Archive | 2011

Birth Fear

“…if you want to know where a woman’s true power lies, look to those primal experiences we’ve been taught to fear…the very same experiences the culture has taught us to distance ourselves from as much as possible, often by medicalizing them so that we are barely conscious of them anymore. Labor and birth rank right up there as experiences that put women in touch with their feminine power…” -Christiane Northrup

Since it was just Halloween, I wanted to re-post some things about fear and birth that I shared on another blog a couple of years ago. I encounter a lot of women who are very scared of birth, particularly of the pain of birth. Grantly Dick-Read’s Fear-Tension-Pain cycle has influenced the teachings of most natural birth educators and most people readily connect to the idea that fear leads to elevated tension in body which leads to increased pain (more about fear-tension-pain in a linked post below).

One of my favorite birth books, Birthing from Within, has several sections about coping with fear. The author’s idea is that by naming fears and looking them in the eye rather than denying they exist, you shift your thinking from frozen, fear-based, thoughts to more fluid, adaptable coping-mechanisms. There is a useful handout based on her ideas available at the Transition to Parenthood site.

I also think of this quote from Jennifer Block:

Why is it that the very things that cause birth related morbidity rates to rise are seen as the ‘safe’ way to go? Why aren’t women and their doctors terrified of the chemicals that are dripped into their spines and veins—the same substances that have been shown to lead to more c-sections? Why aren’t they worried about the harm these drugs might be doing to the future health of their children, as some studies are indicating might be the case? Why aren’t they afraid of picking up drug-resistant staphylococcus infections in the hospital? And why, of all things, aren’t women terrified of being cut open?

I actually was afraid of these things, which is part of why I didn’t go to a hospital to have my babies!

I hope some day all women will be able to greet birth with confidence and joy, instead of fear and anxiety. This does NOT mean denying the possibility of interventions or that cesareans can save lives. And, it also doesn’t mean just encouraging women to “trust birth.” Indeed, I read a relevant quote in the textbook Childbirth Education: Research, Practice, & Theory: “…if women trust their ability to give birth, cesarean birth is not viewed as a failure but as a sophisticated intervention in response to their bodies’ protection of the baby.”

Here are some more good quotes from Childbirth without Fear:

A well–prepared woman, not ignorant of the processes of birth, is still subject to all the common interventions of the hospital environment, much of which places her under unnecessary stress and disrupts the neuromuscular harmony of her labor.

–

It is for this reason that thousands of women across the country are staying home to give birth…Women are choosing midwives as attendants, and choosing birth centers and birthing rooms, in order to regain the peaceful freedom to ‘flow with’ their own labors without the stress of disruption and intervention. Pictures on the wall and drapes on the window do not mask the fact that a woman is less free to be completely herself in the hospital environment, even in a birthing room. The possibility of her being disturbed is still there.

–

The women in labor must have NO STRESS placed upon her. She must be free to move about, walk, rock, go to the bathroom by herself, lie on her side or back, squat or kneel, or anything she finds comfortable, without fear of being scolded or embarrassed. Nor is there any need for her to be either ‘quiet’ or ‘good.’ What is a ‘good’ patient? One who does whatever she is told—who masks all the stresses she is feeling? Why can she not cry, or laugh, or complain?

–

When a woman in labor knows that she will not be disturbed, that her questions will be answered honestly and every consideration given her, then she will be better able to relax and give birth with her body’s neuromuscular perfection intact. The presence of her loving husband and/or a supportive attendant will add to her feelings of security and peace, so she can center upon the task at hand.

Childbirth without Fear was originally written in the 1940′s. The quotes above are just as relevant and true today.

Fathers, Fear, and Birth
Fear-Tension-Pain or Excitement-Power-Progress?
Cesarean Birth in a Culture of Fear Handout
Worry is the Work of Pregnancy

Motherhood as Meditation

Oct30

I sometimes use my blog as a way to “store” things that I’ve read and want to remember later–or, come back to and re-discover later. I’m slowly making my way through a book called Meditation Secrets for Women and this morning I read the following:

…a mother is naturally drawn into simplicity meditations when she has small children. A hundred times a day you are forced to surrender, to slow down and pay attention…A mother must continually let go, not only of rigid scheduling but in the deepest movement of her heart. The maternal bond is a powerful primordial instinct…Each day is a little death and a challenge to live in trust. When a mother learns to accept this process and allows herself to be changed by it, her heart is softened and stretched. This demonstrates again how women’s awareness of the preciousness of life leads us into a natural spirituality that does not have to be manufactured or enforced.

