Archive | 2011

Our Bodies, Ourselves: New Edition Cover

Jul8

In April, I responded to a call for readers’ photos for the cover of the newest edition of the women’s health classic, Our Bodies, Ourselves. I sent in a profile picture that my friend Karen took of me at a river a couple of summers ago (same Karen who took my pregnancy pictures and then recently, Alaina’s pictures). I was completely shocked to find out this month that my picture was selected to be one of the 52 women on the cover. I could hardly believe it! OBOS is such a classic women’s health book and so devoted to women’s empowerment that I’m just as pleased as pleased can be to be a tiny little part of that herstory now 🙂 (And, a very tiny piece it is, as I appear in the lower left corner and part of my head is cut off 😉 I don’t care though, I still think it is cool to be on it!)

My original little story and picture is here:

“When I think of OBOS, I think, Empowerment! OBOS means knowing your body, your personal power, and taking control of your health care and your reproductive rights. OBOS is an essential voice for women.”

Guest Post: Overcoming Stigma: A Film Story of Stillbirth, Miscarriage

Jul8

This post is republished from the blog of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:

Overcoming Stigma: A Film Story of Stillbirth, Miscarriage

by Jhene Erwin

In 2007, with one two and half-year-old child, my husband and I decided it was time to have another baby. My first miscarriage occurred at six weeks. My second was at almost eleven weeks. The grief was alarming but I did what many women do – my best to quietly “carry on.”

Simple tasks became challenging. I’d stand in the cereal aisle frozen by the choice between honey-nut and plain. The question, “Paper or plastic?” should not make a person cry. Maintaining this external “everything-is-ok” façade was agonizing.

It was the tension – between façade and grief – which inspired my short film about miscarriage, stillbirth and early infant loss. “The House I Keep” is a story of transformation during one woman’s struggle to come to terms with the loss of her child.

My hope is that this film frees people to talk more openly about what remains stubbornly taboo. When people hear about my film total strangers let loose regardless of location: be it the gym or in a grocery store. Their stories are always deeply moving and I am honored by their candor.

What do they say?

They tell me there is no appropriate place to mourn this loss. While family and community are powerful sources of comfort, the silence on this subject prevents women from accessing that healing power. Consequently, the mental health of not only mothers but also their children suffers.

Consider this stigma magnified around the globe. In some developing countries, superstitious beliefs lead women to be blamed for a stillbirth or miscarriage. Some communities feel more people will die if the bereaved mother is in contact with other women and children. Subsequently, access to the healing power of family and community becomes greatly restricted. As we move forward with the important work of improving global maternal and newborn health, the long term effects of stigma on the mental health of women and their surviving children cannot be over looked or marginalized.

Talking heals. Women want to feel reassured that their child’s too-short life had a place in the world and that the world is different because of that child’s absence. You can help mark that life by just being willing to talk and listen. The landmark Lancet Stillbirth Series released in April is already impacting the worldwide perception of stillbirth.

In my own community of Seattle, Washington, in the United States, nonprofits that counsel women postpartum will be using my film as a starting place for open discussions. The ripple effect of community efforts, combined with the work of organizations including PATH, UNICEF, Save the Children, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will undoubtedly lessen the stigma of a tragedy for which no woman should ever be held accountable.

By letting women talk openly, and by listening, our communities around the world can help women – including me – begin to heal.

More to Explore

Jhene Erwin is an actor and filmmaker. She lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband and six year old daughter.
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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. Safeguarding the health of mothers and young children is one of the world’s most urgent priorities and a core focus of the foundation’s work; especially in the developing world.

Listening to my baby…even when we disagreed!

Jul6

I have a lot of breastfeeding-related posts I’d like to share soon. Here’s hoping I have time to make that come true! The following is an essay I wrote about my experiences nursing my first baby. It was originally published in LLL‘s New Beginnings in 2006.

Listening to my baby…

Taking a break from nursing to peek at the camera!

By Molly Remer

Before my son Lann was born, I felt prepared for frequent nursing, comfort nursing, and for experiences nursing in public. I started attending LLL meetings when I was 26 weeks pregnant and was also involved with the local Breastfeeding Coalition. I fondly imagined cuddling my baby as he nursed away. I also imagined proudly nursing in public wherever necessary—doing my part to increasing public perception of nursing being a normal part of everyday life, not secret or shameful.

