Feminism Is A Social Justice Movement

I Stand with Planned Parenthood

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Last week I attended a Planned Parenthood “Pink out” rally at the California State Capitol during my lunch hour. I’d estimate there were about 400 people there in the middle of the day on a Tuesday. California lawmakers wore pink scarves and blazers and pink boxing gloves.

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Athena, the goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare, presided over the rally at the west steps of the Capitol, just as she stands on seal of the state of California. (May she be with us these next four years because we need both wisdom and strategic resistance in the face of Trump’s attack on our democracy.)

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I’ve been a supporter of Planned Parenthood for years, however yesterday I initiated a monthly donation. I’m proud of this. I support every woman’s right to choose. And firmly believe that women’s rights are human rights—Thank you, Hillary Rodham Clinton for saying this in 1995 in your speech at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Clinton took this idea to a global stage as First Lady, and it is now prominent in feminist discourse and was everywhere at the Women’s March on the 21st of this month.

The First Lady Hillary Clinton during her speech in Beijing, China.
By Sharon Farmer/White House Photograph Office – National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, Link

With the ACA under attack, women, men and teens will need Planned Parenthood more than ever for basic health care screenings and all sorts of essential services. I am happy to help.

Autism Walk

Sunday morning we all went to West Sacramento’s Raley Field to participate in the Walk Now for Autism Speaks 2010 walk. (According to their website, they raised more than $196,600.) This was my first time at such an event, and we were all surprised at the turnout. We met up with some of Ian’s coworkers and walked from the baseball field to the Capitol and back.

Sacramento Raley Field and the Ziggurat Walk Now for Autism Speaks

Mmm Lolly

Walk Now for Autism Speaks 2010

Walk Now for Autism Speaks 2010

Fierce Asher Lucas and the Stormtroopers Raley Field Is Decorated with Handpainted Tiles Everywhere

Our Family in Front of the CA Capitol Building

Lucas and Hercules

Capitol Mall Sacramento (Autism Walk) Walk Now for Autism Speaks 2010

Tower Bridge Sacramento

We saw Stormtroopers and sat in Hercules’ lap, enjoyed beautiful Capitol Mall without traffic, and got to walk on the Tower Bridge. The weather was warm and pretty, people were friendly, and the kids got lollies. I’m so impressed with their stamina! Asher was carried a bit on the way back, but they both participated (almost) without complaint.

Afterward, we celebrated with burgers and fries at Rubicon brewpub. I have to say, Rubicon’s black and bleu burger packs a wallop, but the organic pomegranate cider helped. We came home and napped in the afternoon. Just right.

Whomever You Love

Whoever you are,

Whomever you love,

Happy Valentine’s Day from our family to yours.

“Where there is great love there are always miracles.” —Willa Cather

“Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much perfoms much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.” —Vincent Van Gogh

“We can do no great things; only small things with great love.” —Mother Theresa

Turning Over

With the change of seasons, it’s time to move the warm-weather clothing aside to make way in drawers and closets for cold-weather clothing. I spent a couple of hours yesterday doing just that with Asher’s things.

This might be a rather tedious task to perform several times a year, except it makes me feel connected to moms and families all over the world whenever I do it. It doesn’t even matter what hemisphere you’re in. Chances are, if you have kids, you also are busy buying, making, sorting, evaluating, mending, packing, and unpacking belongings for your children because they’re always growing.

Will this fit next summer? Is this shirt still nice enough to save for the baby? Who has a child the right age to get more use out of these boots? Do these pants go into the donation box? These questions are being asked everywhere.

I pulled lots of 18 to 24 month clothes out of Asher’s dresser and filled a big shopping bag and a box full of clothing we no longer need. Some pieces are handmade by Grandma Sydney, including little matching Hawaiian shirts and shorts sets. I’m very happy I know a little boy who will grow into these things soon enough. It feels good to pass them on to dear friends.