I was just thinking on Friday about just how many things I let go of every day. It is still painful to do–I’m not softened and stretched enough yet, I guess–but I also feel impressed with my own ability to accommodate and enfold. Knowing how many letting gos are required daily also doesn’t stop me from starting out the next day with just as many plans as the day before though.

I’m experimenting with making this post using my phone…did it work?!

My baby zen master 🙂

Spirit Doll

Oct29

Traditional Akuaba figures

In the summer we started working on spirit dolls at our women’s retreat. I have always wanted to make one in the style of an Akuaba—an African fertility goddess-type figure—however, I felt like it would be quicker to make a different style and so that was the one I began working on in the summer. After letting her languish for months without finishing her, I realized after our fall retreat that I really wanted to make one according to my original vision. So, in two days, I worked feverishly and made this little beauty:

I love her! She’s just what I wanted to make. My boys say she looks like a gingerbread voodoo doll and she kind of does. That’s okay. I know what she really is!

Happy Halloween!

Oct27

This time last year I was entering the third trimester of my pregnancy. It feels almost surprising to me to look back at my pictures and posts from that time. I love having it be my past experience now—it feels great. And, in some ways it seems so far away that it is hard to believe that it was just last year. I’ve reposted several links from old posts to my Talk Birth Facebook page recently because of that feelings—I’m like, remember just LAST YEAR you were PREGNANT??!!

Today was our playgroup Halloween party again and here we are (Lann took the picture so isn’t in this one):

Yes, I have three troll pins on 🙂

When my first son was three, my friend sent him a skeleton sweatshirt that glows in the dark. He wore it for about three years! Now, it has passed on to my younger son and he has been wearing it for a year. So, imagine the delight when we found these cool sweatshirts at KMart this week. I got one for each of them (these glow in the dark too) and I couldn’t resist getting a smaller skeleton sweatshirt for Alaina as well. (Hers doesn’t have the cool hood-mask though.)

Three little skeletons!

Moon Salutation Yoga Series for Blessingway or Women’s Gathering

Oct25

At my blessingway with my second son, my mom led us through a moon salutation together outside and then we all entered the blessingway space via a “birth arch” made with the women’s arms (think London Bridge only all in a row making a channel of arms to pass through). This weekend, we had a women’s retreat with the theme of the sacred body and I found this moon salutation from the book She Who Changes for us to do together—seemed fitting that with a theme of the body, we should actually use our bodies! (In addition to the moon salutation below, I also have a handout with a birthing room yoga series available.)

Moon Salutation
I stand tall, heart open to the world, body full and present in all of its beauty.

(standing with arms in prayer position)

I open my arms wide to bring all of life into my being.

(opening arms and tracing the circle of the moon)

My arms form a temple above me, sheltering and protecting me.

I know that I am on holy ground.

(arms completing the circle extended with palms touching above the head)

Yielding now, softening, my body takes the shape of the crescent moon.

I see visions of women, young and old, helping and loving each other.

(bending to the side with arms still above the head and palms touching)

Rising up and bending to the other side, I know that my softness is my strength. I am tested, but not broken.

(bending to the other side)

Up again, I feel the sweet stillness, always present within me.

(arms above head, palms still touching)

I step wide now into a squat. Mother Earth’s ferocious powers rise up through my strong legs, hips and back. As woman, I give birth to all that is, caring for and protecting life.

(arms bent in priestess pose, legs bent and open in birth pose)

Straightening arms and legs, I am a star. I am the universe. Planets and galaxies whirl within me. I radiate in all directions.

(legs straight and spread widely apart, arms straight out to the sides)

Supple and yielding, I stretch to the side. I open my arms and look up, opening to love and compassion.

I reach, yearning and striving, and yet rest, accepting fully.

(triangle pose)

Turning to pyramid pose, I become quiet. Head to knee, I sense the inner workings of my own being.

(typical runners’ stretch)

Lunging, I stretch long and feel the glorious length of my body.

As I look up, the moon shines on my path.

(lunge pose)

Turning now, I touch the earth, hands on the blessed Mother, strong and steady.

Gratefully and tenderly, I bow my head.