After newborn Lann’s first growth spurt had passed, I was surprised to learn that he had other ideas about what our breastfeeding relationship would be like. Lann did not like to comfort nurse—he nursed when hungry and stopped when full. He would become upset and cry loudly if the breast was offered and after the first few sucks he would get milk that he wasn’t looking for. He also vastly preferred nursing lying down in our own bed. In public, he would refuse to nurse at all or would nurse a bit, choke on a mouthful, and become upset and not continue. He would often choke while nursing in any setting (though less frequently while lying down at home) and become very distraught and turn away from the breast—sometimes even pushing at me with his hands. These experiences were very difficult for me. I felt embarrassed to go to LLL meetings with a baby who cried and fought the breast, despite clearly appearing hungry, but then would nurse happily in the car! I did not have the cozy, peaceful nursling I imagined (though I was comforted by the fact that at home, lying down, when he was hungry, he certainly loved to nurse!).

These challenges continued for three and a half months, before I finally accepted that listening to my baby’s needs applied to these situations as well! Even though Lann didn’t breastfeed the way I had imagined or in the way I thought he needed to breastfeed, I still needed to listen to what he was telling me. Things became much less stressful when I finally realized this. If we were in a public place, I went to the car to nurse him and generally averted the crying, gagging/choking on milk episodes. At friends’ houses, I would ask to go lie down in another room. I made sure to “tank him up” before we left our house and planned to be home again within approximately three hours so we could nurse in our comfortable surroundings. I stopped being embarrassed that my baby wouldn’t nurse the “right” way and accepted that his style was different than what I had anticipated. After Lann went through a very challenging nursing strike at 5 months old due to a cold, I also learned that it often worked to nurse him standing up and moving around and I successfully employed this strategy in other settings after the nursing strike had passed. I also learned that if I let him unlatch to look around frequently while nursing in public (something I had never expected to “allow” before he was born), we could usually manage to complete a nursing session without struggling.

Interestingly, Lann’s disinterest in comfort nursing and his preference for private nursing both faded away when he was about 10 months old. He began to enjoy nursing “just because” or for comfort when distressed. He started to nurse around other people and in public places with ease and continued to nurse happily and frequently until he was two and half and weaned during my pregnancy with his brother, Zander.

I loved the feeling of being able to meet multiple needs in one interaction with Lann. Even during our early “conflict” over where and how to nurse, I loved the experience of feeling both of our bodies suffused with peace as we lay down together to nurse. I also deeply cherished the times we eventually spent comfort nursing. I felt so sad to be missing out on those times when he was younger, that every time toddler Lann asked to comfort nurse, I felt like it was a true gift.

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(Hindsight lets me know that I was struggling with oversupply/overactive letdown with Lann, an issue that has re-arisen with each baby, but one that I’ve managed much better each time!)

Haumea: The Divine Midwife

Jul5


“Haumea, a Polynesian Goddess, was credited with teaching women how to give birth by pushing their babies out from between their legs. Before this, folklore claims that children were cut from their wombs, extracted by knife like a pit from ripe fruit. Thanks to Haumea, women were able to forgo this dangerous passage.” –Kris Waldherr, Goddess Inspiration Cards

Reading this, I felt like women need to “meet” Haumea again. Perhaps modern midwives, doulas, and birth educators are Haumeas on earth, reminding women that they have the inherent power and capacity to push their own babies out from between their legs, rather than having major surgery.

After reading about Haumea and thinking about my own births, I felt inspired to make yet another figure in my birth art series. I’m experimenting with new types of figures lately and made this catching-your-own image:


You will safely give birth to something powerful.

Inseparable

Jul2

Notice how she is holding my finger?