We are rather lucky in that we have a mountain of things in our garage waiting patiently for Asher to grow into them. I pulled out the 3T box yesterday and pawed through it. The pants are all too big still, but many of the shirts will be useful this winter and beyond. It was a little like shopping for new things—kind of exciting in that way. But it was more like rediscovering old friends. I sometimes remember who gave the item to Lucas, or who made it for him, or where we were when we bought it. Even some of the stains are familiar. As I pulled out items from the box that was nearly as tall as Lucas is, memories of younger Lucas flooded my mind. It was bittersweet.

Ian has occasionally chafed at the amount of space all this STUFF takes up in his garage. But I know he’s happy to be saving the money because we don’t have to outfit our toddler from scratch. I’m so grateful to have the hand-me-downs, to use them again for Asher. I really like that these clothes get an extended life. What about the things that don’t yet fit? They go back into the garage to wait a bit longer.

Heather B. Armstrong Explains Why We Do It

http://www.dooce.com/2008/05/02/newsletter-month-fifty-and-fifty-one

Quoting from Dooce, Newsletter: Month Fifty and Fifty-one (The author is speaking to her daughter in a newsletter she writes every month since 2004—except for month fifty—about criticism she receives from readers who think it’s wrong for her to write about her child on her website):

“Will you resent me for this website? Absolutely. And I have spent hours and days and months of my life considering this, weighing your resentment against the good that can come from being open and honest about what it’s like to be your mother, the good for you, the good for me, and the good for other women who read what I write here and walk away feeling less alone. And I have every reason to believe that one day you will look at the thousands of pages I have written about my love for you, the thousands of pages other women have written about their own children, and you’re going to be so proud that we were brave enough to do this. We are an army of educated mothers who have finally stood up and said pay attention, this is important work, this is hard, frustrating work and we’re not going to sit around on our hands waiting for permission to do so. We have declared that our voices matter.

“These are the stories of our lives as women and they often include you, yes. …

“I will not be discouraged from continuing to document the beauty of life with my family or supporting them with an income from doing so. Leta, some people will one day try to convince you that what I’ve done here is some sort of sickening betrayal of your childhood, and what those people fail to recognize is that I am doing the exact opposite. This is the glorification of your childhood, and even more than that this is a community of women coming together to make each other feel less alone. You are a part of this movement, you and all of the other kids whose mothers are sitting at home right now writing tirelessly about their experiences as mothers, the love and frustration and madness of it all. And I think one day you will look at all of this and pump your fist in the air.”

EDIT: I wrote this post late last night and I’ve been thinking I must add to it. I must add a little about why I do it. I write about my kids and my feelings about my kids in the hopes that someday they will know who I am. That I am human and full of flaws, and still beautiful. That I start every day with hopes and good intentions. That I strive for goodness and warmth, honesty and love in our family. 

If that bus with my name on it claims me before my sons grow up enough to remember me and our experiences, I hope that eventually, they will read what I have written here and know I loved them imperfectly and completely—in the very best way I could.

Breastfeeding, Illness, and Medications

A while ago I alluded to my recent crisis. The “crisis” turned out not to be one, so rest easy. I want to write about it because … well … because I learned stuff that other people might want to know.

I was recently sick with a cold; you may remember my bitching about it. The cold seemed to go away, then returned and settled in my lungs as a respiratory infection. This is what colds do in my body. It’s tradition. I relented and went to see my doctor, Dr. Chen on a Monday morning, now two weeks ago.

Chen confirmed that I had an infection in my lungs, confirmed that this is indeed what colds turn into in people like me—people with chronic asthma and allergies. Right. I knew that. Chen listened to my breathing and exclaimed “You’re really wheezing bad!” Right. I knew that, too. She prescribed two medications for me: prednisone (a corticosteroid) and Zithromax (a brand name for azithromycin, which is an antibiotic).

Then she told me I would have to stop breastfeeding Asher and “pump and dump.” I am beginning to think that this phrase is a favorite among physicians everywhere. I expressed my dismay about this, and she launched into a discussion about how these two drugs are needed to make me better—that I would NOT get better without them—and that surely I don’t want these drugs to go into my milk and into my baby.

