various & sundry birth notes

I'm on call for an imminent birth and I'm leaving in 5 days. Am I sleeping? No. Packing? No. Watching my Spanish DVD? A little. What I'm really doing is eating chocolate, browsing and blogging.

Thanks to Citizens for Midwifery I've learned that Sheri Menelli's book Journey Into Motherhood is a free e-book now. Every pregnant woman would be wise to turn off "A Baby Story" and read this positive, empowering, inspiring book instead.

This quote on the Unnecesarean blog made me chuckle, at first:
"Most American women have already had an OB rip them a new one with no evidence to back their decision—it’s called an episiotomy."

Then it made me sad.

There is some debate whether episiotomy or hysterectomy is the most frequent surgery performed on women. There is no question that most episiotomies are cut without a woman's fully informed consent.

Bewildered by this news story making the rounds. A woman gave birth on an airplane and the attending doctors are lauded as heroes. I think the woman is the true hero!

• the birth went fine, but upon landing the mother and baby were rushed to the hospital, strapped to a stretcher and bundled in what appears to be a giant carpet. what was the emergency, pray tell? it's too bad the doctors did not pronounce mother and baby healthy, sending them to their destination in a more peaceful fashion.
• one of the doctors reports: "we took the baby out...we took the placenta out." How powerful you are. Did you really remove these items from a passive woman's body, or were you perhaps honored to receive them as she gave birth?
• I'm ever so grateful somebody onboard donated some formula. Whatever else would the poor, starving newborn be able to eat?!!! (Imagine the headlines: Mother Gives Birth In Flight and Breastfeeds Infant. Scandalous.)

informative health journal?

while browsing through a pregnancy magazine for "older moms" at ye olde corporate booke store, wondering if they might be interested in some holistic-minded articles, I flipped back to the index:

M, m, m, let's see....magnesium sulfate, massage, mastitis, meconium, medications, membranes, methergine, milia, milk, miscarriage, molding, morning sickness.

midwife, where is midwife?
not one entry for midwife in the entire publication??!!

calm, mocking voice in my head, responding to my Id's outrage: "put the magazine down, back away slowly..."

B***y Bars

Local healthfood store (that term gets looser & looser all the time) now carries a certain nutrition bar designed for pregnant/ postpartum women. They claim to be "natural" and are even endorsed on the Today Show by a nutritionist and a celebrity "chef" (again applying the term loosely to a lovely woman who cooks with store-bought tomato sauce. So do I, 99% of the time, but I don't purport to be a chef. but I digress).

Let's take a look-see at the nutritional content:

Brown Rice Syrup SUGAR. The number one ingredient. Cleverly disguised as a whole food and touted as being "healthier than sugar" but once you isolate and purify it, it's maltose + glucose!

Toasted Oats, (Rolled Oats, Honey, Soybean Oil) Oats alone ain't so bad. Cooked honey (more SUGAR) creates toxic accumulations in our bodies, according to the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda. Soybean oil is high in inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids, and is a new item in the long history of human food consumption. Like most vegetable oils, highly processed and not heart-healthy.

Soy Crisp (Soy Protein Isolate, Rice Flour, Calcium Carbonate) Calcium carbonate is chalk. It also neutralizes your stomach's hydrochloric acid, making protein digestion and mineral absorption damn near impossible. Ironic, yes? Soy protein has a whole host of issues: highly estrogenic, goitrogenic (affects thyroid activity), inhibits trypsin (protein-digesting enzyme), binds to minerals making them hard to absorb, and since it's not organic, the soy is probably genetically modified and doused with pesticides. Yum. We need all the nerve and endocrine-disrupting chemicals we can get when gestating our babies, gals! Visit The Weston A. Price Foundation for information about Soy that just might rock your world.

Crisp Rice (Rice Flour, Malt Extract, Rice Bran, Calcium Carbonate) rice elements have been separated, treated with high temperatures and pressures (destroying any nutrients), and then sprayed with malt extract to replace missing fiber and more chalk (calcium carbonate)

Almonds a whole food, yippee!

Soynuts (Soybeans, Sugar, Natural Flavors, Sunflower Oil, Salt, Caramel Color) more sugar. "natural" flavors are anything but. Soy: see above.

Graham Pieces (Wheat Flour, Sugar, Canola Oil, Salt, Sodium Bicarbonate) More sugar and inflammatory, highly processed omega-6 oils. Canola oil is NOT healthy, folks. Dump yours out and don't look back. Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda. Like calcium carbonate, it neutralizes hydrochloric acid. Now you can't digest whatever nutrients your body can find in this product.

Nonfat Milk Powder Note this is not organic milk. It likely contains antibiotic and pesticide residue, as well as recombinant bovine growth hormone. Milk that is dried and powdered via high temperature processing is also oxidized, creating rancid compounds that wreak havoc on our arteries. Nitrites created by high-temperature drying are potential carcinogens. Read your yogurt labels: if they contain "powdered milk", put the yogurt down and very slowly back away.

Palm Kernel Oil Plant-based saturated fats supply energy and are not stored as body fat. Plus they contain fat-soluble vitamins. Traditional peoples around the world feed their pregnant mamas delectable fatty treats such as fish eggs because they know this helps grow a healthy baby.

Milled Flaxseeds Fiber, a little omega-3's, all right.

Vitamins & Minerals: Calcium Carbonate, (Calcium), Magnesium Carbonate (Magnesium), D-Alpha-Tocopheryl, Acetate (Vitamin E), Elemental Iron (Iron), Sodium, Ascorbate (Vitamin C), Ascorbic Acid, (Vitamin C), Folic Acid (Folate), Beta Carotene 10% (Vitamin A), Zinc Oxide (Zinc), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, (Vitamin B6), Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12).

The minerals calcium, magnesium, and zinc are bound to cheap compounds and are very hard to absorb in this form. Elemental iron isn't bound to anything--I am wondering how our bodies will know it is food? We don't have receptor sites in our intestines for rust. In general these vitamins and minerals are USP, isolated, synthetic, lab-created molecules. Not organic molecules which are found in living tissues, and which sustain life.



So what we have here is essentially sugar, sugar, and more sugar; highly processed hard-to-digest protein, highly processed fats, and synthetic isolated "nutrients" wrapped in plastic. And we are supposed to grow LIFE from this toxic amalgam? "Baby wants chocolate"? Please!