The cutting of the umbilical cord tends to herald the arrival of a new and unique life. Though this tiny being began its existence many months before, growing nestled and protected within the womb, the just-born infant is seen as an individual apart from his or her mother. There is, however, a significant error in this thinking, for baby and mother are one, so to speak, and severing this unit denies an empirical truth. Birth should not be a celebration of separation, but rather a reuniting of mother and baby, who joins her for an external connection. –Barbara Latterner, in the book New Lives [emphasis mine]

I felt like this was a completely relevant quote for our Independence Day weekend. A baby has no concept of the notion of independence. Even though we live in a culture that pushes for independence at young ages, all babies are born hard-wired for connection. For dependence. It is completely biologically appropriate and is the baby’s first and most potent instinct. I remind mothers that after birth your chest literally becomes your new baby’s habitat. Mother’s body is baby’s home—the maternal nest. If the baby cries when you put her down, that means you have a smart baby! Not a “dependent” or “manipulative” one. People are fond of making comments about babies being “spoiled” if they are held often. It is impossible to spoil a baby by responding to her needs (why do people have such an issue with other people holding babies anyway?). I am 100% certain that it is impossible to “spoil” any baby under the age of one by answering her when she cries and giving her what she needs (which at this point is food, warmth, safety, love, and physical closeness). One of LLL’s  pearls of wisdom is, “a baby’s wants are a baby’s needs”—-there is no difference between them at this age. A baby is not “manipulating” you by crying for you to come to her and then stopping when you pick her up—-that is a perfect example of skillful mother-baby communication (if someone says, “she is only crying to get you to pick her up” the answer is “yes! She is! Isn’t she smart!”) .

New Lives is a compilation of essays by NICU nurses and it is no surprise to me that the essay from which the above quote comes was written by a former LLL Leader 🙂

Speaking of LLL, at the last international conference in 2007 I was fortunate enough to hear Dr. Nils Bergman speak about skin-to-skin contact, breastfeeding, and perinatal neuroscience. In super short summary: babies NEED to be with their mothers following birth in order to develop proper neural connections and ensure healthy brain development and proper brain “organization”; Mother’s chest is baby’s natural post-birth “habitat” and is of vital developmental and survival significance; Breastfeeding = Brain wiring.

And, as long as I’m reminiscing about the conference and Dr. Bergman, in fact I actually ended up “performing” on stage with him in a mimed play put on immediately prior to his presentation! He is a dynamic and engaging speaker (with a great accent!) and has so much of value to share. I will never forget hearing his duet with an LLL Leader of the song, “Anything Tech Can Do, Mum Can Do Better.”

Yes she can, yes she can, yes she CAAAANNNNNN!!

Today, let’s celebrate being in dependence with our babies 🙂

Book Review: 101 Offline Activities You Can Do With Your Child

Jul2

101 Offline Activities You Can Do With Your Child
Steve Bennett,  Ruth Bennett
Paperback: 134 pages
Publisher: BPT Press (June 14, 2011)
ISBN-13: 978-0984228522

Reviewed by Molly Remer

Just in time for summer amusement comes the new book 101 Offline Activities You Can Do With Your Child. Written by the authors of the classic 365 TV-Free Activities You Can Do With Your Child (a book I’ve used a resource for about 6 years), this concise little book offers a wide variety of fun activities. Coded at the bottom of the page with a sketch, the activities are either designed to be used at home, on the road, in the kitchen, or anytime, anyplace. A nice feature is the picture index for kids who are not yet reading to choose their own activities.

Single page explanations/descriptions mean all of the activities are fairly simple to implement and enjoy—offering a brief time-out for anytime fun. Many of the craft ideas seem most appropriate for children under age 10 and plenty of the other games and other activities are enjoyable for any age group.

My kids have come up with quite a few of the suggested ideas using their own imaginations and some of the ideas are classic car games (or variations thereof), but there is enough fresh, unique content to make this book a worthwhile resource for our family.

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Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.

Remember those pink shoes?

Jun28

When I found out that Alaina was probably a girl, I went to the store and bought a pair of shiny pink shoes. (I wrote about this here.) When I got my first set of maternity pictures taken, we included those shoes in a couple of the pictures:

Last week, I took Alaina for a photo shoot with my same photographer friend and look at the shoes now!