Right. No, I wouldn’t want that.

 

So, I left Chen’s office and drove directly to the pharmacy at Raley’s. I shopped for a few items while waiting for the pharmacy people to fill the scripts. While I shopped, I got more and more upset. I put a can of Earth’s Best organic baby formula in my cart and tried to imagine Asher happily taking a bottle. Or a cup. Or anything other than mama milk at bedtime. I bought the drugs, bought my other items, and came home. By the time I got home, I was crying.

Ian had been watching the boys for me while I went to the doctor’s office. He was naturally alarmed by my tears. We sent Lucas out into the backyard so I could fall apart and tell Ian what was wrong. I sobbed as I told him how I didn’t want to take the meds. I did not want to stop breastfeeding. I felt that Asher was old enough now that there was a serious chance that if I stopped nursing him, he would wean. Nursing is a beautiful symbiotic relationship: My body makes enough milk to meet the demand of my nursling. Without the demand, the body stops making milk.

 

I was looking at taking seven days’ worth of drugs, plus two more days of dumping my milk and using formula “just to be sure.”

Asher gets a good portion of his nutrients from “real” food now, or from purées. But he still nurses at least six to eight times in 24 hours. At this time, Asher was still sick with the same cold I had had, and was feeling miserable, and was therefore nursing for comfort and more often than usual. Even though he might be physically able to wean without a huge negative nutritional consequence, he is still very much a baby. Or a toddler, if you will. Both the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend continued breastfeeding until the age of two. Studies show that the immunity benefits of breastfeeding change as the baby grows. Some immune factors decrease, but some increase: Lysozyme, an immune factor that attacks the cell walls of bacteria and kills them, is present in greater concentrations after the first year than before.

Breastfeeding Asher is crucial to me for a lot of reasons. When he was first born and I got so shockingly sick with a uterine infection and then septicemia, my milk did not “come in.” In the hospital, they had me on something like ten different drugs to combat the infection and save my life (three different antibiotics—Flagyl, Levaquin, Vancomycin—steroids, an anticlotting drug called argatroban, two asthma drugs, potassium chloride, phosphorus, insulin, mucomyst (a drug I was told was supposed to protect my kidneys from all the other drugs they were giving me), guaifenesin, dilaudid as needed for pain, and Xanax).

 

It was only through great effort and single-minded determination that I eventually became able to breastfeed my infant: I had to pump every three hours around the clock for weeks. Following doctors’ instructions, I had to dump out my milk for six weeks before I was allowed to feed my baby my milk. 

So here’s where I wax poetic. We need to breastfeed. Both of us. It is our primary and primal form of communication. It is a panacea for all hurts, fears, insecurities, and worries. It makes us sleepy. It makes us feel peaceful, in harmony with each other, and safe. Breastfeeding my baby makes me feel worthy—that I am a good mother. It increases the happy hormones in my bloodstream, and helps me stay patient when faced with the many frustrations of raising small children. It burns calories that I would find difficult to burn otherwise, given my circumscribed (read: housebound) activity. It provides him with perfect, tailor-made nourishment and protects him from all sorts of health problems. It also protects me from future health problems such as osteoporosis and possibly even breast, ovarian, and uterine cancers. Nursing is the perfect start to every day, the perfect way to drift off to sleep, the perfect way to reunite after an absence. It is our special time together, our unique bond. We are not ready to give it up.

My doctor’s recommendation that I stop breastfeeding and “pump and dump” was greatly disturbing. It threw me into a panic and dredged up all sorts of terrible feelings that were born in my illness last year. It churned a lot of dark, gloopy fears around and threw them back in my face to be felt all over again.

Ian talked me down a bit. We discussed my not taking the drugs. But I was sick and felt very ill. Not breathing properly sucks, by the way. I wanted to feel better. But I didn’t want to stop breastfeeding Asher.