(turning and bending to touch the earth)

Coming into a squat, I am connected with all animal and plant life. My body open and close to the earth, I know my body’s ability to give birth, to love, to work, to pray. I resolve to hold all of these activities as sacred.

(full squat)

The Moon Salutation continues with the poses repeated in reverse order to form a complete circle and cycle of the moon with the whole body. The combination of words and yoga movement creates connections between the body and the mind, enabling the meaning of the words to come into the body. The full meaning of the Moon Salutation can be appreciated only in the doing. It celebrates the female body and the earth body, affirming that the female body is sacred, an image of the body of Goddess. It names the connection between women and the moon, positively affirming cycles of change, in contrast to classical theological traditions. In the Moon Salutation, women’s changing bodies and the process of giving birth become images of the divine creativity of the Goddess. The Moon Salutation celebrates strength as supple and yielding, yet ferocious in the protection of life. These are images of strength as power with, not power over. In the Moon Salutation, the female body is not perceived negatively as it is in traditions associating femininity with the “weaker” light of the moon. Still, it might be asked: Does the Moon Salutation limit women to the body or the traditional roles associated with it? I do not find this to be so. In the Moon Salutation the female body is an image of all the creative powers in the universe. It can expand to include planets and galaxies. The female body is celebrated not only for its capacity to give birth, but also for its ability to love, to work, and to pray.

From: Carol P. Christ. She Who Changes: Re-imagining the Divine in the World, Kindle Edition.

Placenta Encapsulation—Three Days Postpartum Comparison…

Oct24

I’ve been wanting to write a quick post about placenta encapsulation for ages. I had it done after Alaina was born and I’m a total convert. A month or so ago, the topic came up on a breastfeeding email list I belong to, with concern raised by several IBCLCs about the possibility of hormonal disruption of milk supply with placenta ingestion. Several women stated that they would not be comfortable doing it until there is some real evidence to support it. All I had to offer to the conversation was my own personal experience (and, I’m well aware that the plural of anecdote is NOT “data”) and also the observation that it is common practice for mammals to ingest the placenta. Of course, mammals eat it all at once and don’t powder it up into little capsules first, but then again, mammals also don’t wear socks or read stories to their kids or drive cars or sleep in beds in warm comfy houses either. I only found minimal evidence online via these two articles (which I think cite the same sources): Research Studies supporting Placenta Encapsulation and Scientific Research (from Placenta Benefits which certifies placenta encapsulators). Edited to add: there is a literature review now available at this site.

Anyway, this is what I shared with the list about my own experience:

I had it done with my last baby (born in January) and I’m a total convert. I have never felt better during postpartum. I joked that I was “placenta powered.” I felt and looked great—good color in my face, etc. Tons of energy. Total opposite of my other postpartum experiences in which I felt completely depleted and run over by a truck. I didn’t even ever feel like taking naps during the early weeks—you know how new mothers are often all strung out and exhausted. I was vibrant, cheerful, and alert. (I also swallowed a small piece of it raw, immediately pp.) I do not think there is any real research on milk supply and I had/have the same questions as you—if it is putting those “discarded” hormones back into the body, couldn’t it have a milk supply reducing effect? My guess is that the amount you take is so small (one placenta makes around 100 capsules), that it does not have a significant impact on supply one way or the other. I only have anecdotal evidence to offer in favor of it. In addition to various long-distance friends, three in-person friends have also done it during the last six months. Three of the four of us have had oversupply—one of which had not had oversupply with her other three children (my other friend and I had oversupply with previous children who we did not do placenta encapsulation with), though she is tandem nursing, so I suspect that as the cause more than placenta (she also has had mastitis with the current nursling).

I had less trouble with oversupply this time around than with previous children—my first baby and I struggled with it for 10 months, my second baby and I did 12 hour block feedings to get it under control. With my new baby, I started block feeding her from birth (I know this isn’t an officially recommended strategy, but I truly think it made a very positive difference for us). While we still had some issues with it, including several days of 12 hour blocks and one day with 24 hours on one side only (her choice, not mine!), it was much less stressful than my previous experiences. (And, BTW, I did have a couple of plugged duct incidents that quickly resolved with ginger tea compresses.)

Anyway, IMHO, placenta encapsulation= awesome. I really support it!

Oh, and one side effect I did experience was bad headaches when I started “weaning” off the placenta pills. I’ve always been sensitive to hormone changes provoking headaches (get one with ovulation and then again with menstruation, etc.).