One of my good friends is nearing the end of her own pregnancy after loss journey and she just had a maternity photo shoot with the fabulous Karen as well. She had a similar belly picture taken with a little pair of pink socks. When I looked at her photo, I remembered so vividly my own feelings while getting the one taken of me—that almost panicky combination of hope and fear and just trying to trust that I would NOT have to look back at that picture and be filled with grief that I had no one to fill the shoes after all. And, once again, I felt grateful and relieved to be on this other side of the PAL journey. It is a very, very good place to be. I look forward to my friend welcoming her own “rainbow baby” next month and getting to feel that sense of pure relief at putting those pink socks on her happy, beautiful, healthy new daughter!

Asking the right questions…

Jun27

A couple of weeks ago a list of sexual assault prevention tips made the rounds on Facebook. Containing reminders such as, “When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone” and “Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone ‘on accident’ you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do,” these tips are absolutely perfect and so very appropriate. I spent several years working in domestic violence shelters answering the hotline. The number one question/comment I used to get from people about this work was, “why doesn’t she just leave?” And, we always used to reply that that is the wrong question, “the question isn’t, ‘why does she stay?’ but ‘Why does HE do it?!'” And, why, as a society, do we accept it? The same website that created the SA Prevention Tips poster, also noted this:

When we talk about rape as something that happens to 1 in 6 women, it is something that happens to women. Oh no, women! You have a problem! A women’s problem! That has to do with women! What are women going to do to solve this problem? Perhaps if we rephrased that as ‘one in…however many…men will commit rape in his lifetime,’ the problem might start to look a little different to certain people.

The wrong questions

Quite a while before this, an article made the rounds about women in another country ironing their pubescent daughters’ breasts flat to try to make them less appealing as rape targets. Many comments on the article were to the effect of, “ugh! What horrible mothers.” Again, entirely the wrong lens with which to be looking. Why is it okay to rape little girls?! Ditto for the news reports of a reporter being sexually harassed by the football team when she went to  interview them—people responded with things like, “she should try dressing professionally.” Um, excuse me? How about the football players—adult, capable men—try acting like professionals? Wrong questions, wrong lens, wrong direction to point the fingers. And, it is because I respect men as people that I give them more credit than this—I believe men are rational and fully capable people who are responsible for their own behavior, not out of control pigs who women are responsible for “taming” and/or not “provoking” (sexually or otherwise). Men are smart, let’s treat them like it by remembering to ask the right questions and to give the right sets of tips.

Of cannibalism & implied social acceptance

These topics remind me of an example I use in the college classes I teach and the questions I encourage my students to ask about all kinds of social services: If we respond to the presence of disturbing social conditions by working primarily to soften the pain they cause, does this imply tolerance for their existence? Our actions do help, but we need to be sensitive to the fact that our limited actions indicate endorsement of, or at least acquiescence to, these conditions that call for all our hurry and scramble. Under the guise of caring we may have reached a point of acceptance of conditions that produce the pain we try to ease…Why are we accepting that children go hungry, that people are homeless, and that women are beaten and raped? Are these conditions that you find acceptable? Are these things just part of the “normal” course of life? I then ask my students to consider cannibalism—what would it be like if rape was as unheard of in our culture as cannibalism? We don’t have “cannibalism survivors support groups” and cannibal hotlines and shelters, because as a whole, our culture does NOT accept cannibalism as a remotely acceptable activity. All of our “services” for sexual assault and domestic violence tell a different story—while these things are “too bad” and “shouldn’t happen,” we’ve accepted that they do and in a way tolerate their existence. I believe we can and should create a world where DV and SA are as unheard of as cannibalism! Usually this example gives students pause. We need to ask bigger social questions that go beyond the individual cases right in front of us.

But what about pregnancy and birth, anyway?

Okay, what does any of this have to do with pregnancy or birth?! Well, in the most recent issue of Brain, Child magazine, I was reading an essay called “Play Parallels” by Dorothy Fortenberry, exploring parallels between her play, Good Egg, and reading What to Expect during her own pregnancy. In it, she makes this fabulous observation:

“I also left my obstetrician. The more I saw him, the less I wanted to talk to him—and if you don’t like chatting with someone, I’ve usually found you also don’t want to have his face in your crotch.”