We turned, as we often do, to the Internet and to books. I spent an entire afternoon researching online and flipping through some books on breastfeeding that I have. And for those of you who might still be reading, here’s what I found:

You do not have to stop breastfeeding when taking MOST medications. 

Doctors have an incomplete understanding of lactation and medications. Drug studies are not done on nursing mothers or babies, therefore little hard evidence exists to prove that continued nursing when taking meds is safe. Serious research on breastfeeding and the nature of breast milk has only been done in the last 20 years. Therefore, to the established medical field, breastfeeding while taking medications is not safe. To the drug companies, it’s less risky simply to say “ask your doctor” or “don’t take while breastfeeding.” They avoid lawsuits that way. Same with the doctor. I gather from what I’ve read that very little time is spent on lactation in medical school, so doctors who may even be pro-breastfeeding don’t really know much about it. They take the conservative stance, as my doctor did: Don’t breastfeed while taking meds.

 

But, two of the biggest experts in lactation and breastfeeding, both MDs, say most medications are fine to take while continuing breastfeeding your baby. Only a very small percentage of most drugs makes it into breast milk, usually less than 1%.

 

Tom Hale, MD, (a lactation and drug specialist and author of Drugs and Mother’s Milk, 13th ed., and Drug Therapy and Breastfeeding), Jack Newman, MD, (researcher and author of The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS: The Transfer of Drugs and Other Chemicals Into Human Milk) all say its OK to breastfeed even when taking these specific drugs (prednisone and azithromycin) and not to worry about baby. The 2001 AAP publication (Table 7) says there is “no reported signs or symptoms in infant or effect on lactation.”

In fact, there are lots of medications that are safe to take while breastfeeding, but your doctor may not know that. Whether a medication is safe to take depends on a number of things, such as:

* maternal serum drug concentration

* whether the drug is absorbed through the gut; many medications are delivered in other ways, therefore almost none enters the milk

* whether the medication binds to protein

* the size of the drug’s molecules (“In the early postpartum period, large gaps between the mammary alveolar cells allow many medications to pass through this milk that may not be able to enter mature milk. These gaps close by the second week of lactation.”—Spencer, MD; Gonzalez, PharmD; and Barnhart, PharmD, American Family Physician, July, 2001)

* age of the infant (premature and newborn infants are more at risk if they absorb mother’s medication through her milk, as their livers don’t filter the chemicals out of their bodies as efficiently as older babies and toddlers)

* amount of milk the infant is receiving (young infants nurse more than older babies and toddlers)

* the drug’s half-life (drugs break down within the body, so if you time the medication well, such as by taking it immediately after a feeding or during baby’s longest sleep, the drug may well be out of your milk by the time baby feeds again)

* dosage and frequency of dosage (a drug that you take frequently is better than a longer-acting dosage; if you take it frequently, it means the drug breaks down relatively quickly)

* whether the medication is one that is normally prescribed to infants and babies if the medical condition were theirs and not mother’s

* whether the medication will affect the mother’s ability to make milk for her baby (oral contraceptives fall into this category)

 

Jack Newman, MD, in The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers, (published by Prima!) has a whole chapter on breastfeeding while on medication. He says, “The essential question in all this is: Does a small amount of medication in the mother’s milk make breastfeeding riskier than not breastfeeding? The answer … is almost always no. Breastfeeding with a small amount of medication in the milk is not riskier than feeding the baby formula, except in a few specific situations. It is almost always less risky. There are safer and less safe drugs for mothers who are breastfeeding, but the majority are still safe. Health risks exist for both the mother and the baby when the mother does not breastfeed. This may not just be a question of taking the baby off the breast for a week or 10 days. It may be a question of permanent weaning, since off the breast for a week often means, in practice, off the breast forever.”

 

Newman goes on later to say, “You should not assume that your doctor or even your pharmacist knows much about drugs and breastfeeding or that they are concerned with helping you continue to breastfeed. Often the information they may use to decide if a drug is acceptable during breastfeeding domes from the drug manufacturer itself, found in a book called the Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties (CPS) in Canada and the Physician’s Desk Reference (PDR) in the United States. The manufacturer is concerned about its own medical legal liability, not the importance to the mother and baby of breastfeeding.”