As I was typing and thinking about my experiences, some pictures came to mind and so in this post I want to do a photographic comparison of how I looked at 3 days postpartum with each baby. (I left out Noah’s post birth pictures, because how I look in those is complicated by grief as well as blood loss.)

First baby–pretty happy and pretty tired. Note the eyes, pale skin, and the semi-exhausted tilt of head.

Second baby. Could NOT find another 3 days pp that was any better than this. Again, note pale skin and kind of distant, tired eyes.

Second baby again, but now one week postpartum. I’ve perked up! Still see tired eyes and pale-ish skin.

Last baby–note pink cheeks and happy, sparkling, semi-manic, placenta-powered eyes!

Of course, when this picture was taken I had actually hardly ingested any of the placenta, but for me, it visually sums up the vastly different physical recovery experience of this most recent postpartum time. I also think part of the difference is also in my emotional relief at her live birth!

Integrated Mama

Oct22

Alaina turned nine months old this week and I again found myself wishing to make a new polymer clay goddess sculpture to capture this new phase in our life cycle. I’m interested by how I began this series during my pregnancy with her and how I continue to feel “moved” to add to it as she grows and changes. While she is on the move a lot, she also spends a great deal of time riding on my hip in a pouch carrier. So, it felt àpropos to make another slingin’ mama figure, this time with the baby on her hip. While, as always, it isn’t perfect, I do like how my new sculpture turned out:

Slingin' mama goddess!

Healthy Baby Fair Booth--just popped out of baby carrier for photo op

I’ve written several times before about my desire to live an integrated life and I honestly think that babywearing makes it (semi) possible. She most wants to be with me, but often she doesn’t want direct play, she wants to ride along and see what interesting things I’m going to do. I think this is part of baby’s biology and part of how the motherbaby relationship is socially and biologically meant to be at this point—mother goes about her business (grinding corn, perhaps), with baby very close and watching. Unfortunately, this doesn’t include typing things on the computer, which is what much of my work actually entails. So, I save household work to do while she’s awake and riding along and I do computer-based work while she sleeps. That way, we (usually) both get our biologically appropriate needs met within our cultural context. Recently, I had a LLL table at the local Healthy Baby fair and several people came up to my friend and me to comment on how we were wearing our babies and how they were just riding along so content to look at what was going on. I tried to explain to one booth visitor who was expressing concern about the changes babies bring to life how I believe that babies can go along with mothers as they go about their tasks/days—it is possible to integrate the baby into the rest of your responsibilities.

Looking at the wavy lake from safe harbor of mama's body (in Ergo)

I was thinking about this again over the last couple of days that I spent with my family on a mini-vacation to Silver Dollar City (theme park in Branson, Missouri). As long as Alaina was riding with me in the pouch or Ergo she was totally happy. We spent hours outside on Wednesday in pretty bitter cold and she rode and looked and nursed and snoozed. On Thursday we took a lunch “cruise” on a Showboat (didn’t actually cruise due to wind) and again, she rode and checked out the world. Then, on Friday, we were back in the park where she got to go on her first rides ever like a big girl—the carousel (out of pouch) and on the Flooded Mine ride (where the whole family rode in a boat—she rode in the Ergo in the boat with me).

Big girl going for a ride!

Several years ago at an LLL conference, a sleep “expert” spoke during the lunch session. She was of the opinion (which is not shared by LLL as a whole), that nursing a baby to sleep is a “habit” that you don’t want to get into and advocates detaching them when they get sleepy so that they learn how to fall asleep without relying on nursing to get them there. She gave examples of babies and sleep associations and then said, “but if a baby is used to being nursed to sleep, they could fall asleep in the middle of Times Square while the ball was dropping on New Year’s Eve as long as mama was there too and nursing them.” And, I thought, EXACTLY! The problem with that is….?! That is one of the very best things about breastfeeding to me—home is where the mama is. So, this week as Alaina snoozed peacefully when she was sleepy while roller coasters sped around and bluegrass played and fiddlers fiddled and cold winds blew and people swarmed all over, I was thankful that I’ve never tried to get my baby to develop a different sleep association! Breastfeeding is magic like this to me, not an inconvenience or a habit to be restructured.