And how! She then comments on reading an article about how the environment in the womb sets the stage for the baby’s entire life and that mothers are responsible for making this environment as pure as possible–it is in your hands! She also is thinking about the dangers of eating coldcuts during pregnancy, frequently warned about in popular pregnancy books and media: “Hold on, I thought, deep breath. Stop hating yourself and start asking questions. Like: Where was an article about why cities have air pollution in the first place? What about an article about what to do if you want to leave your ob/gyn? Or the headline I would have written: ‘Pregnant Women Routinely Denied Health Insurance, Perhaps a Bigger Deal for Babies Than Tuna‘?…I’d be damned if I paid someone else to make me feel bad about myself. The next time I started to panic, I vowed to put my time and money to helping women with real challenges in pregnancy, and more worrisome things on their plate than sliced turkey.” [emphases mine]

Finally, she describes the book as, “a long, depressing catalogue of all the ways I had already failed my baby” and then concludes, “I saw it as one more way our society puts all of the blame and credit on individual mothers, casually omitting any larger forces like politics, or fate.”

Motherblame

I truly think this is a chronic social issue—motherblame. We MUST look at the larger system when we ask our questions. The fact that we even have to teach birth classes and to help women learn how to navigate the hospital system and to assert their rights to evidence-based care, indicates serious issues that go way beyond the individual. When we say things about women making informed choices or make statements like, “well, it’s her birth” or “it’s not my birth, it’s not my birth,” or wonder why she went to “that doctor” or “that hospital,” we are becoming blind to the sociocultural context in which those birth “choices” are embedded. When we teach women to ask their doctors about maintaining freedom of movement in labor or when we tell them to stay home as long as possible, we are, in a very real sense, endorsing, or at least acquiescing to these conditions in the first place. This isn’t changing the world for women, it is only softening the impact of a broken and oftentimes abusive system.

Poem: Woman & Nature

Jun26

Woman and Nature

By Susan Griffin

 The earth is my sister;

I love her daily grace,

her silent daring,

and how loved I am

how we admire this strength in each other,

all that we have lost

all that we have lived

all that we know:

we are stunned by this beauty,

and I do not forget;

what she is to me,

what I am to her.

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My friends and I had our quarterly women’s retreat today and I used the above poem as our closing reading (I did alter it slightly from the original in the middle). To read it, have each participant read one line and the rest of the group repeat it after her. The italicized section is then read by the group in unison.

I also used the following as our opening reading:

 

Opening Words/Chalice Lighting

May we be reminded here of our highest aspirations,

and inspired to bring our gifts of love and service to the altar of humanity.

May we know once again that we are not isolated beings

but connected, in mystery and miracle, to the universe,

to this community and to each other.

-Anonymous (Reading #434 in Singing The Living Tradition)

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I like to share these things I’ve collected here as well in case other women are googling for readings for women’s programs, retreats, or mother blessing ceremonies 🙂

Postpartum Feelings, Part 3

Jun24

When I published my article about my postpartum feelings with my first son, I envisioned it as the first part of a series of three posts comparing/contrasting my postpartum feelings and experiences following each child. Here’s what happened—I wrote part two in which I shared some of the recurrent thoughts I had in the year following my second son’s birth and decided that I just don’t feel like publishing it. Reading it back over makes me feel like I probably could have been considered mentally ill and I don’t really feel like sharing that right now. I started to analyze why I feel like sharing any kinds of feelings via blog anyway—really, what is this about? Why “expose” myself? In part, because that is what helped, and still helps, me the most; knowing that I’m not alone in my feelings and that other women have “been there.” So, I feel I have a responsibility of sorts to share my own “been theres.” When I began this website/blog, it was primarily about gathering and sharing information with others, not about telling my own story or sharing my personal experiences. I didn’t start it intending to have any element of a, “personal journal published online” feeling. After the birth-miscarriage of my third son and then my pregnancy-after-loss journey, it took on more of the personal journal flavor. And, I’ve liked that. I’ve enjoyed sharing my feelings and experiences and learning from the comments other people leave that I’ve “spoken” to something in them, and/or helped someone to understand their own experiences (or me) better. That said, I don’t have to share everything I write just because I’ve bothered typing it and I just don’t feel like sharing my second post about weirdo, “crazy” postpartum thoughts right now. So there! Maybe someday I’ll hit “publish” on it.