 

Tom Hale, MD, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics at Texas Tech University School of Medicine, has a website and a Q&A forum which discusses specific drugs. He answers the questions himself and specifically discussed prednisone and azithromycin, as well as many other medications:  http://neonatal.ttuhsc.edu/lact/

 

This site is a clearinghouse of info and links to many good online  sources: http://www.breastfeedingonline.com/meds.shtml

 

The American Academy of Family Physicians introduces the topic of breastfeeding and medications in this way: “Physicians receive little education about breast-feeding and even less training on the effects of maternal medications on the nursing infant. Yet, concern about potential harm to the nursing infant from maternal medications is often cited as a reason to advise discontinuation of breast-feeding. Overwhelming evidence demonstrates the benefits of breast-feeding and the deleterious effects that can result from premature weaning.” You can read the full article here: http://www.aafp.org/afp/20010701/119.html

 

Here is an easy-to-read table of drugs and their relative safety/risk when breastfeeding: http://www.ukmicentral.nhs.uk/drugpreg/qrg_p1.htm

 

La Leche League’s website (http://www.llli.org/) has three articles specifically about medications in mothers’ milk. One is written by Tom Hale and he says “In a 14-month-old breastfeeding baby, the volume of milk provided is often so low that the dose of maternal medication transferred to the infant is minimal to nil.” This is exactly Asher’s present age.

 

William Sears, MD, a huge proponent of Attachment Parenting and breastfeeding has a website, too. Here’s an article on the benefits of breastfeeding “from top to bottom”: http://www.askdrsears.com/html/2/T020300.asp

 

This is just a small sampling of the information that is available. It was enough to convince me and Ian that it was safe for me to take the medications my doctor prescribed to me and to continue breastfeeding our baby, with no interruption or big change in our routine. I made an effort to take my meds after Asher had nursed and right before his longest sleeping period of the day, but otherwise we continued life as normal. Within 24 hours, I felt about 40 percent better for having taken the drugs. The day after that, I felt enormously better and very grateful I had done my research and decided to take them.

 

We carefully observed Asher during this time. He didn’t change in any observable way, except for the better: He gradually got over his cold after a few days. His mood improved and he returned to his normal happy, healthy self. 

I’m returning that baby formula to the store unopened.

 

The moral of this story is this: Do your research before you take the advice to stop breastfeeding your baby, and don’t assume the doctor knows all the info. Don’t risk losing the most perfect symbiotic and health-promoting relationship two human beings can have. It’s too important to throw it away.

Turning Point in the Government’s Position on Bisphenol A, or BPA

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/15/AR2008041501753_pf.html 

Bisphenol A, or BPA, is one of the creepy plastic chemicals discussed in The Toxic Sandbox, the book I mentioned a while back with regard to pacifiers and phthalates. 

I found this blog post (http://greenerpenny.blogspot.com/2007/09/least-toxic-totables.html) about safe and unsafe plastic food containers by Mindy Pennybacker, environmental writer and editor with focus on lifestyles and health and former editor-in-chief of The Green Guide (thegreenguide.com) for 11 years. Check it out. We may become a household full of only wood and metal soon.

  • About Sara

    Thanks for visiting! I’m Sara, editor and writer, wife to Ian, and mother of two precious boys. I am living each day to the fullest and with as much grace, creativity, and patience as I can muster. This is where I write about living, loving, and engaging fully in family life and the world around me. I let my hair down here. I learn new skills here. I strive to be a better human being here. And I tell the truth.

    Our children attend Waldorf school and we are enriching our home and family life with plenty of Waldorf-inspired festivals, crafts, and stories.

    © 2003–2018 Please do not use my photographs or text without my permission.

    “Love doesn’t just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.” —Ursula K. LeGuinn

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