very cute digital camera that Jeff gave me last year. I love my Canon s20, but this little Olympus is very tiny, shock and water proof and takes awesome pictures–it also takes a lot of them; the little memory card can store 520 shots. Pretty cool for a tiny thing, ha! Well, the thing is that I wanted to make room for even more pictures, so I uploaded the ones in the camera to the computer, and I found some very beautiful glimpses from all the way from the summer to the holidays: our cruise, el Cangri with short hair, Coco newly groomed, the first day Chubbers “swam” at the sea…It was like finding pieces of my heart in that little camera, and I thought I’d share it with everybody. Of course, they might not mean the same to someone else as they do to me, but they’re beautiful and I couldn’t help it!
On another note, I’m horrorized by this current legislation session that’s almost over. Horrible here in Utah, with that “lady who represents the people” and putting so many restrictions on the job our wonderful midwives do. So next time I have a baby, if I want to have a licensed midwife to attend to me, I better not have twins, or a breech baby, or ICP. For many who will read this, it may be common sense that midwives have to transfer to an OB-GYN for these kind of circumstances, but the sad reality is that in the majority of cases midwives are the only ones who still have the knowledge, training, and skills to attend a breech baby, or the birth of twins without running to the operating room and reaching out for a knife. Sadly, the majority of doctors don’t know how to do natural birth that doesn’t go according to the books. Sadly, my midwife fought hard two years ago to have those midwives who wanted to, be certified and be legal in Utah. Now, because of that triumph, the main opponent to the licensing, came up with all this rules to define “normal birth.” I may not have another baby, but most likely I’ll have at least one more. If I don’t have another baby myself, I want my daughters to have the freedom to choose to have a homebirth if they want to in the future. It’s the matter of being able to choose what’s important here. One of my sisters in law had two elective C-sections, and will have another later this year; even though I don’t agree with her on the nature of birth, I respect her and her choice to elect to have a C-section. But I also want my liberty to have a natural, unmedicated birth. And the worst part is that the US has a huge maternal and infant mortality rate, along with one of the highest rates of C-sections, and the lowest use of the midwife-model of care. Countries where women are educated and attended by midwives have way lower maternal and infant deaths (check mothering.com for references and a myriad of articles about this topic). My midwife was the only one to diagnose my ICP (intra-hepatic cholastesis of pregnancy), the Ob’s thought I itched because of my imagination! With my midwife attended births I was informed and in charge at all times, I trusted those women because I KNEW they knew what they were doing.
So there it was, our country is less free this year because of that, and because parents in California can’t homeschool their children if they don’t have teaching credentials. I almost went into shock when I read those news. How dare they! But enough ranting! I’ll need some mate, chocolate and “Twilight” (maybe not in that order) to be able to go to sleep tonight.