Of course I know (and firmly believe!), that you’re “postpartum for the rest of your life” (Robin Lim), but I feel like this current postpartum experience is different than my others in some qualitatively different ways. I first credited it to having taken placenta pills this time around. My doula encapsulated my placenta for me and I took all 95 capsules during the first 6 weeks postpartum. It was amazing! I have become a total “convert” to the benefits of placenta encapsulation. I felt GREAT and I had tons and tons of energy, instead of being wiped out and weak and exhausted feeling. I’ve only taken about two naps in Alaina’s life (this may come back to bite me with regard to lactational amenorrhea , we’ll see…) and that ISN’T because I’m crazy and was pushing myself too hard, it is because I haven’t felt like I needed to take any naps. I highly recommend placenta encapsulation. Amazingly powerful!

Another thing that is different about this experience is that I don’t feel “restricted” after having her—I don’t feel like I’ve had to sacrifice or let anything go, I feel like she has integrated smoothly into our lives. I had a phone counseling session with an intuitive healer the afternoon before Alaina was born and one of the new “neural pathways” I set was, “the new baby seamlessly integrates into our lives.” I think it worked! 🙂 What is interesting, is that I have put quite a lot on hold lately, but it doesn’t feel like she MADE me, it feels like what I want to do (or not do, as the case may be). When my first son was born, I had to let go of most of my old life and work and it was very painful. With my second son. I felt like I had a lot of energy to give to the “world” that was being blocked/couldn’t find expression. This time, there is more balance. I’m continuing to teach college classes in-seat and online and that feels really good to me. I’m homeschooling the boys and doing well with that (we actually “do school” almost every day!). I read all of the time (55 books so far this year!). I’ve started a doctoral program. And, I make time for a variety of other smallish projects like facilitating quarterly women’s retreats, editing the FoMM newsletter, and answering breastfeeding help calls/emails.  Oh, and making birth art sculptures (new pictures to follow soon!) And, here’s what I’m not doing: writing new articles, working on my books (I have three in progress), doing much birth work, staying caught up on articles/news/research, teaching prenatal yoga or prenatal fitness classes or leading birth art sessions (all of which I trained to do last year), creating (or teaching) any new craft classes for our annual craft camp, writing the dozens of blog posts that come to mind (or even pulling old material into this blog the way I’d like to do), staying caught up with book reviews, keeping up with the garden, etc., etc. More about balancing mothering and personing will follow someday. I promise!

With previous babies, I’ve felt very haunted by the “list” of all I’m not doing. While I still feel this way sometimes, I more often have a less familiar feeling—that of amazement at my own capacity for adaptation and change. I regularly feel kind of proud of myself—like, look how I can expand and enfold and how I can create a life that works and is satisfying as it continually evolves and changes.

This time with my baby has been the sweetest and most delicious time in my life. Yes, I’m still busy and overextended and hard on myself about a lot of things, but there is a different clarity to the experience. I feel like every moment with her is so vivid, clear, and memorable and like each one is being etched into me. It is just so real this life we have together now and it is weird for me to realize how quickly things change and how pretty soon, this life that I’m living in this moment, will just be our past. I do feel like I savored my boys’ infancies as well, but I don’t remember this sharpness of feeling and observation.  I feel like I will never forget what it is like to be this mother of my baby girl. However, I also know that the reality is that the growing baby and then toddler, and then child replaces the one who came before (even though it is the same person—those other versions of them are replaced by the vivid reality of the now). So, while I retain distinct mental snapshots of my life with the boys as babies, their current, vibrant, and ever-growing selves are much more intense and real (obviously), and I know it will be the same with her. And, it makes my eyes well up to know that this sharp sweetness will float away on the rivers of time and that before I know it, I will be the mother of two men and a woman. It is hard to explain what I mean in writing—what I want to say is, “but this is SO REAL now.” Well, duh. It IS real now. And, later will be real as well. That is just the flow of life, Molly dear ;-P However, one of the main reasons I wanted to get her pictures taken yesterday is to try to capture what it is like to be her mother NOW:

Then, last night while I was nursing her to sleep in my arms as I have done every night for five months, I took this picture myself to capture how well we fit together. I wanted to get how her little feet are nestled into my legs so perfectly and how her hands rests on me and how her head cradles in my arm:

I know this one isn’t a pro picture, but this is what it is like to be her mama 🙂