She is nursing in this picture

Of course, integration of parenting with work can also be a pretty significant challenge, as I touch on in my recent interview in the working/parenting series at Molly Westerman’s blog First the Egg. (I typed my responses to her interview questions on my phone while lying on my side in bed nursing Alaina to sleep.)

My whole series of sculptures

The Value of Sharing Story

Oct12

“..no matter what her experience in birth was, every mother knows something other people don’t know.”—Pam England

“Stories are medicine…They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything—we need only listen. The remedies for repair or reclamation of any lost psychic drive are contained in stories.” –Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Every woman who has given birth knows something about birth that other people don’t know. She has something unique and powerful to offer.

As birth professionals, we are often cautioned against sharing our personal stories. We must remember that it is her birth and her story, not ours. In doula and childbirth educator trainings, trainees are taught to keep their own stories to themselves and to present evidence-based information so that women can make their own informed choices. As a breastfeeding counselor too, I must remind myself to keep my own personal experiences out of the helping relationship. My formal education is in clinical social work and in that field as well we are indoctrinated to guard against inappropriate self-disclosure in a client-helper setting. In each environment, we are taught how to be good listeners without clouding the exchange with our own “baggage.” The messages are powerful—keep your own stories out of it. Recently, I have been wondering how this caution might impact our real-life connections with women?

Nine months after I experienced a powerful miscarriage at home at 15 weeks, a good friend found out at 13 weeks that her baby died. As I had, she decided to let nature take its course and to let her body let go of the pregnancy on its own timetable, rather than a medical timetable. When she emailed me for support, it was extremely difficult to separate our experiences. I kept sharing bits and pieces of my own loss experiences and then apologizing and feeling guilty for having violated the “no stories” rule. I kept telling her, “I know this isn’t about me, but I felt this way…” I told her about choosing to take pictures of the baby and to have a ceremony for him at home. That I wished I had gotten his footprints and handprints. The kinds of personal sharing that may have been frowned upon in my varied collection of professional trainings. After several apologies of this sort, I began to reflect and remembered that what I hungered for most in the aftermath of my own miscarriage was other women’s voices and stories. Real stories. The nitty gritty, how-much-blood-is-normal and did-you-feel-like-you-were-going-to-die, type of stories. Just as many women enjoy and benefit from reading other women’s birth stories, I craved real, deep, miscarriage-birth stories. These stories told me the most about what I needed to know and more than organization websites or “coping with loss” books ever could.

I had a similar realization the following month when considering the effectiveness of childbirth classes and trying to pin down what truly had reached me as a first time mother. The question I was trying to answer as I considered my own childbirth education practice was how do women really learn about birth? What did I, personally, retain and carry with me into my own birth journey? The answer, for me, was again, story.

On this blog, I have a narrative about my experiences during my first pregnancy with being able to feel my baby practicing breathing while in-utero. More than any other post on the site, this post receives more comments on an ongoing basis from women saying, “thank you for sharing”–that the story has validated their own current experience. In this example, rather than getting what they need from books, experts, or classes, women have found what they needed from story and, indeed, most of them reference that it was the only place they were able to find the information they were seeking.

And finally, as breastfeeding counselor, during monthly support meetings, I cannot count the number of times I’ve seen mothers’ faces fill with relief when another mother validates her story with a similar one.

So, what is special about story as a medium and what can it offer to women that traditional forms of education cannot? Stories are validating. They can communicate that you are not alone, not crazy, and not weird. Stories are instructive without being directive or prescriptive. It is very easy to take what works from stories and leave the rest because stories communicate personal experiences and lessons learned, rather than expert direction, recommendations, or advice. Stories can also provide a point of identification and clarification as a way of sharing information that is open to possibility, rather than advice-giving.

Cautions in sharing stories while also listening to another’s experience include:

Are you so busy in your own story that you can’t see the person in front of you?
Does the story contain bad, inaccurate, or misleading information?
Is the story so long and involved that it is distracting from the other person’s point?
Does the story communicate that you are the only right person and that everyone else should do things exactly like you?
Is the story really advice or a “to do” disguised as a story?
Does the story redirect attention to you and away from the person in need of help/listening?
Does the story keep the focus in the past and not in the here and now present moment?
Is there a subtext of, “you should…”?

Several of these self-awareness questions are much bigger concerns during a person-to-person direct dialogue rather than in written form such as blog. In reading stories, the reader has the power to engage or disengage with the story, while in person there is a possibility of becoming stuck in an unwelcome story. Some things to keep in mind while sharing stories in person are:

Sensitivity to whether your story is welcome, helpful, or contributing to the other person’s process.
Being mindful of personal motives—are you telling a story to bolster your own self-image, as a means of pointing out others’ flaws and failings, or to secretly give advice?
Asking yourself whether the story is one that will move us forward (returning to the here and now question above).

While my training and professional background might suggest otherwise, my personal lived experience is that stories have had more power in my own childbearing life than most other single influences. The sharing of story in an appropriate way is, indeed, intimately intertwined with good listening and warm connection. As the authors of the book, Sacred Circles, remind us “…in listening you become an opening for that other person…Indeed, nothing comes close to an evening spent spellbound by the stories of women’s inner lives.”

Molly Remer, MSW, ICCE, CCCE is a certified birth educator, writer, and activist who lives in central Missouri with her husband and children. She is an LLL Leader, a professor of Human Services, and the editor of the Friends of Missouri Midwives newsletter. She blogs about birth, women, and motherhood at https://talkbirth.wordpress.com.

This is a preprint of The Value of Sharing Story, an article by Molly Remer, MSW, ICCE, published in Midwifery Today, Issue 99, Autumn 2011. Copyright © 2011 Midwifery Today. Midwifery Today’s website is located at: http://www.midwiferytoday.com/

Glass Half Full

Oct11

Written by Katy Read, the article “Glass Half Full” in the fall issue of Brain, Child magazine, explores the questions: “Have mothers complained too much, already … or not enough?” In it, she references a book I hadn’t yet heard of by Bryan Caplan, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You’d Think

…Caplan argues that parents make their own job unnecessarily difficult. If they’d cut themselves some slack, he insists, raising kids would be more enjoyable—so much so that couples should consider having more children than they’d planned.

At the same time, however, other observers contend that it’s still rare and socially risky for mothers to admit any discontent…

So which are we: A culture in which mothers hesitate to voice misgivings for fear of social reprisal? Or one so inundated with maternal kvetching that onlookers are understandably tired of it?…

Glass Half Full in Brain, Child magazine.

She later returns to Caplan’s ideas about nature vs. nurture (i.e. that nurture carries less weight than we often assume):

Why do moms “self-flagellate”? Because they’ve been taught that kids pay a long-term price for their parents’ ordinary mistakes. They don’t. Because they think they’re to blame for their children’s flaws. They aren’t.

But guess what. Admitting you can’t control phenomena that nevertheless significantly color your emotional well-being and day-to-day life is not necessarily a ticket to relaxation. Even armed with twins studies and mortality stats, I have not experienced parenting as the carefree romp that Caplan promises.

Sure, much of it has been wonderful. However, not to get all whiny mother on you, raising children remains an often complicated, frustrating, and stress-inducing enterprise, involving many kinds of challenges.

The best part of this article in my opinion, however, was the author’s postscript:

If I were the conspiracy-theory type, I might imagine a sinister plot behind efforts to keep mothers from complaining. After all, mothers perform the lion’s share of unpaid housework and child care—and pay a steep economic price for doing so, on average making less money than fathers or childless people and suffering from a higher rate of poverty. What better way to keep mothers from rebelling against those circumstances than to discourage them from voicing any objections? It’s ingenious: convince women through cultural conditioning that mothers are blissfully content—or ought to be, anyway—and penalize those who contradict that image by lashing back with criticism dripping with contempt.

Luckily, I’m not a conspiracy nut. So of course I don’t seriously think that the writers and publications I quoted in this piece, whom I respect, are in cahoots with opponents of reforms that would make mothers’ lives more manageable (universal health insurance that would make part-time work more feasible, for example). Still, it’s worth asking why the reaction is so swift and harsh—why the outrage? where’s the threat? what deep, dark fears are being tapped?—when a mother dares to mention the empty half of the glass. Glass Half Full in Brain, Child magazine.

As a side note, the same issue contains another interesting article called Inappropriate. This article includes a nude photo of a woman with a double mastectomy and notes that no print publication has ever published the photos, taken by photographer/artist David Jay in a project called SCAR (“Surviving Cancer. Absolute Reality.”). So, it was cool to extrapolate from that that Brain, Child was the first publication to have the guts to publish his work in a print magazine!